How the Institute is Governed
A professional body's authority rests on how it makes decisions. This page sets out the Institute's legal form, who decides what, and the safeguards that keep assessment decisions independent of everything else.
Legal form
A company limited by guarantee
The Institute of Administrative Management is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales and governed by its Articles of Association. It has no shareholders and distributes no profit: guarantee members undertake a nominal sum in the event of winding up, and the Institute exists to serve the profession rather than to return value to owners.
Public registrations
Where the Institute is registered
Two official United Kingdom registers record the Institute’s standing. Both are public, and both can be checked directly.
HM Revenue and Customs
An approved professional body — List 3
The Institute of Administrative Management is listed by HM Revenue and Customs among the approved professional organisations and learned societies whose members may claim tax relief on their subscription. Inclusion on List 3 is granted only to bodies HMRC recognises as genuine professional organisations, and it is the basis on which UK members claim relief on the IAM subscription.
See the Institute on List 3 (gov.uk) · About List 3 and how relief works
UK Register of Learning Providers
UKPRN 10064134
The Institute is registered on the UK Register of Learning Providers, the Department for Education’s register of organisations delivering education and training in the United Kingdom. Its UK Provider Reference Number is 10064134. The register verifies a provider’s legal identity and is used by funding bodies, awarding organisations, and employers.
The Board
Who the directors are
The Institute's directors are a matter of public record. The following are the currently appointed directors of the Institute, together with the roles they hold on the Board.
| Director | Role |
|---|---|
| John Butterfield | Chair |
| Karl Daniel Harland | Executive Director |
| Justine Alexandra Francis | Membership Director |
| Craig Anthony Wood | Standards and Quality Director |
Who decides what
The Board and its committees
Authority flows from the Articles of Association. The Board manages the business of the company and makes the rules under which the professional framework operates; specialist committees and independent panels hold the decisions that must not sit with management.
Governing body
The Board of Directors
The Board manages the business of the company and makes the regulations, schemes, and policies that constitute the professional framework — the Membership Regulation, the CPD Regulation, the Centre Recognition Scheme, and the Endorsement Scheme among them. It sets fees, determines benefits, confers Honorary Fellowship, and approves each edition of the Professional Standards. No rule it makes may be inconsistent with the Articles.
Standards
The Professional Standards Committee
Responsible for developing, maintaining, and periodically reviewing the IAM Professional Standards. Its members are drawn from across the Institute's Professional Membership, so the description of the discipline is written by people who practise it. The Committee reports to the Academic Board.
Academic oversight
The Academic Board
Endorses substantive changes to the Professional Standards and provides academic oversight of the framework. Any revised edition of the Standards requires both the approval of the Professional Standards Committee and the endorsement of the Academic Board before the Board of Directors adopts it.
Independent
The Recognition Panel
Decides applications for centre recognition and programme approval on the evidence alone, against the published criteria of the Centre Recognition Scheme. Neither payment of a fee nor any commercial relationship with the Institute secures or influences a recognition, approval, endorsement, awarding, or certification decision.
How the Institute is organised
The departments, and what each one does
Beneath the Board and its committees, the Institute's day-to-day work is carried out by departments with defined remits. Each has its own contact route, so an enquiry reaches the people who can answer it without being passed along.
