Aims of professional bodies may be expected to be in the public interest. Surely efforts to ensure professionals are properly qualified, up to date and guided by well-defined standards are all in the public interest. They advance high quality and trustworthy professional services. However explicit reference to the public interest or public benefit are attached only to some foundation document objects. For example, the first object of the Chartered Institute of Building is ‘(a) the promotion for the public benefit of the science and practice of building and construction;’ which we coded as promoting the knowledge base and promoting the profession.
Public benefit is made explicit in 19% of the 2165 objects in our sample of 200 foundation documents. Given the requirements of the Charity Commission and the Privy Council we expect a much higher proportion for charitable and chartered professional bodies. This is a strong distinction for charities but far less for chartered bodies. Charities have 34% of objects with public benefit clauses compared to 12% for non-charities. Chartered have 22% compared to 18% for non-chartered. Notably chartered bodies that are also charities had 26% compared with those that are not charities at 16%.
Professional bodies that are neither chartered not charities had 12% of objects with explicit public benefit statements, however most of those with public benefit statements were regulatory bodies. Professional associations that were not charities or chartered had 9% of objects with public benefit statements. Regulatory bodies in this category had 44%.
Public benefit statements are concentrated on certain targets. Almost half of objects targeted at public/society and a third for public confidence/trust had explicit public benefit clauses, as may be expected. Other targets were also commonly so designated. Competence also had a third with public benefit clauses. Rather lower but still above average were standards at 26%, education at 24%, ethics at 22% and the knowledge base at 21%. Only 3% of objects targeting members and 6% targeting the professional body had public benefit clauses.
The profession only had 18% of instances with a public benefit statement. This may be regarded as a lost opportunity. However, it is arguable that specific public benefit should be mentioned in relation to all objects. It should be taken as given for those constituted as charities. On the other hand, it may be that some objects are more clearly, more specifically, and more focused on achieving public benefit.
Interestingly competence was more likely to be explicitly designated as for public benefit than ethics. Also expertise was only half as frequently associated with public benefit than competence [33% versus 17%). Emphasis on public benefit from expertise may become more important in future as justice secretary Michael Gove’s famous quip during the Brexit campaign, that the British people have had enough of experts may encourage (interview Sky News, 3 June 2016).
It has been great to share some of the key stats of this research with you through Sector News. Soon we will have the recommendations to share with you; putting the findings into practice.
In order to secure a complementary copy of the recommendations, you need to sign up for the distribution list here and you'll have them sent directly to you once they are available.