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2023-12-31-accounts

Trustees’ Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 December 2023

CONTENTS

OUR MISSION 2
PUBLIC BENEFIT STATEMENT 2
FOREWORD FROM OUR PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE 3
STRATEGIC REPORT ON GROUP ACTIVITIES 6
Promoting and sharing knowledge
Supporting career development and lifelong engagement
Bringing together molecular bioscientists and encouraging wider dialogue
Developing and transforming our working practices and business model
GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT 17
Principal Risks and Uncertainties
Biochemical Society Trustees
Directors of Portland Press Limited
Senior Management Team
Key Contacts
Financial Review
Reserves Policy and Going Concern
Remuneration Policy
Investment Policy
INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT 32
FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2023 37
Consolidated Statement of Financial Activities for the year ended 31 December 2023
Consolidated and Charity Statements of Financial Position as of 31 December 2023
Consolidated Statement of Cash Flows for the year ended 31 December 2023
Notes to the Financial Statements

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OUR MISSION

The Biochemical Society exists for the advancement of the molecular biosciences. Together with our publishing subsidiary Portland Press Limited, the Group promotes and facilitates the sharing of knowledge and expertise, supporting the advancement of biochemistry and molecular biology, and raising awareness of their importance in addressing societal grand challenges.

PUBLIC BENEFIT STATEMENT

The Biochemical Society promotes the advancement of the molecular biosciences. The Society’s activities support the development of individual and collective understanding of biochemistry through dissemination of research and the provision of resources and activities to support the education of students, researchers and the general public. The molecular biosciences impact on many areas of science including biotechnology, agriculture and medicine, helping to play a key role in tackling global issues such as improving lifelong health, treatment of disease, biotechnology and food security.

The Trustees confirm that they have complied with the duty in Section 17 of the Charities Act 2011 to have due regard to the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit “Charities and Public Benefit”.

Registered charity name: Biochemical Society Charity registered number: 253894 Company number: 00892796 Registered Office: First Floor, 10 Queen Street Place, London EC4R 1BE Telephone: +44 (0)20 3880 2793 Email: info@biochemistry.org Website: www.biochemistry.org Twitter: @BiochemSoc

Company name: Portland Press Limited Company number: 02453983 VAT No: GB 523 2392 69 Email: editorial@portlandpress.com Website: www.portlandpress.com Twitter: @PPPublishing

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FOREWORD FROM OUR PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE

2023 saw the Group complete the first full year of its current strategy (launched in July 2022) and continue to innovate its working practices to operate at the forefront of change within the sector.

As in 2022, our events programme provided essential opportunities for collaboration and the sharing of ideas within our community and in collaboration with others. Our Biochemistry Focus webinar series continued to harness links and promote content across the Group with 22 webinars run, linking to awards, education, careers, grants, policy, and publishing. 2023 saw over 3,000 delegates register to attend our webinars with total on-demand views across all channels reaching 55,928 by 1 February 2024.

The success and reach of our webinar series provided an excellent opportunity for promoting membership of the Society, with over 1,600 non-members and 265 lapsed members registering to attend. By December 2023 we had seen a 13% growth in our membership numbers, supported by the first full year of operation of our new membership CRM system, which has developed our reporting processes and overall data accuracy. A membership survey was sent out in November which showed member satisfaction rated as high by respondents, as well as identifying reasons why members joined the Society and what they considered were key member benefits. These results will inform future work to review and refresh the membership offering, ensuring it remains relevant and offers appropriate support for our community.

Work undertaken in 2022 to review both our awards and grants portfolios delivered impressive results in 2023.. Awards nominations increased by 70%, with an increase in female nominees to 33% and an increase in international nominators and nominees. We also introduced three new awards categories: Significant Breakthrough or Achievement and Sustained Excellence, the Research Support Award and Teaching Excellence Awards [with categories for both Early Career (EC) and Established Educators].

A total of £321,590 was awarded across our full grants portfolio to applicants from 34 different countries. Our first Student Opportunities Grant was awarded in October, with a further five funded by the end of the year supporting a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate projects, and our refreshed Care and Assistance Grant received its first four applications, supporting those with childcare and carer requirements when attending Society events. The largest percentage of grants was awarded to postgraduates (31%) and those in the early stages of their career (26%). The number of successful international applicants (22%) remained on par with last year, with our international reach particularly improved through our Diversity in Science Grants scheme, which awarded £7,372 to 15 applicants and continued to promote inclusivity on an international scale, with 87% of grants going to overseas projects.

