Friday 11-10-2013 - 14:24

On Thursday 10th October, the members of NTSU voted unanimously to accept the proposal to incorporate the union as a charitable company limited by guarantee, previously approved in principle at our Annual General Meeting.

This resulted in the adoption of a new set of Memorandum & Articles to replace our Constitution. This change was a legal requirement to adopt the new legal status of incorporated charity limited by guarantee. There will be no shareholders and members will still make the decisions they have made before.

The main changes are detailed below:

• Clarifies the liability the Trustee Board - Previously liability was on the shoulders of certain individuals within the organisation whereas the new document ensures that this is shared across the Trustee Board and therefore the company.
• Dictates reporting mechanisms for public accountability - We will now have to report to Companies House as well as the Charity Commission. All of these reports are accessible for interrogation by the public.
• Changes to our Democratic Processes Document - The document that governs our daily operations needs to be updated in order to remain compliant with our new Memorandum and Articles.

This document has now been passed to the Charity Commission for acceptance.

This resulted in a number of number of changes to our Democratic Procedures Document (DPD) that governs the operations of the Union on a daily basis: in order for the organisation to function as a charitable company limited by guarantee, the DPD had to be brought into line with the newly accepted Memorandum and Articles.

The main changes are detailed below:

• Name changes to avoid confusion - the words ‘Directorate’/’Director’ and the phrase ‘General Meeting’ tend to be used by the company side and so we are going to avoid using these in the charity side to avoid confusion. The way the meetings/body works remains unchanged. ‘Student Directorate’ shall now be known as ‘Student Council’ and ‘Union General Meetings’/‘Annual General Meetings’ shall now be known as ‘Union Meetings’ and ‘Annual Meetings’.
• All policy must be submitted as Big Ideas - in order to keep our student members at the heart of the decision making process, all policy suggestions must now be submitted through our Big Idea process: officers cannot take policy directly to Union Meetings, it must undergo the same scrutiny as any other idea. This puts policy from Officers and policy from any other student on a level.
• Student members will outnumber Officers on Student Council - to keep our student members at the heart of the decision making process and ensure that Officers cannot push ideas through at Student Council, student members will outnumber Officers on the Student Council. To achieve this we are creating 4 new positions for students elected to represent Halls Assembly, Societies House Assembly, Sports Executive, and School Rep Forum, ensuring that a broader range of student opinion is considered in the meeting.

If you have any questions relating to the contents of the document please contact the President Jo Southwell-Sander on president@su.ntu.ac.uk.