A Consultation was held between December 2025 and March 2026 to seek views on how Yorshire Quakers might operate. This page gives details of the consulation proposals.
The many responses are now being evaluated.
March 2026
Consultation Summary
This is a consultation from the Yorkshire Quakers Implementation Group on how the new charity should operate. It is the next stage following the agreement, in principle, of Area Meetings to merge their charitable functions. This document proposes how a single charity should be run with the focus on the financial and property management as these are very relevant to most local meetings. It also has proposals for employment and safeguarding but in these subjects we are obliged to follow legal and regulatory requirements so there is less scope for local differences.
Published December 2025
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The seven Area Meetings (AMs) and Quakers in Yorkshire are the current charities. They have agreed, in principle, to merge so they are the formal bodies to respond. But most of our activities take place in Local Meetings so it is they who are particularly being asked for their views. It is envisaged that there will be a Memorandum of Understanding between the Trustees of Yorkshire Quakers and Local Meetings and this will be one outcome of this consultation.
To date: AMs have approved the Constitution and appointed the first trustees. The process of registering with the Charity Commission has commenced. The Implementation Group has agreed this Consultation Document.
Comments and responses should be sent to consultation@yorkshirequakers.org.uk
It might be helpful for comments to fall into three categories
We look forward to hearing all views, both from those supporting the proposals and those who are not comfortable with some elements.
Quakers across Yorkshire have been working since 2019 to develop a shared framework for managing our business. Area Meetings have now agreed that this will be a single charity with its first trustees nominated by Area Meeting. Area Meetings and Quakers in Yorkshire will be dissolved as charities in their own right.
A single charity will manage the finances, property, employment and safeguarding for Quaker Meetings across Yorkshire. Area Meetings will continue to exist for spiritual and membership matters.
Our vision is of a single organisation which enables us to share all our resources – be they spiritual, or temporal, our buildings and our financial assets. We see this as at the heart of our history as Quakers and as a bid to future proof our organisation so that the burden does not fall on fewer and fewer people. We are small in number but great in spirit – we will thrive if we are able to share our resources across Yorkshire. There are local meetings which are well resourced financially but with few members and vice versa. Much of the current work is carried out unpaid and roles are becoming harder to fill.
We see this time as an opportunity to use all our assets, including enabling us to pool our funds and smooth out the capital costs that local meetings encounter.
The proposals in this document are established with four key principles:
This section outlines the recommendations and items for consultation for the financial strategy and operation of the new Yorkshire Quakers charity.
We recognise that it will represent significant change for local meetings and will need the active engagement by treasurers of local and area meetings and by individual Friends.
There will be a Memorandum of Understanding which sets out the commitment of each Local Meetings and the Yorkshire Quakers charity to each other. It will set out a model for funding the central charity given the additional costs of using professionals to undertake many of the tasks currently done by volunteers.
Local Meetings are still at the heart of our spiritual activity, and that includes our finances. Local Meetings need to know how their money is raised and spent, and to make key decisions about the use of their resources. All 38 Local Meetings will have a direct relationship with the new charity on governance finance, property, employment and safeguarding.
There are three strategic elements to the financial arrangements of the new charity:
Proposals for each of these strategic elements are set out below.
The costs quoted are NEW COSTS associated with running Yorkshire Quakers. They do not include any of the existing costs which are expected, at least initially, to continue. About 90% of the anticipated total cost of Yorkshire Quakers are the continuing existing costs that appear in the accounts of AMs and Quakers in Yorkshire. These come to about £1.6million. The new costs in this document will represent only about 10% of the total running costs
a) In drawing up these proposals we have considered three staffing models and budgets to cover them. This includes a preferred model which it is hoped would maximise the benefits of the new charity to Local Meetings in relation to finance, property, employment and safeguarding and which supports the role of the new Trustees. The funding however will come from the unrestricted funds of Local Meetings. The new charity will require a number of paid staff, which will be a new overhead. The cost will be partially offset by savings from eliminating duplication in the 7 AMs at present. Each Area Meeting will be able to identify the amount which is currently being spent in their Area Meeting which will be covered by the functions of the new charity.
