Neil Harris, Treasurer, writes:
We were saddened to learn that our sometime Treasurer and Independent Examiner of Accounts, Jill Tyrrell, passed away last November. As you may know, Jill was a long-standing BRA committee member, serving as Treasurer for some seven years until I took over in 2013. Thereafter she acted as Independent Examiner of Accounts, continuing in that role after we became a charity in 2018. A charity of our modest annual income (about £5K) is not required under charity law to have its accounts examined at all (£25K is the threshold for this), so I and my Committee colleagues were hugely grateful to Jill for agreeing to do this work each year and performing it with such diligence, and unrewarded to boot (apart from the price of a cup of coffee and a gossip after the examining was completed, which we felt didn’t compromise her independent status. The latter was something she was very properly anxious to preserve).
Jill requested that anyone wishing to make a tribute in her memory might like to make a donation to the Royal Free Charity. BelSoc has recently done this.
Jill’s passing means that the independent examining of accounts role is at present vacant. As explained above, it is not mandatory for BelSoc to have this work undertaken at all, but the Committee feels that having an examiner of this kind has always afforded members an extra assurance that our financial affairs are run as well as they can be. For that reason we are minded to look around to see if anyone might be interested in taking over the function, and our membership seems a good place to start. So please get in touch if you are interested yourself or know of anyone who might be. The Charity Commission website offers detailed advice about what the role entails (including what “independence” means in this context), and we are happy of course to answer questions ourselves.