Benenden Healthcare’s message of mutuality is set to be broadcast wider than ever before following a series of successful votes at its Annual Conference in June this year. As a consequence, more people than ever before can benefit from the wide range of discretionary healthcare services that members of Benenden Healthcare have access to.
Three propositions at the Conference in Kensington on 24 June 2010 were carried, making members of approved credit unions, co-operatives and charities eligible to join the Society. In the past, only employees – not members – of such organisations were eligible to join.
This will make it easier for those potential new members who share our mutual values to join the Society where they may have not been able to before.
These new rules were recently registered with the Financial Services Authority, enabling recruitment efforts to begin right away.
The move maintains and strengthens the Society’s mission of promoting itself to those individuals and organisations who share its mutual values and will have no impact on the membership fee of £1.50 pp per week. Additionally, we still won’t ask for medicals or exclude you for having existing medical conditions.
It also represents the wishes of the Society’s own membership as delegates to Conference are drawn from its nationwide network of 47 branches.
Graham Hadfield OBE, speaking to Conference on behalf of the CoM, explained that extending eligibility to members of credit unions, co-operatives and charities was the way ahead. Credit unions were “as fine a form of a mutual organisation as you can find,” he said, while co-operatives were also “great mutual movements”.
As for charities, the Society is intending to target selected charities that are deemed to be sharing Benenden Healthcare’s own values.
Benenden Healthcare has a longstanding relationship with the public sector and third sector having been founded by a Post Office worker, Charles Garland in 1905. Earlier in 2010, the Society became a member of Co-operatives UK, an organisation that seeks to promote the benefits of co-operatives and mutuals.
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Notes to editors
Founded in 1905 and based in York since 1990, Benenden Healthcare Society is one of the UK’s longest serving and most respected mutual healthcare societies.
The Society has a membership of over 930,000 and provides a range of discretionary healthcare services to public sector workers and their families as well as employees of organisations whose aims and objectives are compatible with those of the Society.
Benenden Hospital, an independent hospital & charitable trust based in Kent and a subsidiary of the Society, was founded in 1907 and became the centre for hospital treatment for members of Trade Unions and Friendly Societies and subsequently large numbers of public sector employees who have joined Benenden Healthcare.
The hospital places great emphasis on quality providing comfortable, clean and infection free accommodation and a range of clinical services which are tailored to meet the needs of individual patients.
