The Group agreed that the focus for the next Council should be the budget (which absolutely has to be discussed) and governance. I will get everything ready for Council to look at well in advance of the normal paper deadline, to give Council members lots of time to look and comment. I will also send weekly reminders.

The Group said thank you to Angela for giving up her time to charm everyone at the two online Q&As, and noted that Mark will be doing the same thing in a couple of weeks. Andy has also been a Governance Ambassador (note: I just made this term up; it won't go in the Laws), and has done some great work in Hong Kong and other Far East destinations, explaining the benefits to F&M there.

The Governance Year

Noted that the College will be moving the AGM back to being around St Andrew's Day. So this means that the College Year would start on the planned date of the first Council meeting in the December (probably) following the AGM, and that the election period will be the Autumn before the AGM.

Lucy will change references from Summer and September, to Autumn and December.

Job Shares

The College is discussing how governance roles with a very heavy workload could be managed through a job share. The Group noted that both "sharers" would be highly likely to meet the definition of charity trustees, and should therefore both be on the Board.

Implications:

• This will increase the size of the Board if it happens (unless the role is shared between people already on the Board, of course, but that seems unlikely to be possible) - so we'll need to increase the Board maximum size in the Laws. This will make it look strangely large, so we'll also need to add an explanation to the comms.
• We will need to add flexibility to the Laws to allow two Deans (or other role?) per "work area". At the moment, they refer to "The Dean for....." etc, not "the Deans". this will be straightforward, but we need to remember to do it!

Please click each heading below for the details:

Overarching 

College Meetings

Trustees AND Council

Council

Trustees