We continued to focus on support for those in the early stages of their careers, with a sold-out EC networking event held in July that provided insights into non-academic careers; an offering we will be looking to repeat in 2024. The Structural Mass Spectrometry issue of Essays in Biochemistry published in March was EC led and specific EC sessions were held at several events within the year; a networking event at Dynamic Cell V in April, a breakfast at Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Neurodegeneration 2023 in April, and EC sessions at the 89[th] Harden Conference in September.

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Expansion of the Society’s flagship Summer Vacation Studentships successfully piloted placements in scientific publishing and public engagement and outreach in 2023, developing our offering outside ‘traditional’ careers and skills development. Eighty-two student placements were awarded (42 in research, 38 in programming, 1 in public engagement and 1 in publishing). The careers section of the Society website was fully revised, and we are working with university career departments to ensure our careers resources are disseminated as widely and effectively as possible. Careers-based webinars attracted over 500 delegate registrations, covering topics such as careers in clinical trials, alternative protein careers for biochemists and the transition between academia and industry, and vice versa.

Through our Local Ambassadors (LAs) the Society had a presence at career-related events and public engagement events throughout the year, with LAs also involved in reviewing grant applications and Science Communication prize entries.

The Society’s Industry Advisory Panel met for the first time in 2023, allowing us to engage representatives with Society activities including our Drug Discovery training event which provided a comprehensive overview of the pre-clinical drug discovery process. We also worked closely with our Policy Advisory Panel, Policy Network and EC Advisory Panel to develop a set of policy priority themes for the organisation, which have provided focus for our policy work: antimicrobial resistance, open science, STEM education and skills, genetic/genomic technologies and their applications, sustainability and drug development/discovery.

Our commitment to digital development and innovation continued this year, as the first implementation phase of our infrastructure review drew to a close. Work to migrate the Society’s finance systems to the cloud was successfully completed which has increased system security and streamlined key processes. Google Analytics are now embedded on the Society and Portland Press websites and the design and use of imagery on both sites was also updated. We were able to further develop consistent output across all of the Society’s social media channels, increasing the following of the Society on X (formerly known as Twitter) to 32k and opening an Instagram account, which had 575 followers by the end of the year.

The Group’s remote working model continued to operate effectively, maintaining flexible working options for staff, for example those with caring responsibilities and/or disabilities, as part of our wider Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) commitment. Having assessed similar organizations’ successful adoption of a four-day working week (4DW), the Society commenced a trial of the scheme in January 2023, with regular reviews and monitoring of productivity and staff engagement. The trial was a success and, at the end of the year, Trustees confirmed the adoption of the 4DW as an approved non-contractual working pattern, for review and approval annually. We are proud to be operating a forward-thinking staffing model and have seen the benefits with staff recruitment and retention, as well as the work/life balance of employees.

Our wholly owned subsidiary, Portland Press, saw a continuing downward trend in publications, as was the case across the sector, with a decrease of 18% in 2023, although the decline was less steep than that seen in 2022. We continue to prioritize commissioning efforts and associated marketing campaigns to address these issues.

We continue to beat industry sector article turnaround times, and total usage (PDF and HTML) sat at just over 4.8m; below last year’s peak but still above average for the past three years. Institutional PDF usage continued to increase, mainly as a result of increased article views to

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content in Biochemical Society Transactions (BST), Clinical Science (CS), Emerging Topics in Life Sciences (ETLS) and Essays in Biochemistry (EBC).

The Society’s long-standing commitment to open scholarship is embedded into our 2022-2025 strategy, with a revised open science position statement published in October 2023.The statement outlined eight open science principles, from open access (OA) to research integrity. Covering not just publishing practices but also research culture, the statement included a pledge to implement equitable, inclusive and sustainable routes for publishing across the Society’s publications, particularly considering funder mandates and landscape changes. The impact of the transition to OA on Group-level finances continues to be a major focus and in addition to work on identifying new revenue streams, work is in place across the Group to identify efficiency savings.

With growth of OA publishing an important indicator for us, the proportion of OA articles published in the hybrid journals increased from 48% in 2022 to 54% in 2023. Of particular note was the proportion of OA in the review-only journals, with EBC standing at 63%, BST at 57%, and ETLS at 56%. Articles funded through Read & Publish (R&P) agreements rose from 30% in 2022 to 35% in 2023 and, as expected, we saw decreased revenue from article publishing charges (APCs) compared with last year. This anticipated and planned transference of funding from APCs to R&P institutional agreements is set to continue through 2024 until APCs are fully eliminated in our hybrid journals in 2025.

As always, we thank our Trustees, Members of PPL Board, Local Ambassadors, Committee and Panel members, Editorial Board members, Society members, peer reviewers, authors, partner organizations and staff team for their ongoing support and commitment that allows us to deliver for the molecular biosciences community.

Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow President, Biochemical Society

Kate Baillie CEO, Biochemical Society Managing Director, Portland Press Limited

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STRATEGIC REPORT ON GROUP ACTIVITIES

2023 was the first full year of delivery for the Group’s current 2022-2025 strategy. What follows is an assessment of Group business within this period as it relates to the strategic objectives contained therein.

Promoting and sharing knowledge

Key objectives for the strategic period

As in 2022, our events programme provided essential opportunities for the promotion and sharing of knowledge within our community and in collaboration with others. With 273 delegates, the Synthetic Biology UK meeting in November brought together the synthetic and engineering biology communities to share recent scientific advancements across the field. Conference themes included biomolecular design and engineering, cell and system-level design and synthetic and minimal cells. The 89[th] Harden Conference, focused on proteoglycans, was organized in collaboration with the British Society for Matrix Biology and drew 112 delegates. The meeting programme covered research areas at the forefront of the field, basic aspects of proteoglycan research including new technologies and tools, their functions and mechanisms of action, and advances in translation to biomedical applications. These two events ran as part of our full programme, which provided 15 scientific meetings, 6 in-person training events and 9 runs of online training events. We continued to focus on gender diversity with 46% of female speakers at our events and had 24% of total delegates from the Early Career (EC) community, (increased from 17% in 2022).

Our Biochemistry Focus webinar series continued to successfully harness links and promote content across the Group with a total of 22 webinars run, linking to awards, education, careers, grants, policy, and publishing. 2023 saw over 3,000 delegates register to attend our webinars with total on-demand views across all channels reaching 55,928 to date. Our most popular webinars attracted a total of 489 registrations; ‘Antimicrobial resistance, the next pandemic?’ (250 registrations), and ‘Transitioning between academia and industry and vice versa’ (239 registrations). Overall, the highest groups of delegates across the webinar programme were students and members of the EC community, with both members and non-members in attendance at each webinar run within the programme.

Our Scientific Outreach Grants received a total of 58 applications (up from 23 applications in 2022), 25 applications for the £1k grant and 33 applications for the £5k grant. Funded projects included an outreach project at the University of Warwick to provide laboratory experience to

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secondary school students, the creation of an Activity Zone at the Cambridge Science Centre to provide hands on biochemical activities for school groups and families, and an event to disseminate current scientific research in Down Syndrome. We also saw an increase in eligible entries to our Science Communication Prize; 80 entries in 2023 up from 35 entries in 2022. The winning entries came from a range of countries, including China, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Spain and Turkey and covered a variety of topics, including cancer, genes and DNA and women in STEM.

Our Society awards programme was refreshed in 2022, having a significant impact on the nominations received in 2023, which increased by 70% on the previous year. We also saw a 38% increase in female nominees and an increase in both international nominators and nominees. Dr Kelly Nguyen was the first Vietnamese winner of the Colworth Medal, given to EC researchers who are considered to have completed outstanding research. Our new award categories were presented for the first time, and we had our first team winners: the University of Dundee Drug Discovery Unit and GSK Global Health received the Industry and Academic Collaboration Award, and the WEHI Bioservices Team from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research received the Research Support Award.

The Group’s social media channels continued to perform well, despite the uncertainty about how the platform level changes would impact X (Twitter) over the course of 2023. This platform remained our largest channel of communication with an increase of 18% in engagements and 54% in impressions. Significant increases in engagement, impressions, posts and followers were seen with both our LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, most notably with increases of 58% (LinkedIn) and 93% (Facebook) in engagements. The launch of our new Instagram account in May 2023 was well received and by the end of the year had achieved 575 followers; valuable insights were gained into how to continue to improve the content offering into 2024.

The Group’s mitochondria content package, hosted on the PPL website, proved to be the most popular package offering, seeing 3,887 engagement activities, (numbers of unique users, views and engagements) compared to 2,125 engagement activities for the synthetic biology content package and 1,905 engagement activities for the virology and vaccinology content package, both of which are hosted on the Society website.

In general, the open rates for mailing campaigns to promote the packages were comparable with the rates for other Society campaigns (mailing campaigns concerning packages achieved an average open rate of 29% compared to the overall mailing campaign average open rate of 33%). Click-to-open rates were lower for the mitochondria and synthetic biology packages (an average of 7% compared to 12% overall), but the virology and vaccinology package achieved a click-to-open rate of 24%, well above the 12% average. Work continues to assess the future development of content packages as part of our content offering.

Work was undertaken to broaden the content of the Society’s science magazine, The Biochemist, with the addition of representatives to the Editorial Board from the Training Theme Panel, Education Committee and Policy Advisory Panel. Articles published have covered engaging and inclusive teaching, science outreach, and policy topics such as Voice of the Future and Parliamentary Links Day. Issues were themed throughout the year covering a broad range of areas, including protein engineering, fungal economics, gene therapies and death and decomposition.

