The British Association of Occupational Therapists/Royal College of Occupational Therapists’ (BAOT/RCOT) annual general meeting (AGM) took place on Tuesday 21 September 2021.
We were delighted to be joined by our new and re-elected RCOT Council members who started their terms at this year’s AGM: Professor Diane Cox, Dr Kee Hean Lim, Samantha Flower, Lisa Ledger, Cathryn Holding, Kalimah Ibrahiim and Dr Duncan Pentland.
Before giving an overview of the organisation’s achievements over the past year, Professor Diane Cox, Chair of RCOT Council, reiterated that stamping out racism and improving the diversity of the occupational therapy profession is of paramount importance to RCOT.
The organisation wants to lead the profession by advocating strongly for a culture that values respect and celebrates diversity. Steps have already been taken, such as embedding equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) principles in new publications, ensuring that they feature across media and communications and, crucially, an EDI manager has recently been appointed to support this work.
Kim Atkinson, then Vice Chair of Council, presented the audited accounts for BAOT/RCOT. The total income for the period 2019 to 2020 was £9.9 million, which included £8.6 million from membership subscriptions - which continue to be the largest source of income for the organisation - and £1.3 million from other sources of income, which come from a range of activities including advertising in journals, accreditations fees and investment income.
Total expenditure was £9.4 million, split between industrial relations (£1.6 million), staffing costs (£4.5 million) and professional activities (3.3 million), which covers areas such as practice support services, research and development, membership services, journals and conferences.
After the year-end statutory accounting adjustments, there was a deficit for the year of £960,000 compared with a surplus of £104,000 in 2019. This was because of investments generated losses of £1.5 million compared to a loss of £411,000 in 2019.
This loss was due to investments performing poorly because of the pandemic. The investments have recovered most of this loss as of June 2021, with a £1.4 million gain.
The balance sheet for the organisation on 30 September 2020 showed a net worth of £14.1 million, compared with £15.1 million the previous year. Of the total net worth, £5.3 million was held in cash and £7.8 million in investments, which both provide income from interests.
These reserves meet the target set by Council of having 26 to 52 weeks of budgeted expenditure to protect the organisation against any changes in income and expenditure.
It must be noted that the organisation still has a significant pension liability of £1.2 million for the defined benefit pension scheme and, as the pension buy-out is not finalised, this liability could increase.
These figures demonstrate that the organisation is in a healthy financial position and as a result Council has again been able to freeze subscriptions across all categories.
The AGM also saw the approval of the new articles of association; they are the written rules for running companies and were last amended in 2001. They stipulate that the BAOT/RCOT AGMs must be held with members present in person only, which would have been impossible last year until the government passed temporary legislation to allow organisations to hold wholly virtual AGMs.
The pandemic highlighted the need to review and modernise the organisation’s articles and ensure they are in line with Companies Act (2006).
This year, in line with the old articles of association, we had to hold an AGM with members present in person. However, now the new articles have been agreed, future AGMs can be online or hybrid and all members will be able to attend.