Recent Elections

Recent Elections
Details taken from AGM Minutes. The number of voters is based on the assumption that all voters use fully their votes.

Whilst the Elections are held in the November the new Directors only take their positions in the following year normally February with the retiring/losing Directors resigning as Directors in January following the announcement  of the results 1. Unable to say from Shareholder Register which D Grant is Donald Grant

2. Unable to say which R Thomas is correct.

3. Professor Barwise must have been a shareholder prior to this and resigned, and rejoined. He was a co-opted Director appointed 31/1/2006 and re-appointed 2009. Previously served 1995 to 2001 icluding three years as Deputy Chairman.

Comments regarding Number of Trustees
As you will note by counting the elected Directors post January 2013 there were only eight elected Directors whilst the Article 11.3  requires there to be nine. With the resignation of Jo Coburn in February the number dropped of elected dropped to seven.

Number
11.3 The Council shall be composed of not less than nine Ordinary Members elected in accordance with these Articles [the  "Elected Council Members" ], together with such Ordinary Members as may be co-opted under Article 11.26

Articles 11.5 and 11.6 are on the appointment of Directors when vacancies occur.

11.5 The Council may appoint Ordinary Members to be Council Members in order to fill vacancies among Elected Council Members and a person appointed under this Article shall hold office until the date that the person whose early retirement has created the vacancy would have retired if s/he had not stood down before the end of their term of office, or such other date as Council may decide.

11.6  If the number of Elected Council Members is less than twelve [ or such lower number as may be determined under Article 11.4 ], the Council shall appoint additional members to make up the number to twelve[ or such lower number as may be determined under Article 11.4 ] to hold office only until the next annual general meeting.

The current Council have not seen fit to use these Articles. I have transcribed the Articles from the copy held at Companies House. The complete Articles of Association can be downloaded from Companies House for £1. I suspect the Company Secretary or Chairman's Office would supply them for free :

chairman@which.co.uk

It should be noted that the number of co-opted is at the maximum of six and the latest appointed [ that I know of ] was Anna Walker  who became a Director of the Consumers Association Ltd on 1/11/2013 and joined as an Ordinary Menber on 13/12/2013.

The Articles require you to be a member before you are a Director and, whilst this may be a minor quibble, against the backdrop of holding the Elections which were manifestly going to breach the requirement for nine elected members it seems indicative of a casual attitude by Council to the Articles on running the charity.