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Having placed a commitment to open science within our strategic objectives, Trustees agreed a future roadmap for transition to open in March 2023. The Society’s President announced our intention to transition to full open access (OA) by 2025, which was followed in June with a significant change to our green OA policy – removal of all embargoes on author-deposited accepted manuscripts. In October, we started the countdown to the launch of a fourth OA business model, Subscribe to Open, which will complete our transition to open. We will be offering every author a route to OA publishing, compliant with funder and institutional mandates. October also saw publication of a revised open science position statement.

The changes in the wider scholarly publishing landscape continued to have an impact on the sector, and while we saw an overall increase in our journal submissions compared with the previous year (3596 submissions in 2023 compared with 3394 submissions in 2022), this increase was due to increasing papermill-type submissions to Clinical Science (CS) and Bioscience Reports (BSR). Biochemical Society Transactions (BST) did see a genuine increase in submissions, which resulted in a slight increase in publication volume in 2023 compared with 2022 (174 publications versus 163 publications in 2022). Total publications decreased by 18% in 2023 when compared with the previous year, a less-steep decrease than had been seen in previous years (37% in 2022). We continue to implement quality control processes to support research integrity, with BSR (our fully OA sound science journal) being the most impacted journal in our portfolio. While we are still working with the BSR Editorial Board on correcting the scientific record for historical content, particularly in relation to articles suspected of coming from papermills, a new Editor-in-Chief is in place from January 2024 to ensure a pipeline of highquality submissions. We continue to keep up to date with the research integrity landscape and consider our own practices to ensure we are providing the best possible service to our community.

To the end of 2023, there were 269 OA articles published in the hybrid journals which represents a decrease of around 8% against hybrid OA publications in 2022. But while the number of OA publications decreased this year, the proportion of OA articles in the hybrid journals increased slightly to 54% (compared with 48% in 2022). The proportion of OA in the review-only journals was particularly significant, with EBC standing at 63%, BST at 57%, and ETLS at 56%. There were around 205 articles published through R&P agreements in 2023 which equated to a third of all content published in the year; BCJ and BST accounted for over half of all published R&P content.

2023 saw corresponding authors from a total of 49 different countries, the same number of countries as in 2023, with the highest number of contributors coming from the United States (151), the United Kingdom (115), China (87), Australia (34) and India (30). The BCJ published article, ‘Introduction to the human gut microbiota’, was the most cited article of the year, followed by ‘New photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy’, also published in the BCJ.

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Supporting career development and lifelong learning

Key objectives for the strategic period

We have continued to develop our careers support and resources, including offerings outside of ‘traditional’ careers and skills development. This was supported by a refresh of the careers section of our website and an ongoing review of our careers resources, for example work being ‘ ’ undertaken with our Industry Advisory Panel to update our Biochemists in Industry booklet.

The Society’s Summer Vacation Studentships scheme (SVS) was expanded in 2023 to pilot additional placements within the Group itself, with a placement in scientific publishing (62 applications received for 1 placement) and another in public engagement and outreach (29 applications received for 1 placement). Overall, 82 student placements were awarded, and due to the success of the pilot we will be offering the publishing and public engagement placements again in 2024. Experiences of some of the SVS students were shared in an article in The Biochemist published in December 2023.

We also joined the City, University of London Microplacement scheme, hosting two students within our EDI and Governance teams across a four-week period in June to July. The scheme provides opportunities for students from underrepresented backgrounds to gain valuable work experience, completing projects that contribute towards delivery of the Society’s objectives. In 2023 this included the creation of an EDI toolkit and a review of key Society policies, with one of the students successfully winning the University’s Student Researcher of the Year award as a result of the work she completed on her placement. We plan to continue our involvement with the scheme in 2024, as well as considering other placement opportunities where relevant to the organisation.

We continued our focus on support for those in the early stages of their careers, organizing a free EC networking event in July to provide late-stage PhD students and EC scientists with an opportunity to discover more about careers opportunities outside of bench research. Six varied science-related career pathways were covered, with a strong emphasis on how scientific skills and experience could be transferred to roles in those sectors (grants and funding, policy, patent law, communications, bioinformatics and regulatory affairs). The event sold out and received excellent feedback from attendees, and we are working to offer this again in 2024.

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The Structural Mass Spectrometry issue of Essays in Biochemistry published in March was EC led and specific EC sessions were held at several events within the year, including a networking event at Dynamic Cell V and a breakfast at Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Neurodegeneration 2023. Many of our webinars focused on topics of interest to the EC community, such as ‘Careers in Clinical Trials’ and ‘Alternative protein careers for biochemists’.

