Two Special Resolutions – one to reduce the number of Institute directors from the existing 25 to 13, with one director appointed from each of IHEEM’s UK branches, and the other to amend the organisation’s existing Articles of Association in respect of certain clauses on directors’ appointments, proceedings, and retirements, plus “housekeeping” changes, were unanimously approved at an IHEEM Extraordinary General Meeting held on 5 October during this year’s Healthcare Estates event.
The meeting was chaired by IHEEM President Paul Kingsmore (pictured) who, in a letter to Institute members inviting comments on the proposed changes sent out prior to the EGM, explained that they were being proposed in the light of a continuing membership decline, and to help the organisation better react to “changing commercial conditions”. In the letter, he said: “Our style and ethos might have been appropriate when healthcare facilities and a majority of our members were grouped around area and district NHS infrastructure, but times and needs have changed, and we need to both protect our unique selling point, and reach out to changing styles and groups to attract greater membership take-up. We must, of course, adapt incrementally to change in the healthcare engineering and facility management environment, but not at the expense of diluting our core strengths. Thus we propose making a number of changes to our constitution, the Articles of Association.” The changes stipulate that, in future, the Institute’s directors will be appointed “on skill, with some rules of guidance, and not as a representation of a branch committee or job specialisation”. This arrangement complies with charity law that requires charity trustees to have a duty of care to the charity (the Institute) as a whole, and not to any one part of it. Paul Kingsmore’s letter added that IHEEM’s Council believed the changes would strengthen the Institute’s position, and “benefit everyone in the long term, without disadvantaging unreasonably categories of membership, geographical areas, or specialist groupings”.
