We are looking for new directors for our Co-operative! If you are passionate about bikes and the difference they can make to people’s lives, love working with people from across Bristol’s vibrant community, and want to get more involved in our dynamic and evolving project – this could be the role for you.

The Bristol Bike Project is a member-led Co-op with a flat structure, valuing everyone’s input equally and taking decisions in a responsible and collaborative manner. The Directors Group is responsible for ensuring the Project meets its various legal and financial obligations, and acts as a protector of our values, purpose, and practices. Directors bring expertise and experience to support the Project to achieve its potential, and provide advice and recommendations to our employees, members and volunteers. The Directors Group is principally made up of our members (apart from the community director who can be a non-member), is elected by the membership and is ultimately accountable to the membership.

We are looking to recruit two directors to serve finance and HR functions, and three directors with more general responsibilities. We are also looking to recruit a community director whose role it will be to represent the interests and perspectives of our project users, ensuring their voice is heard in all our decision-making. Details on the roles and responsibilities of the directors and the person specifications can be found here.

Clarification of ‘statutory duties’ of a Director.

Due to a number of people raising concerns about and requiring clarification regarding the statutory duties of a director of an organisation such as BBP, one of our current directors has summed it up below. If you would like to discuss any of this in more detail with him, please email hello@thebristolbikeproject.org to arrange

BBP is a limited company, like most in the UK. The ‘limited’ refers to the limited liability of the Directors of BBP as a business. This means that, other than in exceptional circumstances (covered in a minute below), any financial, legal and other liabilities stay within the company and don’t spread over to the individual Directors.

Any Director does, however, have duties and responsibilities to ensure that the business operates within the law, is financially stable and generally conducts itself well.  There is much more reading that can be included here, but this is the gist of it.

Often the best way to ‘join’ these 2 principles is to give an (extreme) example.  Let’s say that BBP was trading well, generating good surpluses, and the Directors were regularly reviewing how the business was going, setting strategy, etc. Then something unforeseen happens – a large customer doesn’t pay a bill, and BBP suddenly cannot pay its staff and suppliers, so has to close down. Given that the Directors behaved appropriately and could not have predicted the situation, there would be no recourse to the Directors as individuals.

How to apply

To apply, please send a statement of no more than 300 words outlining your relevant skills, knowledge and experience to hello@thebristolbikeproject.org. Deadline is midnight on 29 September.

In your email, please specify whether you are applying for a general director seat, or one of the finance, HR or community director seats. You can apply for more than one of the role-specific seats (for example, finance and HR). If you are applying for a role-specific seat, you will also be considered for the general seats unless you specify otherwise. Please also specify in your email what gender you identify as (this will not be shared publicly, but is recorded in order to comply with our policy that at least 50% of the Directors Group must be non-male).

If you want to discuss the position informally before applying, please contact Krysia Williams (Member Coordinator) or James Perrott (existing Director) via hello@thebristolbikeproject.org. Applications will go to The Bristol Bike Project membership and voted on at the next General Meeting on 25 October. Candidates may be asked to take part in a short interview. We will announce the results on 30 October.

The Bristol Bike Project is committed to equality, diversity and social and environmental justice, and we welcome applications from those who share our values. We value the different expertise and diversity of our employees, members and volunteers. We strive to make our programmes as inclusive as possible and will work with committed individuals to ensure participation. We strongly encourage applications from groups underrepresented in our areas of work and we do not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, place of origin, class, citizenship, system of belief, gender, sexual orientation, language, marital status, family status, physical and/or mental disability.