We provided a variety of training events in 2023, including in-person events on the engineering of recombinant proteins, drug discovery, and protein purification and biophysical characterization, as well as repeat online training events, such as R for Biochemists 101 and 201, and Practical Python. Our in-person training events were attended by 138 delegates, with 311 sign-ups for our online training events. An area in which individuals can suggest training courses was added to the Society website, with the continuing aim of proactively commissioning training events to add to the current offering. We have also convened a working group to consider a replacement for the Society’s massive open online course (MOOC), with the aim of showcasing biochemistry and related careers information. Cryo-electron microscopy will be the first pilot module, with work ongoing to complete the pilot in 2024.

Our grants and bursaries continued to provide support to the molecular bioscience community in 2023, with ~ £322k awarded across our full portfolio to applicants from 34 different countries (£309k awarded to applicants from 32 different countries in 2022). The largest percentage of grants was awarded to postgraduates (31%) and those in the early stages of their career (26%).The number of successful international applications was similar to last year at 22%, with the Society’s Diversity in Science grant scheme being particularly effective in providing international support with 87% of grants awarded within the scheme going to overseas projects.

The Eric Reid Fund for Methodology ran a grant call again in 2023 with increased funding levels to reflect the changes in the living wage. The fund awarded a total of £42,801 to nine projects which covered areas such as regenerative medicine, next-generation microbial cell factory design and dementia-focused biobanks. The revision of the previously named Carers Grant to the ‘Care and Assistance Grant’ attracted our first applicants in 2023 with a total of £1,685 awarded to provide for those needing childcare or other care-related support in order to attend Society events. 2023 also saw six undergraduate or postgraduate projects funded through the Society’s Student Opportunities Grants, including the creation of a student podcast, organisation of a student symposium in Nigeria and a student science writing competition.

We also ran a grant call for The Korner Fund, created following a generous donation from the University of Sussex in late 2022, which offered up to £2,000 to students or EC members planning collaborative overseas laboratory visits. This closely aligned with the previous remit of the Korner Travelling Fellowship Fund and provided an opportunity to reinforce our commitment to international collaboration and the dissemination of knowledge on a global scale. Following a successful year of applications, the total fund of ~£7k was awarded to five applicants to support collaborative visits to Australia, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. Due to the success of this scheme, a new Society-owned scheme ‘Laboratory Visit Grants’ has been introduced for 2024 as a permanent sub-section of the General Travel Grant scheme to support collaborative visits to UK and international laboratories for postgraduate, EC and full members up to the value of £2,000.

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Bringing together molecular bioscientists and encouraging wider dialogue

Key objectives for the strategic period

During 2023 a set of policy priority themes were identified to provide clarity around our policy activities, supported by input from the Policy Advisory Panel, Early Career Advisory Panel and the Policy Network. The themes selected are antimicrobial resistance, open science, STEM education and skills, genetic/genomic technologies and their applications, sustainability and drug development/discovery. Following the update of our antimicrobial position statement in November 2022 an accompanying webinar ‘Antimicrobial resistance, the next pandemic?’ ran in July 2023, achieving the highest number of registrations (250), and live attendees (107), of all webinars within the 2023 programme. Our Diversity in Science position statement and Open Science position statement were also updated in 2023, with work ongoing to update other statements in 2024.

The Society participated in a number of policy-related events within the year, including Voice of the Future, run by the Royal Society of Biology (RSB), which saw Society member and University of Birmingham student Rebecca Budden represent the Society, asking the Science and Technology Select Committee what more the government could be doing to encourage more scientists into policy roles. Members of the Society’s Policy Advisory Panel and Policy Network, together with EC representatives, were in attendance at the 2023 RSB Parliamentary Links Day, themed on ‘Science and Economic Development’ and we continued to sponsor the STEM for Britain bronze award in the biological and biomedical sciences section. In 2023 this was won by Sarah Dickson from Newcastle University for work on a system to monitor dolphins and porpoises at offshore wind farms. Society member Olivia Conway was also a finalist and received the silver award for her project ‘Mapping the subcellular adipocyte proteome in response to fed and fasted stimuli’.

The Society worked together with FEBS and IUBMB to deliver the ‘Evolving Molecular Bioscience Education’ event in May, a two-day event aimed at everyone teaching or supporting learning in higher education in the molecular biosciences. There was a particular focus on communities of practice in bioscience education, with two Society Trustees joining as speakers.

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Governance positions at both FEBS and IUBMB are advertised to Society members and Society events and activities are shared with the FEBS Network.

