BACP: A Membership Organisation not a Business
As a Member I have been given the chance to vote on a series of proposed changes to the BACP Articles of Association. We have been provided with a rationale from the organisation about how these proposed changes have come about and why they feel they are needed.
For members to make an informed decision, I believe that it is important that alternative viewpoints are also available to be considered. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be anywhere for this to happen, so I am writing this with a view to redressing that balance and I would hope that others might also add their voice to this discussion.
While some of the proposals seem to be positive steps, there are three which I believe will fundamentally change the way that the organisation is managed. While I appreciate the reasoning for offering these as a single proposal, I would have liked the opportunity to have been able to vote for each one individually as there are some that I recognise as having value and which I would have been willing to support.
By way of context, I became a member when the organisation was still called the British Association for Counselling. I was elected to the Board in December 2020 and became the Deputy Chair the following April. I resigned from the Board in January 2023 following the Board’s agreement to implement SCoPEd, which I could not support in the form that it was being presented.
The first proposal I would wish to challenge is Change 10: Chair and Deputy Chair Eligibility. Currently the Chair and their Deputy are elected by their Board colleagues and as they are required to be Members will also have been through a process of election by the full membership. It is perhaps worth noting that following their dismissal, which I believe is being challenged in the courts, the organisation has been without either a Chair or a Deputy Chair for many months.
The proposed change to the eligibility for the Chair so that they can be appointed directly from the wider membership shifts the power away from the Members towards whichever group would be overseeing that process. It is perhaps worth noting that not all Chairs of the current committees are elected members and so we cannot be sure that the group responsible for selecting the Chair would be fully representative of the members. For example, the current chair of BACP’s Assurance, Appointments and Remuneration Committee (AARC), which we are told is responsible for overseeing remuneration and appointments, is a Senior HR Professional from the corporate world.
The advantage of the current system is that a potential Chair will have been elected by the Members and so will have presented to them their reasons for wanting to join the Board and their hopes and ambitions while in office. They will then have spent time learning about the organisation and building relationships with senior staff and Board colleagues. They may well have served a term as Deputy Chair so will have had delegated responsibility while the existing Chair was away. They will be well prepared for the role and appreciate all that it requires. All of this will have been viewed through the lens of continuing to be a practitioner.
Appointing a Member without going through any democratic process calls me to question the criteria that will be used for their selection and who will decide what that is.
The proposal to make the role of Deputy Chair optional and that they may also be appointed from among the unelected Trustees further compounds this problem. As Deputy Chair I worked very closely with the Chair, supporting them in meetings and taking delegated responsibility when they were away. Most importantly, I believe, I was able to be a sounding board for them to explore issues as they arose particularly where they were confidential matters that could not be shared with other colleagues. I felt it was important that I was able to offer this from the position of being a practitioner so that we never lost sight of our need to be connected to the profession. Making this role optional begs the question again as to who would decide if and when it was required, and I would suggest that the Chair may not always know when a situation will arise where this form of support will be needed. Allowing the Deputy to be a non-member would mean that in the Chair’s absence neither of the two senior people within the organisation would be from the Membership and that makes me feel very uncomfortable.
One argument that is often used for appointing rather than electing is that Trustees elected from the Membership do not have the skills needed to operate at this level. Clearly, we are trained as therapists not managers, though many of us will have had experience of both. I would suggest that the answer lies in offering appropriate training to support elected Members to develop those skills, just as happens with school governors and in local government.
The second proposal that I would resist is Change 2: Removal of Chair and Deputy Chair Remuneration. When I was Deputy Chair, I was also Chair of the Governance, Remuneration and Nominations Committee (GRaN), which I assume was the forerunner of the current AARC. We spent a lot of time reflecting on this question and developing a policy that was accepted by the Board. The main challenge was to define those aspects of the role which could be differentiated from those expected of a Trustee. This was the criteria demanded by the Charity Commission. It would have been simpler not to have offered any financial benefits as it would sidestep this issue. However, we concluded that the time commitment was such that not offering some form of reimbursement would mean that only people who could afford to give up significant amounts of their time during the working week would be able to apply. We recognised that this would be discriminatory, as it would exclude those without additional income or pensions. The question we reflected upon was how important is it that the Chair is a committed professional working within the profession, and we decided that this was a priority. I do not believe that this has changed. If we want a Chair and Deputy Chair who are practising therapists, then they need to be compensated for the financial loss they will incur by giving their time to the organisation. That is what the remuneration is for. It is important to remember that this is for time given over and above their work as a Trustee which continues to be voluntary.
The final proposal I would not wish to support is Change 3: The introduction of a formal scheme of delegation which has a specific reference to Membership. I appreciate that I may have misunderstood this, however it would seem to me that this is about the Board no longer being directly involved in decisions around the removal or expulsion of Members from the organisation. Currently Members can only be removed by a resolution of the Board. Where there is a complaint or an allegation of misconduct the process is overseen by a review panel which then makes a recommendation to the Board who are tasked with ratifying the decision. The Proposal is to amend that so that a delegated panel can decide and implement these decisions. The suggestion is that this process would be overseen by the Public Protection Committee and that this would be sufficient. One of the reasons given for this proposal is efficiency.
From my time as a Trustee, I remember there being a few occasions when we were asked to consider the removal of a Member. We had the opportunity to review the case notes and the clear recommendation of the review panel. As I recall, on every occasion we concurred with the recommendation. It is understandable to see this as a mere formality which adds additional time, and a layer of bureaucracy, to a process which is likely to have already taken several months. However, for me this part of the process has a huge symbolic meaning in that it is the Governors of the organisation, which will have a majority of members, agreeing to expel a colleague from what continues to be a Membership organisation. I appreciate the value of efficiency, but this feels like an important confirmation that the Members who are tasked with leading the organisation have concluded that an individual has no place within it. Expelling a Member is a decision that should not be delegated as it goes to the heart of what I believe the Members want from this organisation. To move away from this is to abdicate our responsibility and something precious will be lost.
Put together, I see all these proposals as being an attempt to diminish the role of the Members as key players within the organisation. Senior staff are employed for their skills and experience, Governors are appointed for their knowledge and expertise, however I believe that the Members need to remain, and be seen to remain, at the heart of the organisation. BACP is not a business, as it was frequently referred to by some senior employees, it is a Membership Organisation, and Members need to be instrumental in the oversight of all that it does in their name. I believe that these proposals risk undermining and weakening our ability, as Members, to continue to directly influence the way that we wish it to support us as practitioners.
© 2026 Michael Golding