We are pleased to announce that, following a successful application to the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, the Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine UK has now been awarded charitable status as an independent organisation.
This marks a significant change in our status, as we had previously been registered as a charity under the auspices of the Hill Square Educational Trust located at The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
We would like to thank the various departments at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for their ongoing support to reach our goal. The Faculty was formed as an intercollegiate faculty of the Royal College of Physicians and RCSEd, and will retain close links with both colleges. Both RCP and RCSEd will retain Office Bearer observer positions on our Board in our first few years, and we are delighted to be able to rely on their continued support. We hope to continue to develop our professional relationship with the college going forward as a joint faculty with no governance or administrative links.
As Sport and Exercise Medicine has grown over the last 16 years, the Faculty has gone from strength to strength with the support of our parent colleges, and the tremendous efforts of our Office Bearers, volunteers and staff. Sport and Exercise Medicine has advanced as a medical specialty and the Faculty now has around 800 members of our own with a thriving committees and council who support FSEM to unite the specialty and deliver our goals. In our Strategy 2022-25, we identified the need to develop FSEM as a collaborative, multi-disciplinary organisation capable of uniting the specialty, and we believe that gaining independent charitable status is a significant milestone towards achieving that goal.
Our goal is to complete the transition and be up and running as a new organisation by April of this year. We still have a lot of hard work ahead, and will continue to finalise the process of setting up as an independent organisation with our own IT, HR, Finance and Governance Structure. All FSEM staff will also transfer over to the new organisation, including some staff who have been with the college for 18 years. However we won’t be far as we will continue to rent our office in 1a Hill Square – our door is always open for coffee and collaboration.
Kirsty Baird, Head of Faculty, Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine UK