Replacing London's Victorian Water Mains

Not for the first time, the civil service has been interfering with the executive and judicial branches of our fifedom. It's like Yes, Minister without the style.

As I mentioned to you earlier, I am getting somewhat concerned by the apparent inability and/or unwillingness of the Constitution and Steering Committee to act within the Union Constitution. Last weeks decision to allow discussion of an Emergency Business motion despite the fact that it clearly failed to meet a single one of the 3 requirements for an Emergency Business Motion set out in section 11.11.2 of the Standing Orders is merely the latest of a series of perverse and inexplicable C & S decisions. (the decision to treat a motion as lapsed after 3 weeks and to order the re-printing of the order paper without it , despite the 3 week lapse rule having been removed years ago and the decision to accept the submission of a business motion, obviously prior to the Monday 17.00 deadline, as something that could be the subject of an Emergency Business Motion are two other recent examples).

Although these unconstitutional and clearly improper rulings are being taken by C & S , the legal advice we took in relation to paper throwing makes it clear that the Union's trustees (ie the exec) and the Chair of the UGM are legally responsible for the conduct of the UGM. C & S's ignorance of, or possibly just indifference to , the Union's governing documents seems to me to be putting the Exec and the UGM Chair in an extremely difficult position.

As you are aware , SU's will shortly be required to register with the Charity Commission and will , for the first time be regulated directly by them. There is widespread concern in the SU movement that the Charity Commission will take the view that direct election of trustees from the membership fails to provide for proper governance . Many SU's are moving to having appointed trustees in place of some elected exec members (with alumni, local dignitaries, University or Union staff acting as trustees).

I think there is a broad consensus that we do not want to go down this route. This means that we have to be able to demonstrate that directly elected trustees can provide good governance. Failure to even to run the UGM in accordance with the Codes of Practice and Standing Orders is really shooting ourselves in the foot and I think the exec need to address the situation and in extremis, they need to be willing to ignore/over rule C& S when they go off the rails. As part of out preparation for the new Charity Act, I think we need to review whether there is a useful role for a C & S committee and if there is, we need to ensure that the Constitution reflects the legal reality that such a body can only be advisory to the trustees , who carry legal liability and must be the final decision makers. If the trustees act improperly , or allow the Union's business to be conducted improperly it is no defence that C & S told them to do so.

I think it would be useful to have a discussion at exec about how resolve this problem and to invite the C& S chair and UGM chair to attend.