I went along to the AGM in London and listened to the arguments for and against the flat rate fee. I agreed that a flat rate fee would be good in terms of a reduction of effort spent by Cilip on admin of membership and more time spent on growing the numbers of members. This would over time reduce the membership fee because the cost of running Cilip would be more evenly spread across a larger number of members.

I did disagree about the cut off point between members who pay according to their earnings and those that pay a flat rate.

I understand that 44% (ish) of the membership earn between £17 and 22,000 a year, which makes this band an obvious cut off point from a business point of view.

I don’t feel that the group in the £17-22,000 band will suffer as a result of the flat rate fee as it is almost equal to the amount they would pay anyway.

However, Cilip need to recognise that if you work in London the cost of living is higher and this should be reflected in the membership rate with a higher cut off point for members living in the capital.

The second group of people who would suffer from this cut off point would be new professionals, who have recently finished either their under or post graduate qualification. It is widely recognised that this group of young professionals have high debts when they graduate, either from student loans, career development loans, overdraft or credit card debt. I feel that Cilip should recognise this issue and provide recent graduates who are lucky enough to get a job in this pay band a two year period to sort out their finances.

I feel both of these groups would be reasonably easy to deal with administratively.

Charlotte Wilmot

Subject Librarian

Arts Institute at Bournemouth

Telephone:+ 44 (0) 1202 363256

Fax: + 44 (0) 1202 537729

e-mail: [log in to unmask]

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