Board of Governors
From Pirate Party UK Wiki
The Board of Governors is the body responsible for proposing amendments to the Party's constitution and is also the final body of arbitration, appeal, and discipline for the Party. The Board is comprised of 12 members who serve a term of up to five years and are elected by a poll of all party members using STV.
Contents |
Personnel
Chair/Deputy
- Chair: Ed Geraghty (2012-08-16 +)
- Deputy Chair: Stephen Ogden (2012-04-18 +)
Previous Chairs/Deputies
- John Barron (Chair 2012-04-18 -> 2012-07-04)
Governors
- Stephen Ogden, July 2010 - present
- Will Tovey, July 2010 - present
- Shaun Dyer, July 2010 - present
- Finlay Archibald, July 2010 - present
- Peter Brett, July 2010 - present
- Jack Allnutt, July 2010 - present
- Mark Wood, July 2010 - present
- John Barron, August 2011 - present
- Andrew Robinson, August 2011 - present
- Phil Hunt - July 2012 - present
- Ed Geraghty - July 2012 - present
- Andrew Lyons - July 2012 - present
Previous Governors
- Andrew Tindall, July 2010 - 25th January 2011
- Lucas Abedecian, July 2010 - 13th March 2011
- Loz Kaye, July 2010 - 13th March 2011
- Graeme Lambert, July 2010 - 6th June 2011
- Will Macdonald, July 2010 - April 2012
- Graham Hope, August 2011 - April 2012
- Chris Monteiro, August 2011 - May 2012
Constitutional amendments
The Board is currently using the wiki and the forum to organise its work on the constitution.
Code of Practice
Board Meetings
There will be monthly Board meetings, which all Governors will be expected to attend or to make apologies for. The meetings will usually be held in the #ppuk-board channel on the PPUK IRC server.
Seven (7) voting Governors are required for a quorum. A decision by the majority of those present is binding. Votes are decided via a plurality, a voting requirement of more ballots cast for a proposition than for any other option.
Examples:
So with 7 Governors present how do the following votes turn out?
Yes/No/Abstain 4/3/0 (passes) 3/0/4 (passes) 1/0/6 (passes) 0/1/6 (fails) 1/1/5 (stalemate, so fails)
Governor Resignations
Within 24 hours of the Board receiving a Governors resignation, the Board will inform the Nominating Officer and head of IT services.
Making constitutional amendments
The process for making a constitutional amendment has seven steps:
- Proposition of amendment to the Board. Anyone can do this* at any time!
- Internal Board discussions.
- Consultation with the NEC.
- Post-NEC consultation internal Board discussions.
- Consultation with members. This will usually occur via the Board of Governors forum.
- Post-member consultation internal Board discussions.
- Member vote.
These steps can be quite slow, but have seemed to work quite well so far.
*Just email board@pirateparty.org.uk with your proposals. You may, if you wish, discuss in advance with other in the members forum.
Discipline and arbitration
Disciplinary panels shall consist of 5 Governors, and any other individuals, selected at the Board's reasonable discretion. Any panel member determined by the Board to have sufficient interest or bias in matters related to the panel shall not be permitted to vote.
Members or officials may request from the Board of Governors that an Arbitration and/or Disciplinary Panel be formed to deal with an issue. Where other forms of mediation or resolutions have been attempted, please provide details of these when requesting the formation of a panel. The board will create and brief the board on the basis of information provided, but reserve the right to request additional information prior to forming the panel. This information will be used in forming the brief to the panel which will scope, without limiting the area of investigation of the panel.
The panel will investigate all of the available facts, and come to a decision. The panel will act independently of the rest of the Board and of the NEC.
Decisions of the Board shall be binding on all members in the case of disciplinary matters, or on the appellant in the case of arbitration matters. The Board cannot be bound by decisions of a disciplinary or arbitration panel.
Panel Completion
When they have completed their investigations and reached conclusions, disciplinary panels will finalise their reports and present them to Board for approval. Once approved by the board the reports will be sent to the NEC for publication, and the NEC will be invited to add any comments. If a panel decides that redaction is necessary before publication, they will make this clear to the NEC, and provide both a redacted version and an unredacted version to the NEC.
When is someone absent as per 4.4?
The Board defines being absent as having no Party-related communications in any of the recognised internal Party communication channels. For an elected official to be declared (by the Board) as absent for the purposes of 4.4 of the constitution, a majority of Board members must agree.
Minutes
Minutes of the Board's monthly meetings can be found on the wiki