About

The Nuclear Education Trust (NET) was incorporated as a company limited by guarantee on 8 August 2005 (5530662) and was registered as a charity on 14 March 2007 (1118373). Its governing document is its memorandum and articles of association and it is also governed by charity law. It is an independent organisation with a clearly defined educational remit and is not a campaigning organisation.

NET relies on donations, gifts in wills and grants from charitable foundations to fund its activities, which are detailed in the annual financial reports. The Board of Trustees is responsible for overall strategic management of the charity. It is supported by two sub groups, one for education and one for research, that recommend and monitor grant activities and research commissions. NET operates by providing grants or commissioning work for projects that meet its charitable objective.

To date significant grants have been to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament mainly for its acclaimed Peace Education work but other organisations such as the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), the London School of Economics, the Department of Peace Studies, Bradford University and the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, as well as individuals, have also received grants from NET.

In 2012 it commissioned Connect Communications to examine the implications for Barrow in Furness posed by the different proposals in the Government’s Trident Alternatives Review and following on from this work, Connect Communications was commissioned to examine the UK’s defence needs with reference to its international disarmament responsibilities. More recently NET has worked with the Nuclear Information Service on ground breaking research into military attitudes to nuclear disarmament and with Ian Davis of the Stockholm Institute of Strategic Studies on the extent to which NATO policy on nuclear weapons influences UK policy and vice versa. Earlier in 2017, long standing work on attitudes to nuclear disarmament within the Labour Party was published and future research is set to investigate defence diversification in the nuclear sector.

The NET – CND relationship

Nuclear Education Trust (NET) was originally set up by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and was incorporated as a company limited by guarantee in August 2005 (5530662) and registered as a charity in March 2007 (1118373).

Given the clear political nature of CND’s work, the Charity Commission for England and Wales (CCEW) always made it clear that it would review NET’s activities a year or so after its inception and this happened in 2008. Following dialogue with and recommendations from the CCEW over the next four years, arrangements were put in place to guarantee independence for the NET Board of Trustees, which is the sole decision making body of the Charity. While CND is still a formal member of the Trust and able to nominate no more than three Trustees, membership of the Trust is now wider and more diverse. 

NET’s relationship with CND in other respects is as follows:

• NET provides grant funding for CND’s Peace Education work (among other grantees historically), ensuring this work complies with our charitable aims, but cannot raise funds on behalf of CND. Any grant to CND needs to be clearly justified and minuted; the CND Trustees must not be part of the decision making but can provide background information to the other Trustees.
  
• At NET’s request, some administration services are provided by CND. These are reimbursed at a reasonable rate, verified by the NET accountant.

A set of principles for joint working between NET and CND have been established to ensure that the role of the two organisations remain distinct and do not result in conflict with NET’s charitable aims.