The Emerging Topics in Life Sciences journal remains co-owned between RSB and the Society, and we continue to participate in meetings convened via the Strategic Partners Group to consider inter-Society collaboration. Our journal portfolio is also promoted through sponsorship of society meetings, e.g. the European Council on Cardiovascular Research.

Our new Local Ambassador (LA) Representative Trustee, Dr Susan Campbell, was welcomed in early 2023 and represented the Society at the RSB Biosciences Careers Day in March, with LAs supporting four public engagement events throughout the year and acting as reviewers for Society grants as well as the Science Communication Prize entries. As at December 2023 the Society had 103 ambassadors across a total of 21 countries.

Work to re-engage our Industry Advisory Panel also took place in 2023, with their first meeting which focussed on planning priorities for the year ahead and involving members in consultation on potential income generation ideas, including sponsorship and content dissemination. Panel members supported the updating of industry-related careers resources during 2023, as well as the Drug Discovery Training Event held in November 2023, which brought together trainers from industry and academia to provide a comprehensive overview of the pre-clinical drug discovery process.

Society membership saw 13% growth by December 2023 (4,536 members) with our new membership system in place from November 2022, supporting the member journey and providing better data accuracy for overall membership reporting. Results from the membership survey sent out in November showed the most popular reasons for new members joining the Scoiety were to keep up to date with developments in biochemistry, to become part of our community and to access grants, bursaries and career support. Our events and grants offerings were identified as the most valued member benefits with respondents keen to see more networking and local engagement opportunities.

These findings will be built into work to refresh our membership offering as we move through the rest of the strategic period, shifting our focus from membership retention to membership growth.

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Developing and transforming our working practices and business model

Key objectives for the strategic period

Having successfully embedded a remote working model across the organisation in 2022, the Society continued its commitment to flexible working practices, running a one-year trial of a fourday week (4DW) model throughout 2023, following careful assessment of other organisations’ successful adoption of 4DW models. This proved very successful, with continued or increased levels of productivity across all staff teams and 100% of staff in support of the scheme, noting the benefits to work/life balance and more focused and productive ways of working. The 4DW was adopted as a non-contractual working pattern in November 2023, and continues to be regularly monitored by our Executive Management Committee, with reports submitted to the Council of Trustees on an annual basis.

A number of new staff policies were introduced in 2023 as part of our commitment to becoming a destination employer: Study Leave, Carers Leave and Volunteering Leave. By the end of February 2024, a total of 21.5 days had been awarded to staff under the three new policies. Line management training was rolled out to all relevant staff from 2023 and a benchmarking exercise undertaken with sister societies saw the review and adjustment of more junior Society staff salary bands where appropriate.

We continued to operate a hybrid governance calendar, focusing on inclusive governance meetings with online attendance options, including at our 2023 AGM. Guidance on how best to operate inclusive meetings has been produced and shared online as part of our EDI toolkit, with the governance calendar planned around major religious and national holidays and meetings timed to account for international time differences and the caring responsibilities of members.

A review of the Society’s governance arrangements commenced in October 2023 and will complete in 2024. An Advisory Group and Working Group were convened to engage key stakeholders from across the current governance framework to feed into discussions on a number of topics, including the current committee structure, appointments and succession planning and the operation of a trading subsidiary. Recommendations will be made to the Council of Trustees for consideration in 2024, with input from external legal advisors Bates Wells. The Society’s reserves policy was reviewed in the final quarter of the year, and following a recommendation from the Society’s Finance Committee was adopted in November 2023.

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Following a request for proposals process (RfP) in early 2023, Citrus was approved as the provider of a Master Trust service to the closed pension scheme in June 2023. Work to transition the scheme began in the latter half of the year and will complete in April 2024, in line with the transfer of the administration services and the scheme’s assets and liabilities. Annual efficiencies and cost savings of at least £10k per annum will be achieved with the transition, as well as providing a strong route to eventual buy-out.

The Society continues to embrace the opportunities of digital transformation, upgrading CRM systems across the organisation to cloud-based systems to support business continuity and resilience, including the Access Dimensions financial system upgrade which was completed in 2023. This removes the need for servers and increases accessibility with centralised data security.

2023 focused on defining our roadmap to full open access (OA) publishing. Implementation plans are now on course for full delivery in 2025. The impact of the transition on Group-level finances has been modelled and mitigation strategies are an ongoing discussion within the organisation. With a renewed commitment to adaptation, innovation and collaboration, the approach during the remaining period of strategy and a major focus of our work is to identify and evaluate new revenue stream opportunities across all of our activities. A new Working Group is being convened to direct the work in the area of income generation and growth, providing governance oversight and coordination between all committees, boards and panels and the Council of Trustees.