b) The total running costs have been estimated in the range £113,000 to £213,000 per annum. We have discerned a model budgeted at £172,000. This is termed the preferred model and is shown in Appendix 1 to this document. Other models are available on the website yorkshirequakers.org.uk
We recognise (as members of local meetings ourselves) that this seems a considerable sum, but we believe this to be a realistic figure to achieve our aim of a future proofed organisation which releases Friends to engage in the spiritual witness of the Society of Friends. We have considered options for calculating the basis of the charge per Local Meeting. Having listened to the views of Friends who have shared their views so far, the fairest option might combine a sum calculated on the basis of the number of adult Friends and Attenders with a sum calculated on the basis of Local Meeting unrestricted reserves. This approach recognises the significant variability in individual giving balanced with resources accumulated over time. Local Meetings would be encouraged to raise the agreed funds in whatever way they discerned was right for their circumstances.
We have also offered an indication of potential set up costs.
We would welcome the further views of Friends about the staffing and funding options.
a) We recognise that it is important to place the cost of Meeting Houses in the context of our spiritual work offering a place of religious worship. We own many historic buildings which are important in their localities and to Quakers. We seek to balance this value with the demands it places on local Quakers.
b) We recommend that all lettings income is received by Yorkshire Quakers. In return, Yorkshire Quakers will fund all regular property related costs. This will include: Utility costs and property taxes if applicable, staff costs including NI and Employer Pension contributions), insurance, cleaning, window cleaning and gardening contracts, refuse collection, minor day-to-day responsive repairs, routine maintenance such as boiler services, fire protection, electrical inspections and follow-on work, Quinquennial Surveys, interior decoration and the like. Yorkshire Quakers will also oversee major works, major projects relating to buildings and will take responsibility for developing funding plans for them.
c) This approach draws on the experiences of the long-established London Quakers Property Trust (LQPT) and the ‘Bristol Model’. The LQPT website https://lqpt.org/ gives a picture of their work and structure but both they and Bristol Area Meeting follow a model where lettings and accommodation rents are paid directly to the central organisation and the central organisation then pays the running costs and holds a central capital repair fund and takes responsibility for capital expenditure on buildings.
d) Analysis of recent accounts reveals that property running costs currently exceed property income in most local meetings and in all area meetings. This information is on the website.
e) In order to meet this deficit and build up a property reserve, we propose that a common property fund will be established formed from all hire and lettings income and, additionally in the first year, 20% of unrestricted funds at the point of merger. All unrestricted funds could be transferred into this fund over time as may be agreed by Yorkshire Quakers.
f) This fund will be used to cover all routine property-related expenditure (including wardens, resident Friends and facilities employees). It will also be used to pay for 60% of the cost of the proposed Yorkshire Quakers Property manager. Additionally, this fund will be a source of financial support for property development and major repairs alongside of existing and future designated or restricted property funds.
g) Lettings will continue to be managed by LM lettings clerks, supported by finance staff. This will ideally be supported by a common (not central) lettings management system such as Hallmaster which will allow for remote booking, invoicing, and complete transparency.
h) The Meeting House lettings element and any commercial lettings will be subject to proper business planning and marketing to ensure optimum use of the premises and maximising of income. We recognise that Local Meetings may need to be encouraged to ensure optimum use of their property. We are working on a scheme that recognises this whilst retaining our commitment to simplicity.
a) We recommend that Local Meetings retain control of all donated income and other non-lettings income for their own use. The funds will reside within the Yorkshire Quakers bank account but assigned to the local meeting fund. We recommend that Local Meetings decide how much to contribute to Britain Yearly Meeting and that gift aid claimed on donations reverts to the Local Meeting.
b) Practically, at the point of merger, all LM and AM financial assets will be transferred to the new charity in a single bank account and management system which will hold the finances on behalf of LMs using a small team of paid staff.
c) The memorandum of understanding will outline the model whereby funds retained by each LM which will be held in a ring-fenced fund for its own use. Trustees and staff will determine the accounting rules and procedures and will take an active responsibility for the charity’s finances through (for example) scrutiny of quarterly financial reports. There will be a trustee treasurer plus a finance manager with overall responsibility for the charities finances, to whom the staff will be responsible.
