# Ramblers Governance Review 2026

![](https://kent.ngx-ramblers.org.uk/api/aws/s3/site-content/a218eca9-01bd-4bc3-8d22-a682e0036af3.jpeg)

The proposals voted on at General Council have become so layered in process and abstraction that it is hard to see what they actually do. This page sets out the root facts in plain terms, with article references so any point can be checked against Ramblers' own draft constitution. It is offered as a factual summary for members of Kent Area Council.

## The whole thing in one sentence

> The proposals would have abolished General Council - the roughly 150 informed people who currently elect the trustees, approve constitutional changes and can vote the Board's plans down - and replaced it with an online AGM that does only legal formalities, plus six discussion forums that can advise the Board but cannot bind it.

That is the root fact. Almost everything else is detail hanging off it. A telling point: the body the proposals would abolish is the same body that has just rejected them, and the new model would contain nothing able to do that.

## What exists today, and what was proposed

### How it works today

- General Council (about 150 people, drawn mainly from the Areas) meets, debates and votes.
- It elects the trustees.
- It can pass binding motions telling the Board what to do.
- Any change to the governing documents needs its approval, at a 75% majority.
- Areas appoint the Council members, so local volunteers feed directly into national decisions.

### What was proposed

- General Council abolished.
- An **online AGM** replaces it, restricted to legal formalities only: receiving the accounts, confirming trustee election results, ratifying the Chair and Treasurer.
- **Six regional Member Forums** handle discussion. They are advisory. The Board must publish a written response but is not bound by it.
- Binding motions through Areas are abolished. Members keep a legal right to table a resolution, but only if 100 members back it first.
- Areas lose their formal governance role entirely.

## The new Board becomes harder to influence from below

The new Board is capped at 12 (minimum 8), built on a "6-4-2" model:

| Seats | Filled by | Who chooses |
|---|---|---|
| 4 GB + 1 Scotland + 1 Wales = **6 elected** | All members vote | The membership |
| **4 appointed** | A Board recruitment panel | The Board itself |
| Chair + Treasurer = **2 officers** | Board selects, AGM ratifies | The Board nominates; members can only say yes or no to that single name |

So at most half the Board is directly chosen by members from a field of candidates. The Board appoints or nominates the other half. "Ratifying" the Chair and Treasurer is a yes-or-no vote on the Board's own single choice, not an election.

Set against today, this is a reduction in the elected element, not an increase. At present 13 of the 15 trustees are elected; under the new model only 6 of 12 would be. The change was presented as making trustee elections more democratic. On these numbers it does the opposite.

## Where the real shift of power sits

This is the part buried under the layers of process. The central change is to accountability: abolishing General Council removes the one standing body able to hold the Board to account, and nothing in the new model replaces it. The Member Forums can advise but cannot bind the Board, and a vote of no confidence is too blunt to serve as a real check.

What does a member do if the Board performs badly under the new model? In theory: get 100 members to table a resolution; or remove a trustee by ordinary resolution at a general meeting (clause 18.5); or direct the Board by special resolution, which needs 75% (clause 7.2). In practice all of these are hard to organise. The AGM is online, its quorum is just **50 members** out of a membership near 100,000 (clause 28.2), votes can be cast in advance, and there is no standing body whose job is to scrutinise.

Two narrower points are worth noting. The Board would be able to delegate its power to expel a member to a sub-committee, with the procedure set out in the Standing Orders (clause 21), and it keeps its power to dissolve or suspend an Area and to dismiss members of an Area's committee (clause 22.10). And matters placed in the Standing Orders can be amended by a members' ordinary resolution (50%), where changes to the Articles need a 75% special resolution. An earlier draft went further and let the Trustees themselves amend the Standing Orders, but that was removed before the final vote after members objected.

## The money

The Board was open that the cost goes up, not down:

- Now: about **£75k a year** for the three Council AGMs and the Scottish Gathering.
- Proposed Forums: about **£90k a year**, including a travel allowance for each Area and Group.
- Plus external support for the online AGM and trustee elections: about **£15-20k a year**.

So roughly **£105-110k a year against £75k now**, about £30-35k more per year, for a model that reduces the membership's formal hold over the Board.

## The objections, stripped to their root

The Kent written response and Robert Peel's April critique come back to the same core points.