Portland Press’ investment in its sales and marketing support for the transition to open bore fruit in 2023. We increased our visibility in North and Latin America by engaging new sales representatives, Accucoms, who helped us to convert more traditional subscriptions to Read & Publish (R&P) agreements. The effect will be to bring many more US scholars the benefit of feefree publishing in our journals.

We succeeded in winning new consortia business, helping to scale our presence quickly and efficiently, and enabling more molecular bioscientists across the globe to benefit from both reading our content for free as well as publishing their own research for free in our titles. We signed new R&P agreements with Bibsam in Sweden and with the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) consortium – who represent 13 major US university systems. We also upgraded our Canadian consortium deal with OCUL to a R&P option.

USACO, our sales agents in Japan, have been running R&P conversion campaigns throughout 2023. JISC continues as our flagship consortium agreement – revenue from our agreement with JISC was up 16%, with 40 UK institutions now participating in our R&P offering. Through this agency, OA publishing is now the default and dominant route to publish by UK corresponding authors.

With three years’ data collected on R&P, we joined the sector in reviewing the success (or otherwise) of transformative agreements (TAs). We produced a case study reporting regional differences in OA uptake and determined several success factors. Key findings were presented at the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) annual conference in September 2023. The study highlighted that in regions where R&P has the highest uptake, OA publishing now represents 87% of articles published from corresponding authors. Those regions (UK and Australia/New Zealand) have supported TAs from the start, had national library consortia

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partners actively engaged in negotiating agreements with institutions, and had further backing from national research councils and funder mandates to move to full OA.

Initial scoping work on sustainability and a future sustainability position commenced in 2023, with discussions involving both our Policy Advisory Panel, Early Career Advisory Panel and Council of Trustees. A working group will be convened in 2024 to take this forward, in particular to look at formalizing a position around many of the sustainable practices already in place across the organisation, including the operation of a fully hybrid governance calendar with committees only meeting once a year in person, and a remote working model which does not require the operation of an office premises with its associated impacts.

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Looking forward

2024 will see us continue to deliver on the above strategic objectives as we move through the 2022–2025 strategic period. The topics of sustainability and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be taken up by internal working groups as we consider the opportunities available to us and how we can continue to innovate ways of working and support for our community.

EDI will remain at the heart of all that we do, with consideration of the financial implications of the transition to open incorporated at all levels of decision making across the organisation.

Recommendations from the governance review will be considered by the Council of Trustees to deliver a refreshed approach in support of our strategic objectives.

Kate Baillie, CEO of the Biochemical Society and MD of Portland Press Ltd, announced her retirement in February 2024, and will retire on 31 December 2024. This was communicated to key stakeholders and Society members via email with a news item posted on the homepage of the Society website. The recruitment process for her successor is being overseen by the Associate Director for HR, EDI & Technology and the incoming Society Chair Professor Richard Reece.

Volunteers

Volunteers remain key to the Society effectively delivering many of its activities and community outreach programmes, as well as providing the membership for our key governance bodies. All Society board, committee and panel members are volunteers, giving their time to attend meetings and provide their subject-specific expertise to advise on Society strategy and activities. A small number of positions (6) carry an honorarium to ensure appropriate expertise and experience is available to support delivery of the organisation’s strategy and objectives.

Our extensive network of Local, Student, International and Industry Ambassadors are also volunteers, who support our work by encouraging new membership, serving as a conduit for the transfer of ideas between local molecular bioscientists and the Society, disseminating information about the Society’s activities and helping to organize local events. Our ‘train-thetrainer’ approach has proved successful in empowering volunteers to deliver a number of Society activities and has also provided opportunities for volunteers to gain experience in public engagement that has supported their own career progression. Ambassadors also strengthen relationships and collaboration between the Society and their respective institutions/companies.

Our Policy Network members volunteer their time to input into discussions related to specific policy topics via a series of short surveys, and are increasingly engaging with and attending policy events to represent us.

We are hugely grateful to all our volunteers for the time they freely give to support the Society in our endeavors.

16

GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

Corporate Status and Constitutional Documentation

The Society is a charitable company registered in England and Wales and was incorporated by guarantee on 25 November 1966. It has no share capital and the liability of each member is limited to £1.00. The governance document is the Articles of Association, which can be found on the Society’s website, on Companies House, or is available by request.

The Society’s Trustees are also Directors of the Company. Trustees pay due regard to the Charity Commission guidance on public benefit and commission annual audits of Society activities to ensure compliance.

Governance Committee Structure

The Biochemical Society delivered its mission and charitable objectives in 2023 through its members, who were represented on the Council of Trustees and its contributing subcommittees, as well as the Executive Management Committee. A structure of all related committees can be ’ found on the Society s website.

