Current Weaknesses
1. The current arrangements are not compliant with charity law as more than 50% of the trustees are remunerated; this is not a problem at the moment, but will need to be addressed by November 2010, which is the probable deadline for our registration with the Charity Commission
2. The current arrangements suffer from an over-reliance of Trustees who are elected on an annual basis; therefore the Board lacks continuity and the skills and experience required to govern a large and complicated organisation
3. Performance management of the Managing Director could be more robust and varies from year-to-year; because of the lack of continuity, there is an in-built weakness to the performance management
4. The role of Chair of the Board is weak and unclear, conflicting with the roles of President and Chair of Union Council; and there is an argument that an external Chair would bring the necessary skills and experience to chair meetings effectively and, working along-side the President, to improve the performance management of the Managing Director
5. There is a lack of clarity over the relationship between the governance function and the democratic function; in particular, it is unclear how decision-making is linked between these two functions/structures and the reporting mechanism is also unclear
6. Representation of postgraduate students, international students and other minority groups is weak, ad-hoc or non-existent at Board level and there is significant pressure from the University to address this failing
7. Currently, the PA to the Managing Director and President, Maria Mann, supports the Board and oversees support for the scrutiny committees of the Union. This arrangement has worked well for the past few years, but there is increasing pressure on Maria and as the Board has become more ‘professional’ the requirements on Maria have grown. The Union has not kept pace with the expectations on this role and has not properly considered what is required from this role (much like a Company Secretary or Clerk to Governors in a school)
8. Oversight of the financial management of the Union is not as robust as it could be. Often, due to the volume of business at each Board meeting, there is not enough time for adequate scrutiny of the accounts and financial papers presented. Arguably, given the size, complexity and risk of Kent Union’s finances, a separate Finance and Resources Committee is needed to allow sufficient scrutiny of the Union’s financial controls, management and performance
