Category: Quakers in London

LDG have provided an update on Friends’ progress in transferring their membership to Quakers in London. If you haven’t recived your membership transfer email, please contact membership@quakersinlondon.org.

On 20 September, some Friends in Membership of one of the 7 AMs in London were the first to fill in a form requesting to transfer their membership to Quakers in London (QiL) at the end of the year. By 1 October, more than 500 Friends (53% of those in Membership of one of the AMs) had already completed the paperwork.

This article is for those who haven’t yet completed the process because they are having problems with the form filling, or worried about the implications of joining QiL.

Through discernment over many years within each of our AMs and, more recently, working together as the Joint London Area Meeting (JLAM) every AM has agreed to become part of QiL Area Meeting at the beginning of 2027, and to formally close the current AMs soon after.

You need to actively agree to transfer into QiL just as you would leave one AM and ask to join another if you moved to another part of England. Quakers in Britain hold membership at AM level (not at Yearly Meeting or Local Meeting) so – by the time your old AM closes – you need to have agreed to join QiL or you won’t be in membership anywhere. In effect, you will have resigned your membership.

We hope you will all agree to transfer, but it is your decision.

Every AM within Britain Yearly Meeting is a charity and that’s necessary so that they can own meeting houses and hold AM or LM bank accounts. Some are Charitable Incorporated Organisations and some are Charitable Companies. In October 2025, JLAM (with the minuted authority of each AM) opted to take over LQPT’s current charitable registration (Minute JLAM 25/19), which is legally structured as a Charitable Company. You can find the whole minute here. As a result, the legal governing document, which is called the Articles of Association, has been updated to suit Quakers in London rather than LQPT. You can read more about the Articles of Association here and see the final draft here.

When you transfer into QiL you become a member of that Charitable Company as well as a member of the AM in Quaker governance terms. As an Area Meeting and a worshipping community, how QiL works will be governed mainly by Quaker Faith and Practice chapter 4 and by the QiL terms of reference and other documents that we develop ourselves. We will also need to follow the Articles of Association for certain technical issues. There is no risk to members of the Charitable Company because it is ‘limited by guarantee’ – and the only potential liability is to pay ‘up to £1’ in the extremely unlikely event that the charity were to close with debts.

In the words of Beth Allen from Bromley Meeting ‘We need to be an ordinary well-run organisation, with good structures and sensible practices, which we then make extraordinary by transcending, not discarding them.’ Qf&p 8.25

Whichever type of charity JLAM had chosen, you would have had to complete a form to transfer. And the form gives you a chance to say what information you want to receive and whether you want to be included in a directory available to other members.

If you decide that you don’t want to join QiL then you can do most things as an Attender, but we hope that you will be part of our London-wide AM as a Member.

If you want to complete the form and don’t know what to do, don’t worry:

• If you’re in Membership of one of the London AMs and haven’t received a personalised email with your form, send a message to Chris Martin (Assistant Clerk Membership) at membership@quakersinlondon.org and he will sort it out.
• If you’re not sure how to fill in your form online, maybe someone in your LM can help?
• If you – or someone you know – needs a hard copy, message Chris (membership@quakersinlondon.org) and he can give you a hard copy.

Chris and others are happy to come and visit anyone at home who would like to talk all this through or get some help. The important thing is that everyone who wants to transfer their membership, does so. Ideally this should be completed by the end of the year, but we’ve found a way to make it possible to transfer latecomers in the early part of 2027 too.

Please trust the discernment of the last eight years, ‘Live Adventurously’, fill in the form and transfer your membership.

The London Development Group

London Development Group’s (LDG) Legal Subgroup shares an update on the Quakers in London Articles of Association, including a summary of the feedback received and action taken in response.

The final draft of the Articles of Association is available here with changes made since JLAM on 12 September tracked. The next step is formal consideration at a meeting of LQPT Members on 13 October 2026. The LQPT ‘members’ are the 7 existing AMs.  For the purpose of discernment, the AM is represented by the Clerk to the AM Trust as the ‘representative member’. These Friends are representatives (not delegates).

In October last year, JLAM minuted that – from 2027 – all London Quakers in Membership would be ‘members’ of the Charitable Company, thus ensuring the full engagement by us all in the work of QiL. 

The London Development Group Legal Subgroup is grateful for the questions and comments from Friends by correspondence, at JLAM, and at various zoom calls over the last few weeks. At the end of this note, there’s a chart that summarises the feedback, responses and says whether or not any change is being made. There were some useful comments that have improved the Articles. We are not making changes on other points raised for a variety of reasons including that what was flagged isn’t actually in the Articles of Association; that what is proposed contradicts what other Friends are asking for and/or what JLAM asked LDG to do; or that we have already received legal advice that we can’t change it.

The Legal Subgroup has been working on the Articles since October 2025 with advice from Bates Wells legal team to implement what was asked in JLAM minute 25/19:

‘● LQPT will act as the receiving entity, with the 7 Area Meetings and London Quakers transferring all assets and liabilities into it. 

