An Advisory Panel is a group of people given the mandate to advise or recommend decisions on funding proposals and often on fund strategy too. Panel members will usually live or work in the Area of Benefit, bringing local knowledge, perspectives and ‘ownership’ over those decisions. Panel members may be appointed by named local organisations with a specific remit (such as the Community Council, Village Association or Development Trust), or from the wider community, or a mixture of both.

A Panel is a useful arrangement to put in place when the organisation that holds and governs the community benefits is either:

  • A local organisation such as a community company that is pursuing its own projects and for which it may seek support from the community benefits package (and therefore where there are considerations around separation of duties)
  • An independent third party with specialist expertise in fund management, grant-making etc. which requires a mechanism to ensure sufficient local input to and ownership over funding decisions, or
  • The renewable energy business, who wishes to retain control of aspects of community benefits package governance and administration but again requires a mechanism to ensure sufficient local input to and ownership over funding decisions.

The Panel will normally be convened and supported by the organisation that holds and governs the community benefits package. That organisation will usually be responsible for providing the Panel with an induction into their role, organising Panel meetings, providing papers for these, and so on.

The Panel itself is not a formally constituted body but should operate according to a set of rules and procedures equivalent to a governing document and comparable in levels of accountability and transparency. This document is often called a Terms of Reference. Amongst other things this details the role and remit of the Panel, its composition, and procedures for recruitment, meetings, and so on. A sample Panel Terms of Reference is available to download as part of this toolkit, along with further useful sample documents relating to Panels.

As the Panel structure is not in itself a legal entity, it does not entail the same level of regulation – and therefore reporting and administration effort – as a Company does, for example.