An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

172A CHRONICLE OF THE ENGINEERING COUNCIL• The Wider Community• RegistrantsIt was proposed that at least two members of every panel must be Registered Engineerschosen from nominations put forward by the Institutions through a democratic process. Inaddition, the Chairman of the ETB would have an informal International Advisory Group toprovide a global input on relevant areas of engineering and technology.The Role of the NRB‘The New Regulatory Board’ – a name, which it was recognised, was only a working title –would have not more than 22 members of whom 14 would be representatives of licensedInstitutions, chosen on a formula according to size of Institution membership. The largestInstitutions would each have its own seat while the smaller ones would share seats in rotation.The remaining eight members would be appointed by the ETB to provide representationacross the community including the public at large. The NRB would elect its own chairmanfrom among its Institution members. This was a compromise formula which, it was hoped,would satisfy on the one hand the DTI requirement that there should be a single body and onthe other the Institutions’ expectations that they would effectively control the NRB.The terms of reference of the NRB included setting the standards for registration andmaintaining the Register of CEngs, IEngs and EngTechs together with the licensing ofInstitutions to accredit courses. Also, significantly, the ETB would act as the UKrepresentative body in matters that related to the international recognition of UK RegisteredEngineers and Technologists. All this would substantially be a continuation of the workundertaken by the existing BER. Because of its professional regulatory function, it wasplanned for the NRB (or whatever name was finally chosen) to be Chartered. Thus therewould be created the rather unusual situation of a Chartered body being responsible to a noncharteredETB rather than directly to the Privy Council. It remained to be seen if this wouldgain Privy Council approval.Proposed Financial ArrangementsAt this stage the ETB, of course, had no existence. No designated Chairman, agreed BoardMembers, Chief Executive, staff offices, administration or even a firm financial package.However, proposed financial arrangements for the ETB and the NRB were outlined in theSeptember 2001 report. An income of some £7 million a year was picked as the target foreach of the first two years. Some 60% of this was to come from Registrants’ fees – a sourceinherited from the EngC. The key proposal was that the Registrants’ fees would go not to theNRB but to the ETB which would fund the NRB from its budget.So far as the Institutions were concerned there was a wary acceptance of the proposals ratherthan widespread enthusiasm. The fact that the majority of the funding of ETB was planned tocome from Registrants’ fees was bound to be of importance to Institutions and would givethem a potential lever on the ETB. They would, however, be pleased at long last to haverepresentatives on the NRB. This would give them a much higher degree of influence onregistration matters than they had hitherto enjoyed – though it is fair to add that on theregistration front there had been no fundamental difficulties between the EngC and thelicensed bodies – as acknowledged in the ‘Big 4’ letter of 30 November 2000 quoted above.© Engineering Council UK 2004