The main reasons for moving forward with a merger between the 8 Quaker Charities in Yorkshire is to have only one trustee body responsible for all the legal, financial and compliance responsibilities of a charity and thus not replicate these functions 7 or 8 times.
One of the key functions of the new charity will be to own and to take legal responsibility for the property assets now owned by the 7 Area Meetings.
This provides all of us with the opportunity to spend less time on property management and maintenance and more time on the things that matter to us as Friends and Meetings: having vibrant Meeting communities, outreach, inreach, and witness in the world.
We recognise that we face a range of risks which Trustees are legally responsible for managing. Our properties present many of these to us and legislation and regulation around these risks, such as fire prevention, health and safety, and the condition of the fabric of the building itself becomes ever more complex. The merger will give us the opportunity for managing these risks more effectively and with professional support and make it easier to comply with the regulations and legal requirements.
We also recognise and celebrate the contribution our buildings make to all this at best. Our relationship to our buildings is important and allows us to enhance the life of the Meeting and its witness by creative uses of the property. It also provides an opportunity for discernment about the way in which the buildings contribute or could contribute.
But we are also fully aware that there are times when our buildings distract us from these things rather than contributing to them.
The purpose of shared property stewardship is to ensure the least possible effort and cost is expended in making the most effective use of our property assets. Also we have a large property estate with a significant range of properties in terms of age, type, use, and state of repair.
Now is not the time to discuss streamlining that estate; that may, or may not, be something the Trustees of Yorkshire Quakers, once established and bedded in, will want to look at.
At best, the merged approach will mean that we will be able to do more with our estate, not less and that we can make use of professional expertise and economies of scale.
We recognise that there will be many questions about how this will work in practice. Who will do what? Who will take responsibility for what? Who will benefit from the money raised by hiring out spaces in our properties? Who will pay for repairs and maintenance? Who will make the decisions?
All these questions need to be answered, but they are complex questions when looking at a portfolio of property that is as varied and as geographically spread as ours.
We have attempted to show in the attached table, the range of issues and how their management might be shared/spread/allocated. This is not a blueprint; this is a framework for future development as experience leads us and as circumstances change. None of this is set in stone.
We know that some Friends carry significant responsibility for aspects of property management on a voluntary basis; we are not suggesting that this has to stop; but we know that this carries risk. These Friends may not want to carry on or may not be able to carry on, possibly at short notice. If no-one else can be found to carry out the work voluntarily (be that temporary or permanent) there needs to be an alternative that can be put in place quickly. Any model for property management must be flexible and resilient enough to ensure that we mitigate that risk where Friends continue to do things voluntarily and eliminate that risk by employing staff who can take on these tasks when necessary.
In terms of hirings and lettings, we envisage an online common (not central) software package (such as Hallmaster) that is implemented across all Meetings. This will give the necessary flexibility for those Meetings who want to continue to manage their own lettings to do so. It will give the interoperability to ensure that others can step in to support Meetings who temporarily or permanently cannot. It will also ensure that common reporting will give Trustees the information they need to ensure that the properties are managed in the best way possible.
We understand that the move towards an online system will take time; we understand that there may be some operational arrangements put in place that allow the continuation of informal arrangements at local level, including cash payments, with some inputting into the system to allow common reporting.
We envisage a Memorandum of Understanding between Yorkshire Quakers and Local Meetings that details all these issues (in more detail than the table below) and which will be subject to review at regular intervals to ensure that changed circumstances are allowed for.
The merits and options for ways of undertaking shared property management between local meetings and Yorkshire Quakers are shown in Appendix 2.
