RCN: Fit for the Future

This week is an important time for the RCN itself. In the next few days our members will receive voting papers from Electoral Reform Services.

Members are being asked to vote on a crucial amendment to the RCN Royal Charter enabling us to change our legal structure and set up our charity as a separate organisation. It’s a small but important change – important because it will ensure that we meet Charity Commission requirements and legislation governing charities.

You may well have heard discussion in the media lately about how the Charity Commission is reviewing organisations such as independent schools which have charitable status. Consequently, RCN Council approached the Commission last year about changing our legal set-up to enable us to meet its requirements whilst ensuring we could carry on business as usual. The Charity Commission has agreed we can proceed on the basis we proposed.

The proposal will not affect the services we offer to our members and will enable our professional and trade union activities to carry on hand in hand as they do now in one organisation. We will, however, have a separate charitable foundation which will fund our charitable activities through grants.

It is very important that our members vote and return their voting paper in plenty of time for the closing date of Monday 26 October, two days in advance of our AGM which is being held at RCN headquarters in London.

More information about the AGM vote can be found on our website at www.rcn.org.uk/agm2009