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Wonkhe SUs · The 2026 webinar box set

Governance and Democracy in SUs

Trustees, boards, conflicts – and how to navigate them.

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We explain why SUs are the way they are – structurally mutual but legally charitable, wearing three legal hats at once – and introduce the new SU Governance Code 2026. We look at boards in practice, the built-in conflict of sabbatical officers as trustees, lessons from charity failures, and the 2026 reality of structural financial decline, with the questions every board should be asking itself. With Nick Smith, Governance Consultant, Nick Smith Consulting

What we cover

  • The puzzles – from free sandwiches to Gaza ceasefire statements, who actually decides: the members or the board?
  • How we got here – club constitutions, the 1994 Education Act, the 2006 Charities Act and the incorporation wave.
  • Two traditions – charity and mutualism, and why SUs are an odd, uncomfortable fit between them.
  • Three legal hats – Education, Company and Charity law, all worn by the same people at once.
  • The new SU Governance Code 2026 – an official variant of the Charity Governance Code, and its eight principles.
  • What's genuinely new – ethics and culture, resources and risk, and SU-specific threads on student voice and free speech.
  • Student voice, subject to charity law – a real bridge to democracy, or democracy subordinated to fiduciary duty?
  • Two hats – sabbs as representative, employee and trustee, and what St Andrews and the free-speech-versus-reputation see-saw teach us.
  • Lessons from charity failures – Kids Company and Save the Children, mapped onto the new Code.
  • The 2026 reality – boards in structural deficit, the questions for boards in decline, and governing generatively rather than micro-governing.

Things to read

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