We are proposing that Yorkshire Quakers have specialist staff who can deal with the property management tasks that are allocated to ‘central staff’ in the table above. This can be summarised as:
The costed proposals included in this document elsewhere show one role to cover these responsivities. It will be for the Trustees of the new Yorkshire Quakers Charity to make decisions about the final shape of the roles, so the above list is illustrative only.
The Trustees of Yorkshire Quakers will take over responsibility for employment matters from the area meetings. There are legal obligations and much guidance as to how the transfer must take place. We have not yet considered this in detail but we have gathered information.
It is helpful to categorise those who assist us into three groups:
Between the seven Area Meeting charities, we employ (on the basis of information returned) 30 people including building managers, building assistants, caretakers, cleaners, wardens, contractors and Chaplains (see table below). There are a further 5 Friends in Residence (needs confirmation), who are volunteers rather than employees, although some are provided with free accommodation and some have both accommodation and a small salary. Almost all are seen as employees of the Local Meeting, with local management through a premises committee, and reporting to that committee and the local Meeting for Worship for Business. York AM has joined the Real Living Wage Foundation and is committed to being a Living Wage Employer, which brings responsibilities on how employees are treated and might not fit the way some AMs engage people.
There are three tasks for the Employment Working Group:
Firstly, what would be required to ensure legal compliance if we merged the charities? There will be TUPE requirements, and it will also be important to identify whether some elements might be outside the scope of TUPE. We will need expert advice, perhaps through Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) and may need to engage solicitors. We will need to gather copies of employment contracts and agreements with Friends in Residence for the new charity to review.
Secondly, how might the single charity operate from a practical perspective? How might Trustees best dispatch their employer obligations consistently and legally, while respecting local management arrangements? Do we want to keep the RLW commitment? Consultation with staff, local meetings and area meetings will be needed, and we should recognise that this work may identify additional staff resources that might be required. It will be individual AMs who will need to undertake the transfers of their staff, and the arrangements will depend on the number and nature of employment at each AM.
And thirdly, how might we use such an opportunity to support our Quaker community across Yorkshire to prosper? Are there opportunities to realise the benefits of simplification and enable our Local Meetings to refocus their energies on our testimonies, rather than on running and administering buildings? Might there be scope for our employees to use their talents to support a broader Quaker community?
The responsibility for Safeguarding previously held by the trustees of Area Meetings and Quakers in Yorkshire will transfer to the trustees of Yorkshire Quakers when merger takes place.
YQ trustees will develop and agree a single safeguarding policy, along with procedures to ensure its implementation, using the guidance issued by Britain Yearly Meeting. These will apply to all activity, including YQ’s own events and the life of all Area and Local Meetings.
Key roles and responsibilities:
(Note: The following is indicative of the balance of roles and is not intended as full and complete role descriptions).
YQ Safeguarding Lead Trustee
Appointed by YQ Trustees from amongst their number. YQ Nominations Committee will need to be aware of the need for someone with suitable experience and capacity.
YQ Safeguarding Officer
This is an employed post, currently budgeted at 0.4 FTE.
Area Meeting/Yorkshire Quakers Safeguarding Co-ordinators
Appointed by AMs/YQ via their own nominations process and know their own area. Appointments can be structured for each meeting’s circumstances, e.g. AMs could choose to appoint more than one person, or two or more AMs could join forces in a single appointment.
The role for YQ Safeguarding Co-ordinator would be a bit different due to the nature of the activity – including residential and young people’s events. These are partly organised by the Youth Development Worker who is employed by and responsible to BYM, and may draw in volunteers from across the region. The role would similar to that done by the QiY Safeguarding Coordinators.
Additional local role:
AMs should consider whether they need a local named person in Local Meetings or not, depending on size and circumstances – this would be a possibility but not a requirement. So, for example, a large, busy LM with active children/young people’s groups might have its own named person to champion safeguarding matters, whilst a neighbouring small meeting might not. Local appointees would liaise with the AM Co-ordinator who acts as the channel of communication with YQ and other agencies.
Mutual support for co-ordinators is available via meet-ups (virtual or otherwise) arranged by a Local Development Worker.
Professional support for all levels available via Britain Yearly Meeting and 31:8.