The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7308 p75
17 July 2004

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What will happen if the Charter ballot vote is “yes”

Members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society should receive their ballot papers on the new draft Charter (see pull-out section PDF (65K)) in the next few days. The Society confirmed this week that the ballot will close on 20 August and the result will be considered at the Council meeting in September. The ballot will be based on a simple majority vote.

Provided the membership votes “yes” then the next stage will be for the Council to notify the Privy Council of the changes it wishes to make to the December draft Charter. If the Privy Council is happy with the changes then the draft Charter will go forward to the Queen. There will not be a further consultation by the Privy Council since the changes are being made to the existing draft Charter submitted in December (which has already been consulted on) rather than an entirely new draft Charter.

If the new Charter is granted by the Queen, it will come into force on a date to be specified by the Clerk of the Privy Council. Although the precise date is not yet known, it is expected to be before next year’s annual general meeting of the Society.

Since the new Charter will require the election of an entirely new Council, this timeframe could lead to next year’s Council elections being held earlier than normal. “The draft Charter envisages that the reformed Council will take office in May 2005 but a date is not specified,” explained a Society spokeswoman. The Charter itself states that the Council will be constituted on the day before the Charter comes into force, with effect from the day after the Society’s 2005 AGM. The AGM is currently scheduled for 11 May.

“It would seem helpful if elections to the new Council could be held earlier than usual so that the new Council could be brought together in shadow form for a period before it takes office. The shadow Council would not have power during this period but it would provide an opportunity for induction training and for the new Council to consider some aspects of its ways of working before it took office, so as to hit the ground running,” the spokeswoman commented.

“During this period, the current Council would remain in office until the specified transfer date to the new Council.” She added that it is possible that some people might be members of both the current and the shadow councils.

What is not clear is what would happen if the regulations for electing a new Council were not in place before existing Byelaws (which would be superseded by the regulations) required the start of the old-style Council election procedure. The spokeswoman said that if this situation were to arise, the Society would seek the advice of the Privy Council advisers.