1. **No demonstrated benefit.** This is the most fundamental objection. The Board never set out, in plain terms, what problem the changes solve, what public benefit they deliver within Ramblers' charitable objects, what alternatives were weighed, or how any benefit would be measured. Each of the four reasons offered (more democratic elections, a stronger Board, better engagement, a simpler model) is either unevidenced or, the critique argues, achieved in reverse.
2. **Accountability.** Abolishing General Council leaves no well-informed body able to hold the Board to account. The trustee elections do not fill the gap, because the wider membership is not well placed to judge the Board's performance; the advisory Forums cannot bind anyone; and a vote of no confidence is too blunt to count as a real check. The critique notes that simply by existing, General Council disciplines the Board, and that it has risen to the occasion before, giving the Board "a pasting" over the 2010 cash and membership-system crisis and rejecting an earlier governance review in 2015 to 2016. Whether this consultation would have been as thorough without that backstop is, on this argument, doubtful.
3. **Fewer trustees elected, not more.** Today 13 of 15 trustees are elected; under the proposals only 6 of 12 would be, with the co-opted seats doubling from two to four and the Board appointing or nominating the rest. General Council members are also better placed than the membership at large to judge candidates, especially those standing for re-election.
4. **A single candidate for Chair and Treasurer.** Members would only ratify the Board's one nominee, not choose between candidates. The critique argues this is not a real choice: members will endorse a mediocre offering rather than create a vacancy, and the Board's selection is likely to favour candidates who will not challenge it.
5. **Advance online voting with no equal airtime.** Votes cast online before the meeting, with no mechanism for those opposing a Board proposal to put their case to voters on equal terms. Both Kent and Robert make the same point: democracy needs a free press, and the proposals do not provide for one.
6. **The 100-member motion threshold is unworkable.** Presented as a safeguard, but there is no fair, equal way for an ordinary member to find 100 supporters for a motion. An Area officer might email members; an individual cannot, short of mass emails or public social-media campaigns that no one wants.
7. **"Best practice" is asserted, not evidenced.** No evidence is offered that the new model matches comparable charities. Ramblers is unusual in that its Areas and Groups, run by volunteers, deliver most of the core charitable work, so removing structured input from those volunteers is, the critique argues, especially risky.

A point worth keeping separate: the Member Forums the Board champions do not require any of these constitutional changes. The critique argues they could simply be run and tested for a couple of years first, with governance changes following the evidence rather than preceding it.

## The process complaint

Separate from the content, Robert Peel's main grievance in his 8 June report is about how the vote was run. The Board circulated material in favour; his critique against was refused circulation. He argues you cannot run a fair vote when one side controls the channel to the electorate and uses it to deny the other side access, and that the process should have been managed by an independent third party. He believes the vote would have fallen well below the 72.5% it reached, possibly below 50%, had his critique been circulated.

## Where it stands

The motion needed 75% and reached **72.5%**, so it failed. The Board has since sent a questionnaire to General Council members asking how to proceed, which Robert reads as an attempt to revive a defeated project. His proposed conditions if it must continue: a clear statement of the problem and the measurable benefit; an even-handed channel for both sides to put their case, with independent moderation; and proper volunteer resourcing so the work does not fall on the already overstretched.

## Sources

The documents are linked below so any point on this page can be checked at source.

- [Ramblers Governance Review Proposals and draft Articles of Association, 25 February 2026](https://cdn.ramblers.org.uk/media/files/governance-review-update-25-february-2026.pdf)
- [Kent Area written response to the Governance Review, October 2025](https://www.kentramblers.org.uk/KAC/documents/251012_Kent_Response_to_Governance_Review_Final.pdf)
- [Robert Peel, *What Is Wrong With the Governance Proposals?*, 24 April 2026](https://www.kentramblers.org.uk/KAC/2606/260424%20Governance%20Review%20Concerns.pdf)
- [Robert Peel, General Council report, 8 June 2026](https://www.kentramblers.org.uk/KAC/2606/General%20Council%202026%20RAP.pdf)
- [Ramblers General Council page (other motions and election results)](https://www.ramblers.org.uk/about-us/general-council)

## About this summary

This page is a plain-English summary of Ramblers' 2026 Governance Review, written to make a large and technical set of documents quicker to understand.

It was drafted with the help of AI and then checked against the original documents, but it is a summary and may contain errors or omissions. It is not a substitute for the source material: every point above is linked to the document it came from, and where this summary and an original differ, the original stands. If anything looks wrong, please check it against the linked sources.

For context, the source documents run to roughly 26,700 words across about 70 pages, most of it in the Board's proposals and draft constitution. This summary condenses that to around 1,700 words.