C O N T E X T 7 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 2 33 IHBC News Membership notes On 29 July 2002, the number of members recorded on the IHBC membership database remained at the figure of 1,361 reported in Context 75. This included 1,100 full members, 222 affiliate members and 39 associate members. The breakdown of membership by branch at 29 July had changed slightly and was 149 in East Anglia, 120 in East Midlands, 160 in London, 21 in Northern Ireland, 48 in North, 79 in NorthWest, 10 in the Republic of Ireland, 93 in Scotland, 113 in South East, 101 in South, 203 in SouthWest, 65 inWales, 79 in West Midlands, 111 inYorkshire and 9 overseas. As the most recent Council meeting was on 6 June 2002, no new members have been accepted since those listed in Context 75. Having read my notes in Context 75 again, I have noted with horror that my farewell to Carole Fry as assistant membership secretary missed the most important point. I finished that item of news by saying in a rather dismissive manner that ‘it is now felt unnecessary to have an assistant membership secretary’. Oh dear! What I really meant to do and omitted to actually carry through (Context reports are often cobbled together in the early hours of the morning) was to thank Carole very sincerely for all her help and support and to wish her all the best. At the beginning of the IHBC, many of the long-term Association of Conservation Officer members (myself included) were concerned that the essence of the ACO, typified by a strong sense of friendship and a desire to work together, should not be lost. The ACO grew out of the need for lone local authority conservation officers to set up a mutual help group to improve standards, exchange knowledge and gain moral support. As a result, there were usually many volunteers to keep the organisation running and a will to get things done within the limits of available resources. The change to Institute status enabled the already successful Association to develop further and, in particular, to widen its membership to include everybody who works within the field of building and landscape conservation. So far, so good. In my opinion, one of the most serious challenges of the developing Institute is now beginning to manifest itself. Many IHBC members are also members, or have been members, of one of the other main Institutes in the field, namely the RIBA, RICS and RTPI. These are all very large and powerful bodies with huge memberships, well-developed committee structures and large permanent staffs (and equally large annual subscriptions). The IHBC (and ACO before it) has a membership which has remained pretty static (just above or just below 1,400) over the last eight years in which I have been membership secretary. Unless we drop standards (which I would wholeheartedly resist) or combine forces with other related disciplines, we will probably have to accept that we will never be more than a small professional body representing a particularly specialist discipline. As a new Institute, we naturally have aspirations to improve our services to members, our professional standards and our influence in all conservation matters. In doing this, we have set up a new series of committees which should, on paper, have enabled us to really get things moving onwards and upwards. The serious flaw in all this is the lack of a corresponding number of volunteers from within the membership to staff the various committees on a regular basis. I wonder whether we have inadvertently modelled our committee structures on those seen in our working life or in the other main professions, without realising that the size of the Institute will always tend to limit the number of volunteers who will come forward. There may also be psychological and other factors which may be making matters worse. In the days of the ACO, we were just a bunch of like-minded individuals striving towards a common goal.We therefore felt we had ownership of our destiny and did as much as we could. Now we are in an Institute and are all ‘professionals’, has this changed things? Has the more official status the Institute confers – with the letters after our names, a recent rise in subscriptions and our first paid officer – made members feel that they are no longer important links in the chain? Do they think that we should now pay others to do the important jobs necessary to keep the Institute going (and be prepared to stand another subscription increase)? Do we think that posts in the new Institute are going to be more onerous or beyond our humble abilities? Or do we just feel too embattled at work and unable to give any more time to the Institute? I have no simple answers but I am very concerned that it is becoming increasingly difficult to fill vacancies in important posts within the Institute. I certainly feel very strongly that the option merely to ‘contract out’ the jobs and pay more subscriptions is not safe and would not maintain standards. Although some duties can be very efficiently carried out by paid staff (and isn’t Lydia a perfect example of this?), IHBC members must retain control of their destiny. The nub of the solution appears to me to be that we either must have more volunteers from within the ranks or we have to cut down the number of committees and choose carefully what we spend our scarce resources of time on.
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