CONTEXT 185 : SEPTEMBER 2025 51 Director’s cut Charter… or no Charter I must highlight a couple of qualifications to the title of this column. First, at this stage, only permission to petition – or apply – for a Charter is sought. That takes the form of our nowsubmitted Memorandum to the Privy Council Office, guardians of the chartering process. Critically, any permission received carries no guarantees on outcome. However, as the distinction between Charter and Memorandum might be moot for many readers, for convenience this column’s title conjoins the Memorandum and the Charter. Second, by the time you read this, we may all know the answer, or at least the questions the Memorandum has raised, so that is more moot. Noting that preamble, this column reflects how – with our wonderful Shrewsbury School now done and, almost, dusted (and with kudos to our West Midlands Branch for their work there) – collective thoughts here are turning back to just how the Privy Council Office might respond to our case for a Charter. And, either way on ‘Charter… or no Charter’, how we proceed after we hear its final determination. We have really been thinking about this for years, with the entire experience of the consultation, attendant research and investigation, and the drafting of the Memorandum all tied together by such considerations. But now, with a proper sense of just how suited we might be to a Charter all safely resting in and around our Memorandum, we can plot just what we might do, whichever way the response goes, ‘Charter… or no Charter’. For example, we now know that members strongly support the potential for a Charter to bring substantial benefits to our profession and discipline, and to all our diverse aspirations and attached hopes. That member support is dependent on obvious reservations, especially regarding both finances (including member fees) and any administrative distractions from our core services and role that the process might generate. With issues around these concerns now much clearer after our investigative work, we are in a strong position to advise properly. Investigations suggest that neither cost nor process should be barriers. To date, our costs have been both controlled and, compared to earlier external estimates, even much reduced. Those reductions are helped, both for the past and for the future, by the advice and support of partners, consultants and bodies recruited along our journey, all helped by our familiar cost-conscious management. The chartering processes are simpler for us than for other bodies. That is because we already align so well, and across so many measures, with the modern culture of chartering. Our current accreditation standards align with core Charter precepts – from fostering social and cultural improvements to upholding established and exemplary professional practices and principles – bringing public benefit, and matching or exceeding peer chartered disciplines, if on a rather smaller scale. And while the issue of chartering an individual’s practice standards is not directly relevant to the chartering of the charity discussed here (as current discussions relate only to the chartering of the charity, not to chartering our members, which entails a separate stage) the chartering of a person’s practice is naturally a consideration for all. Furthermore, the Charter’s focus on public benefit, its most underrecognised requirement, is easier for us, as our charitable status has always been our default position. That has been made even simpler as we have already modernised our constitution, and had it authorised by charity regulators in line with the protocols of devolved governments, to be charter-ready, so we are ahead of that game too. That unexpectedly tight tie between charter and public benefit also usefully spurred some more fundamental thinking around the Memorandum on how our regulation of the interdisciplinary conservation practice of our accredited members’ enhances the public benefit that is already intrinsic in good conservation. That will be the subject of a future column, as well as new formal guidance, but again this all confirms a real sense of our fit with the concept of a Charter, and the value of our measured approach to the Memorandum. So, if the next stage is ‘Charter’, not ‘no Charter’, we have a clear route to, and capacity for, developing a formal Petition. All new work will be embedded within that chartering process. We will then pursue the subsequent stages, managing the process and its attendant hurdles with the same cautious optimism and careful stewardship of our profession that has distinguished our work to
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