An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1999-2001: THE HAWLEY YEARS 179would then choose from among these and any other nominations received in order to achievea balanced membership for the ETB. So, although eight of the fifteen Board members willcome through the electoral colleges, the final filtering was intended to produce the requiredproportionate sense of balance. Three Colleges were envisaged:• College ‘A’, the Registrants’ College – Members for the ETB would be proposed tothe Nominations Committee by the EngC Senate. Subsequently the EC(UK) Boardwould make the proposals. The members of College ‘A’ would also be members ofthe ETB itself and have the right to attend and vote at its AGM. The first fourproposed to represent the profession on the ETB were Claire Curtis-Thomas MP,Michael Fabricant MP, Air Marshall Sir Colin Terry and Andrew Burton.• College ‘B’, a Stakeholders’ College for representative bodies such as the EEF,RAEng and EMTA.• College ‘C’, a Stakeholders’ College for companies.The ETB’s Registrants’ Panel (one of the five panels listed above under ‘The Role of theETB), would be a permanent on-going representative panel and, to assist its impact, itsChairman would have a place of right on the ETB Board and so would also need to be one ofthe members elected from College ‘A’.On the financial side of ETB David Worskett reported that:1) Although Registrants would provide 100% of the funding for the regulatoryfunction their fees accounted for only 48% of ETB income.2) There was a decision in principle that the DTI would provide core funding of justunder £1 million per annum for each of the first two years. After that, project fundingof approximately £0.8 million per annum would be sought from the Government.3) Further discussions were to be held with the DfES over its contribution to corefunding.Draft Supplemental CharterThe draft Supplemental Charter included a provision that the first Chairman of the newEC(UK) should be Professor Patrick Dowling CBE, FREng, CEng, FRS, Vice Chancellor ofthe University of Surrey. Although this was done apparently without consultation with theInstitutions, it was a perfectly logical move because Professor Dowling, being the currentChairman of the BER, was in an excellent position to ensure that the essential centralEC(UK) activities of Regulation and Registration would continue seamlessly. It wasenvisaged that Professor Dowling would succeed Dr Hawley as Chairman of Senate on 1January 2002 and also retain his Chairmanship of the BER until he became the first Chairmanof EC(UK) to begin the new era.It was agreed that Professor Dowling should continue as Chairman for a limited transitionalperiod and he accepted this in the interests of the profession. Following an election by theEC(UK) Board in the Spring of 2002 Professor Dowling was succeeded by Sir Colin Terry.© Engineering Council UK 2004