Benefit of hindsight
With the benefit of hindsight, some members of the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society might now wish that the consultation exercise for the proposed new Charter had been halted immediately after the Special General Meeting held at the beginning of June. At the Council
meeting held in the same week as the SGM, it was agreed that the “seeking
of charitable status” for the Society would be put on the back
burner. In which case, it might have been argued, the draft Charter
was no longer applicable, as it seems partly to have been designed
to pave the way for charitable status. Instead, an amended draft might
have been created that makes the changes necessary to strengthen the
Society’s regulatory role, but does not undermine the professional
representative role.
If that had happened, many of the members who responded to the consultation
exercise might have been reassured. As it is, the independent feedback
report published in this week’s issue (p349) suggests that they
are far from happy. Of course, the adage that you can never please all
the people all of the time is true in bucketsful when it comes to the
Society’s and Council’s dealings with the membership.
Moreover, the percentage of members who care whether the Society is a
charity, a chartered body or whatever (other than a means of ensuring
they can practise as pharmacists) is likely to be well below 50. It is
no coincidence that the number of responses analysed in the feedback
report (just over 400) — even allowing for the fact that quite
a few represented the collective response from branch and other meetings — fell
far short of the nearly 8,000 responses to the consultation on continuing
professional development. Part of that can be explained by the complexities
of modernisation. You have to be a pretty dedicated Society-watcher to
understand all the legal niceties of the Charter and the modernisation
process: the Powers, Objects, Section 60, etc.
Nevertheless, the Council is faced with something of a challenge — convincing
the membership that it will take their anxieties about the draft Charter
on board.
Transparency is the key to this. Those in the hot seat should be congratulated
for having the guts to publish the feedback — warts and all — without
commentary or apology because it does not make comfortable reading. Given
that decision, The Journal has high hopes that the President and the
Council, after they have discussed the report and its implications for
the Charter, will be able to have most of the concerned members back
on side by the end of the year.
Back to Top
|
