CONTEXT 178 : DECEMBER 2023 49 Director’s cut The synergy between corporate planning and the charter In a previous column I wrote: ‘The IHBC’s exploration of chartering centres first on scoping and, if agreed by members, preparing and submitting a “petition” that makes the case for the grant of a Royal Charter’ (Context 176, June 2023). I explained that this was an action committed to as part of our 2020 AGM-adopted Corporate Plan 2020–25 (CP25), which called for the investigation of issues around ‘chartered status internally and externally’. For more on that, check that column in the stack of Contexts on your bedside table, or follow discussions in the online Context archive and at our #IHBCPetitionforCharter linked web resource. In that column I went on to say that ‘the charter process… properly planned… should bring substantial benefits to the IHBC, our members, and their conservation work, all regardless of any chartering outcome.’ I added: ‘The very process of drawing up a petition is a perfect way to advance some of the most challenging ambitions in the IHBC’s current (and previous) corporate plans.’ Here I want to take that narrative about the synergy between corporate planning and the charter a little further, informed by our more recent progress on the petition’s exploration. The main reason for the synergy is that our corporate objects align perfectly with many of the ambitions underpinning the discussions around petition and charter. Not least of these are the sharing of two headline considerations: the public-interest fundamentals that we operate to as a charity, and our specification of a unique discipline, as represented by our interdisciplinary approach to conservation practice standards. Any application for charter demands both of these. What is perhaps most surprising around our coincidence of charter petition and our corporate planning is that – for all our wide sector-search across chartered peer bodies for advice, guidance, strategy and refinement on the process – we have not come across another case like ours, where the petitioning serves as such an almost-perfect proxy for current and future corporate planning. Most petitioning bodies wanted a charter for a specific objective or two within their plans: financial, to increase income with chartered members; sector status, for that royal imprimatur; or strategic, to carve out their practice niche. For the IHBC, our overarching objective has been to advance the specification of our uniqueness as a ‘discipline’ (in line with the charter principles) as well as corresponding ‘standards’. So, for us, the decision to explore a charter aligned perfectly with planning for current and future plans for improved services and advocacy. The corollary of this simple coincidence of plan and petition is that one of the major concerns voiced by members to date – that we might be spending money unnecessarily in the process and even adding to fees – is resolved. Pretty much all the charter-linked work needs to be done for our planning anyway. For example, the explorations on the petition have charged our elected officers with consulting directly with our members UK-wide on their priorities. It has spurred an independent and ongoing review of members’ ambitions and aspirations for the future. And it has generated high-level consultations with the sector, including government, and with our built environment and heritage partners. For the petition, as for any planning, we are enquiring about members’ needs and perceptions across the entire organisation and sector. This exploration is also raising all issues in between the points of that magic triangle of member consultation, external review and sector engagement. We therefore we have pretty much the most solid foundation for devising our next five-year Corporate Plan, due in 2025 or so, and likely to be abbreviated as ‘CP30’. It will be our critical map for the future, regardless of any submitted petition or secured charter. There is, below, a very simple case study that demonstrates the peculiar synergy between petition engagement and a new Corporate Plan. It should help pin down just how the IHBC as a professional body has lifted our corporate ambitions in ways that we could not have really achieved without exploring this petitioning process. In our first membership consultation survey on the issues and concerns around an IHBC petition for charter, a special concern was raised by one respondent, a concern both specific and resonant. ‘I remain very concerned about certain aspects of the IHBC’s regulatory arrangements,’ he said, ‘notably around training and mandatory standards on matters such as conflicts of interest and site safety, when compared with standards in (for instance) architecture, surveying or archaeology.’
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