Communication to Members regarding the Sale of the Building

After a lot of careful consideration, the OR Society has decided to sell our building, Seymour House, in Birmingham. Like many other small charities, we are having to make increasingly difficult decisions about the best way to use the limited funding and resources that are available to us.

There are a number of reasons behind this decision. Our staff have become increasingly geographically dispersed since establishing our apprenticeship programme and as we have pursued a strategy to recruit the best people to support the Society, regardless of where they live. During Covid we successfully moved the Society’s operations online, demonstrating that we have limited need for a physical office space; post-Covid, the office is now only used two days per week. Historically the building has had an important role as a training venue, but post-Covid we now offer the vast majority of our training online. The condition of the building has deteriorated during this time, and it now requires significant investment and refurbishment. Unfortunately, the cost of that refurbishment is extremely prohibitive; it is cheaper for us to sell the building than to refurbish it. It currently costs in the region of £50,000 to run the building each year, but this is constantly increasing due to the rising costs of energy and insurance.

We have therefore decided that this is the ideal time to sell the office building and transition to a more remote way of working. As you can imagine, this is a very large and complex project, and we are keen to get it right. I am writing to provide you with a short update and to ask for your feedback and input on a few key points and decisions please (highlighted in bold for ease of reference).

A Designated Advisors Report has been prepared ready for discussion at the Board meeting on 20 May. Section 117 of the Charities Act 2011 (as amended by section 20 of the Charities Act 2022) requires that before committing to a sale (or other relevant disposal), charity trustees must have obtained and considered a written report from a designated adviser acting exclusively for the charity and have decided, having considered that report, that the terms of the sale (or disposal) are the best that can reasonably be obtained for the charity.

It is notoriously difficult to predict the timescales of a property sale, but we are working on the basis that we should aim to have mostly decommissioned the building and for it to be standing empty ready for sale by the end of August 2026.

We intend to switch the registered address of the charity from Seymour House to De Morgan House in London from 1 August 2026, pending signature of a room sponsorship agreement with the London Mathematical Society (LMS). This agreement will ensure that the Society still has a physical presence and home for its memorabilia, and a location to hold in-person meetings of the Board and its Committees. It will also co-locate us with LMS and the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), furthering the scope for future collaboration and partnership working. We are seeking views from members for the name of the Society’s new room at De Morgan House. Please send your suggestions to the Project Coordinator, Mandy Blackett ([email protected]) by Tuesday 30 June. We will take a vote on the name of the room at the Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 29 July.

We are currently working through a range of logistical questions, including where the library and the OR exhibition will be housed, and are seeking expressions of interest. If your organisation might be interested in hosting the library and/or exhibition, please do get in touch with Mandy Blackett as soon as possible.

However, before we move the library, we will need to set up a working group to review the contents, remove any duplicate books, and possibly weed the content. We are also setting up a working group to review the paper records currently held in the office to decide what needs to be archived. We are looking for people who can volunteer some time between now and the end of July to join these two working groups please. The exact details are still being worked out, but there will be flexibility on dates and exact time commitment based on people’s availability. It would be helpful if at least some of the working group would be willing to visit the office in Birmingham on at least one day (reasonable expenses would be paid). Please contact Mandy ASAP if you would like to join one of the two working groups.

Thank you for taking the time to read this update. This marks the start of an exciting new chapter in the OR Society’s history, and I hope that members will understand the reasoning and support the decision. If you do have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me ([email protected]).

Dr Colette Fletcher
Executive Director of the OR Society