| Department | What it does | Contact |
|---|---|---|
| Membership Office | Admission and upgrade applications at every grade; grade and route advice before you apply; Good Standing, renewals, lapse and reinstatement; CPD exemptions and adjustments; the IAM Directory and the Mentor Panel. | membership@instam.org |
| Corporate Team | Corporate Membership from enquiry to onboarding; the Corporate Coordinator relationship; workforce enrolment; recognition of in-house learning for CPD; licensing of the Practice Library for internal delivery. | corporate@instam.org |
| Centres Team | Centre recognition from expression of interest to decision; Programme Approval; centre induction, monitoring, and renewal; learner registration and certification; learner protection where delivery is disrupted. | centres@instam.org |
| Endorsement Team | Endorsement of qualifications, courses, and events owned by other providers, including Recognised Centres; review against the Professional Standards; two-year endorsement periods and renewals; the Endorsed Mark and the public register of endorsed provision. | endorsement@instam.org |
| Professional Conduct | Complaints about member conduct, reports under the Code of Ethics, and whistleblowing disclosures; advice on ethical dilemmas the Principles do not resolve; fitness-to-practise notifications. Good-faith disclosures attract no detriment. | conduct@instam.org |
| Appeals | Appeals against admission, assessment, CPD, and disciplinary decisions under the Appeals and Complaints Policy. | appeals@instam.org |
| Data Protection | Access requests, corrections, Directory privacy settings, and the exercise of any right under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 — see Data Protection. | dpo@instam.org |
Assessment and discipline
Decisions about individuals
Decisions that affect a person's professional standing carry their own safeguards, set out in the Membership Regulation and the Appeals and Complaints Policy.
- Admission is decided by published rules, applied consistently. Eligibility and assessment outcomes are determined against criteria written and moderated by the Institute’s panels and published in advance. Every applicant has the right to request written grounds for a decision, to have it reviewed by a person under the Appeals and Complaints Policy, and to reapply after six months. Disciplinary outcomes remain human decisions in every case.
- Assessment instruments are written and moderated by panels, not applied by them. Senior Fellows and subject specialists write and moderate the Progression Matrix descriptors and the assessment criteria; those criteria are then applied uniformly to the documentary evidence every applicant supplies, so no individual application depends on who happened to review it.
- A Disciplinary Panel comprises three or more people with no prior involvement in the matter, including at least one Fellow or Senior Fellow and at least one independent member who is not a director, officer, or member of staff. Conflicts must be declared, evidence is provided at least fourteen days before any hearing, the standard of proof is the balance of probabilities, and written reasons are given.
- Verification of evidence. The Institute may verify qualifications, experience, and identity with issuing institutions and employers at any time before or after the decision, under Regulation 3.8. A false or misleading declaration is a ground for refusal and for termination of membership.
- An Appeals Panel likewise comprises three or more people, none of whom had prior involvement in the decision under appeal.
- Publication is restrained. Disciplinary outcomes are not routinely published; the Board may publish an expulsion only where doing so is necessary to protect the public.
- Refusal is not final. An applicant refused admission may request the grounds in writing, seek a review under the Appeals and Complaints Policy, and apply again after six months. A refused upgrade never affects the grade already held.
Consultation and review
How the framework changes
The framework is not fixed, and it is not changed quietly. Fixed review cycles and consultation requirements govern how it evolves.
| Safeguard | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Two-year review cycle | The Professional Standards are formally reviewed every two years. The next review concludes by 1 December 2028, so that any revised edition takes effect on 1 January 2029, aligned with the CPD Year. Between reviews, only minor corrections and clarifications are issued, as errata. |
| Notice and consultation | Changes to fees and to member benefits are subject to the notice and consultation requirements of the Membership Regulation. Members are notified through the IAM Portal. |
| Open feedback | Professional Members, employers, educators, and other stakeholders may submit feedback, corrections, and suggestions on the Standards at any time. Confirmed errors are corrected through the errata process. |
| Transitional protection | When the framework took its current form, existing members continued at the corresponding grade without re-application or re-assessment, with any non-corresponding grade mapped and published by the Board. |
| Published fees | No fee is charged that does not appear in a published schedule. See the Recognition and Endorsement Fees in full. |
The public interest
Why any of this matters
A professional body that awards credentials is asking the public to rely on them. An employer hiring an MInstAM, a client engaging a Fellow, a government contracting a Recognised Centre — each is trusting a decision the Institute made. The governance on this page exists so that trust is warranted: standards written by practitioners and reviewed on a fixed cycle, recognition decided by an independent panel on evidence, discipline handled by panels including an independent member, fees published in full, and every credential verifiable by anyone, free, without the holder's involvement.