Brentwood Horticultural Society CIO

For most of its long history the Brentwood Horticultural Society was an unincorporated association, a private body which was not supervised by any regulator and was free to make any rules it liked. Although this was great, in terms of minimising bureaucracy, it had two major disadvantages which made it unsustainable in the long run: its inability to hold property (such as the site leases we now hold from Brentwood Borough Council) and the personal liability of all members for any legal claim against the society.

The old society transferred its assets to a new Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) with the same name on 16^th April 2025. This has meant that the Society is now more fit for purpose as membership no longer carries the risk of being sued, and the Council has been able to grant us a lease. However, the downside is that we are now essentially a public body subject to charity law and the oversight of the charity commission, which lay down certain governance processes which we have to follow.

On the Documents page are more explicit explanations of how we manage these responsibilities. It can all look very hierarchical but it’s important to remember that everyone involved at whatever level, is a volunteer acting for the sake of the society and the benefit of the community. It’s just that some volunteers, the Trustees, bear a greater personal responsibility to the Commission while they are serving as trustees and for that reason have greater control while they so serve. However, they only serve, at the pleasure of the membership. And the Trustees recognise that they cannot perform all the tasks needed to keep the society running. They also recognise that people best able to look after the society’s sites on a day-to-day basis and perform all the other administrative tasks as volunteers are to be found amongst our plot-holders.