board elections 2025
The RCM invites you to apply to be a member of its new Board, taking up office on 1 September 2025.
How to stand for Election
The RCM invites you to apply to be a member of its new Board, taking up office on 1 September 2025. The RCM Board is responsible for ensuring that the RCM is efficient, effective, properly managed, supervised and accountable. The Board provides long-term vision, a strong understanding of governance, ensures clarity of purpose by setting strategic goals and objectives, and protects the reputation and values of the RCM.
Becoming a Board member for the RCM is a fantastic opportunity, and is both a challenging and rewarding commitment in equal measure. In lending your expertise and experience to the RCM, you become part of an organisation that strives to set standards across the midwifery profession, acting as a voice for all those who work within it.
We strive to make our RCM as reflective as possible of the midwifery community and those we serve, so we welcome nominations from underrepresented groups. We value all our members’ skills, experience and contributions as a true reflection of the midwives working across the UK.
RCM Board members are RCM members elected to office by fellow members.
The first step is to complete the RCM’s self-nomination and the Equality and Diversity monitoring form. This is compulsory and you will not be accepted as a candidate for election unless you have completed, signed and submitted this form to elections@rcm.org.uk by 21 February 2025. To take advantage of the assessment process, please submit your cv to elections@rcm.org.uk by 21 February 2025.
Providing you meet the eligibility criteria, you will be invited to interview the week commencing 10 March 2025
Following the interview process, you may also prepare an election address for the RCM to distribute, together with the voting papers, to the persons entitled to vote in the election. Your election address may not exceed 300 words and must only include text (which may include links to other material if you wish). Your completed election address form must be sent to elections@rcm.org.uk by 31 March 2025.
Period of Office
A member elected in 2025 and who has not previously served on the Board will be appointed for four years. They may stand for election for a further period after that.
A member elected in 2023 who is already a board member and approaching the end of their initial period of office will remain on the Board for a further two years.
All new members elected in 2025 will take up office as an RCM Board Member on
1 September 2025 with a lead in period starting on 23 July 2025.
A member who has served as an RCM Board Member for a combined period of six years, must take a break of six years before standing for re-election.
The following documents provide more detail on role and responsibilities of the RCM Board and its members.
Assessing your competence for the role
The RCM Board has drawn up an RCM Board Member role profile and core competencies. The core competencies are those required of all board members while the additional competencies are considered desirable.
If you wish to stand for election, you will be offered an assessment of your competence for the role. You are strongly advised to take advantage of the opportunity to learn more about becoming an RCM Board Member and assess your readiness to perform the role.
Candidates should prepare for the assessment interview as you would for a job interview. For example, please make sure you are well informed about the RCM.
If the assessment suggests that you would benefit from further development before standing as a candidate, you may be offered advice on how to strengthen your competencies for a future occasion. However, it is entirely your choice whether you stand as a candidate in 2025 or later.
Should you decide to stand as a candidate in 2025, the members of the RCM who vote in the election will receive a statement about you from the assessment panel. This is intended to help voters make an informed choice. The statement will include one of the following competence ratings which will be assigned to you by the assessment panel.
Competence rating A
The candidate demonstrated to the assessment panel the required level of competence.
Competence rating B
The candidate demonstrated to the assessment panel a level of competence requiring further development.
Competence rating C
The candidate did not demonstrate to the assessment panel an acceptable level of competence.
You may choose to stand as a candidate without completing the assessment process. RCM members who vote in the election will be informed that the assessment panel was unable to provide a view of your competence. The assessment process will be completed by 31 March 2025