● At the point of merger, the LQPT charity will change its name. 

● At least initially, the charity will have Charitable Company status but we could choose to change this to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) at a later date. 

● We will use the existing charitable objects of LQPT, which are sufficiently broad, but may choose to change them in time. 

● The legal members of the charity will be all Quakers in membership in London, in line with the principles of spiritual Quaker governance.

We ask that the LDG carries out a review of the articles of LQPT to look further at what else is needed to reflect our Quaker practice and values and to ensure all our current Local Meetings are included’.

This is what we have tried to do, making the minimum necessary changes needed to create a document that will work for QiL. Certain types of changes to governing documents require Charity Commission permission and it can take a long time to get it. The London Development Group has not made any changes that require permission. They anticipate that QiL and its trustees will review the Articles again and may consider making further changes in the future – but this is for future discernment.  

In July 2026, at an LQPT meeting for Members, representatives reviewed the draft articles and made suggestions that were incorporated. The amended version has been on the QiL website since early August so that all Friends across London could feed in questions and comments as many have. In addition, Member Representatives have consulted within their AM as needed.

A table summarising the points raised in correspondence, at JLAM, or in zooms by 20 September 2026, the response and any action taken is available to read and download below:

Dugan Cummings, Clerk to EPCC reports on what the Committee has been up to in its first year.

A year ago it was decided to set up a committee of Elders and Pastoral Carers to serve Joint London Area Meeting (JLAM). The intention was to seek experienced people from each of the Area Meetings in London, plus someone from Young Friends, to provide:

• Eldership and Pastoral Care during JLAM and subsequently QIL in session
• support to other Elders and Pastoral Friends in Local Meetings (LMs) (including ensuring that support is provided from outside a LM in times of difficulty). This may include training, helping to build mutual support groups and responding to ideas for strengthening Eldership and Pastoral Friend work
• gatherings of all Elders and Pastoral Friends from across London Area Meeting at least once a year.

We were asked first to consider ways into membership. Quaker Faith and Practice (chapter 11) sets out principles and gives guidance but allows flexibility in how area meetings implement them. The seven current London AMs have each developed their own practices. As we come together, we have an opportunity to agree on a shared approach, drawing on the best of existing practice, but ultimately creating something exciting and new, future-facing, and suitable for the new Quakers in London.

We gathered leaflets on applying for membership and on what ought to be done when visitors are appointed to meet with an applicant. Not all the AMs in London had them. Together we marked up what seemed to us to be best practice and drafted new leaflets for JLAM to consider at its meeting in March. Friends present that day felt they needed more time to consider the issues and that will be done when JLAM meets in October. The EPCC paper on QiL Membership Process is available here.

We were also asked to draw up a job description for the new Membership Clerk. It was encouraging to learn that clerical support would be provided for this role.

In November 2025 Elders and Pastoral Carers across London were invited to spend a day at Friends House getting to know one another and thinking about how they carried out their responsibilities. This was so popular we planned another day together on 11July to consider the new relationship between JLAM and local meetings, support for smaller meetings, and support for families, children and young people. There were 40 of us, led by Josh Selfe in the morning and Julia Stacey in the afternoon. Friends were encouraged to write their questions and ideas on post-it notes and Josh collated them. They have drawn attention to areas of further work we need to do, including:

• How will the EPCC support Elders and Pastoral Carers in Local Meetings? We think it might be helpful to draw up a list of Es and PCs with appropriate experience which we could draw on to support meetings with difficulties.
• How can we learn from those meetings that are thriving and keeping their newcomers? We are seeking to collect their initiatives so they can be passed on to other meetings to help them ‘grow well’.
• Can we provide training for new Elders and Pastoral Carers in London? We are exploring how this might be run with help from Woodbrooke. It could be very useful to people newly appointed to these roles and would also help them to get to know one another.

We have met online 10 times so far and we have also provided Eldership at JLAM meetings, both in the room and on-line. We enjoy meeting together and trying to discern the way forward for QIL. There are only 8 of us on the committee and we have asked Nominations Committee to find us some more Friends to share the burden of our responsibilities at this key time in the development of Quakers in London.

Dugan Cummings, Clerk to JLAM EPCC

You can contact all of the QiL Committees on the contact page of this website.

A Friend from South East London Area Meeting reflects on how SELAM are commemerating the past as they take their final steps toward London Area Meeting.

In SELAM we plan to commemorate the laying down of our AM; at our final meeting this year each of our three Meetings will present an item showing the flavour of each Meeting, and we will hear some stories from the past history of Quakers in the area, including the origin of each of the Meetings.    

From the early days we recall the destruction of Horsleydown meeting house, and our past includes famous Quakers like Ada and Alfred Salter, so we have a lot to celebrate. 

If you would like to tell Friends about how your AM is approaching the transition, please feel free to get in touch by emailing us at quill@quakersinlondon.org.