TMCP has a professional team of 19 staff, led by the Chief Executive, Anne Goodman. Anne and her team are responsible for ensuring the Board's functions and responsibilities as trustees are discharged on a day to day basis in accordance with the legal and accounting requirements of Methodism, charity and trust law.
The Chief Executive's duties, as delegated by the TMCP Board, are primarily to ensure that TMCP operates as an effective Custodian Body for the Methodist Church and that it performs all its statutory duties effectively, in accordance with its Trust Deed, the Standing Orders within The Constitutional Practice and Discipline of the Methodist Church (CPD) and within the background of current Charity Commission and other regulatory bodies legislative requirements.
The organisation is governed by its Board, and the Board, Executive and Audit Committees meet regularly to ensure good governance and a continued development of internal procedures and risk management.
It has taken Anne a number of years to understand the complex background behind TMCP's duties and role, and over these years Anne and the TMCP team have worked with the Board and Connexional Team colleagues to help develop more robust internal procedures and ways of working.
There has been a review of all key areas of governance, operational systems, accounting systems and compliance with statutory requirements and all areas of compliance have been systematically reconfigured as necessary. As well as looking at VAT registration, one key area of review has been looking at TMCP's compliance with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and its rules and regulations. Whilst looking at whether TMCP was complying with the framework of SRA regulations it became clear that the structure and organisation within the Methodist Church and the relationship between managing trustees and TMCP as the Custodian Body was not something which fell within the standard definitions and SRA’s legislative norms. As such, ultimately, in 2012, TMCP was provided with a waiver by the SRA whereby it was recognised that, when TMCP is performing its statutory duties, the relationship between TMCP and managing trustees is not one that required the usual regulatory structure as it was not a commercial relationship.
Since then, the TMCP team have been developing ways of making their work more relevant and the help and guidance more accessible. TMCP understand and empathise with the demands placed upon managing trustees and other volunteers and we are working hard to make processes more straightforward and clear for all to follow.
Anne has recently commented (June 2016):
"It has taken a great deal of time, effort and perseverance to get where we are today. The Board and I are very proud of the TMCP team and we are all very excited about current in-house developments which will help us towards our goal of matching Connexional needs with the resources available."
Meet the TMCP Staff Team