The Council of Trustees is the governing body of the Biochemical Society. It meets four times a year and addresses Society strategy and matters reserved for consideration by Directors/Trustees. Its full composition is detailed on page 22 of this report. During the period covered by this report there were 13 Trustees, as shown on page 22.

The Executive Management Committee has the remit of overseeing the implementation of the Society strategy, as set by the Council of Trustees. It meets a minimum of five times a year and met 11 times in 2023. It comprises the Chair of the Executive Management Committee, the Honorary Treasurer, the Chair of Portland Press Board, an Independent Member (post vacant since July 2023) and the Chief Executive Officer.

 Finance Committee

The Finance Committee has delegated authority to oversee financial matters on behalf of the Council of Trustees and make recommendations for action. Final authority remains with the Trustees. It meets four times a year and is comprised of the Honorary Treasurer, Chair of the Executive Management Committee, Chair of the Board of Portland Press Limited, and two Independent Members appointed from outside the Society with expertise in general financial and charity financial matters. Independent Members are appointed via an external recruitment process overseen by the Honorary Treasurer.

 Audit Committee

All audit activity is initially managed by the Audit Committee, which is chaired by an independent appointee from outside the Society membership, with demonstrable skills and experience in compliance and audit-related matters. The Honorary Treasurer

17

attends by request. The President of the Society may not attend these meetings.

In addition to the above, within 2023, the Council of Trustees also had the following subcommittees:

Elections and Appointment of Trustees

The Society is keen to encourage as wide a representation of its members as possible amongst its Trustees, as well as ensuring sufficient breadth of skill and experience. Members are invited to nominate themselves or others for consideration through announcements placed on the website and delivered directly by email, or via post if no valid email address is held. During 2023, the Society operated two nominations cycles, with the process overseen by the Nominations Panel. The panel is mindful of the particular skills of existing Trustees and Committee Members and areas of Trustee skills that might be strengthened.

Trustee Induction and Access to Training

On appointment new Trustees receive an induction pack consisting of all key Society governance documents, including the Articles of Association, the annual Accounts for the previous financial year, Terms of Reference for their Society Committee(s) and policies related to conduct and financial security. Trustees who will have specific responsibility for a Committee/Sub-Committee also receive copies of the minutes from any appropriate meetings that have taken place within at least the last 12 months.

All Trustees are required to adhere to the Code of Conduct and register any applicable interests upon the Society’s Interests Register, which is updated throughout the year and available for review upon request. This information is managed and maintained and is reviewed at the beginning of all Trustee meetings.

All Trustees are invited to attend a series of introductory sessions which comprise their induction, including a governance induction, a meeting with key Trustees and Senior Management Team (SMT) personnel related to their roles, as well as sessions on charity finance and a meeting with the President of the Society.

Statement of Trustee Responsibilities

The Trustees (who are also Directors of the Biochemical Society for the purposes of Company Law) are responsible for preparing the Trustees’ Report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable legislation and regulations.

18

Company law requires the Trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year. Under that law, the Trustees have elected to prepare financial statements in accordance with United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice). The Trustees must not approve the financial statements unless they are satisfied that they give a true and fair view of the state of affairs for the Charitable Company and of the income resources, and the application of resources, of the Charitable Company for the period.

In preparing these financial statements, the Trustees are required to:

The Trustees are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records that are sufficient to show and explain the Charitable Company’s transactions and disclose, with reasonable accuracy at any time, the financial position of the company and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the Charitable Company and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

The Trustees confirm that:

The Trustees are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the corporate and financial information included on the Charitable Company’s website. Legislation in the United Kingdom (particularly in England and Wales) governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.

Management of the Society’s Business and Activities

The Trustees have delegated the authority to manage the Society to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who reports on the performance of the Society against the strategic and operational plans approved by the Trustees. The Chief Executive is supported by other members of the SMT which, as of 31 December 2023, comprised of the CEO, Associate Director of Content and Engagement, Associate Director of Events and Marketing, Associate Director of Human Resources, EDI and Technology, Associate Director of Finance and Governance and Associate Director of Business Development and Sales. The SMT progresses the Society’s activities and strategy, and members deputize for the CEO in her absence. All Associate Directors report to the CEO.

19

Portland Press Limited

Portland Press is a trading subsidiary wholly owned by the Biochemical Society, responsible for publishing, marketing, selling and distributing the Society’s journals and other publications, as well as offering related services to third parties.

Portland Press has its own Board of Directors, on which sit three Society Trustees. The full membership of the Portland Press Board of Directors in 2023 is listed on page 22.

The Group employs three personnel responsible for Human Resources utilizing 27% of their time. The remaining 73% of their time is contracted, via Portland Press Limited, to provide HR guidance to the Microbiology Society, Society for Experimental Biology, and Applied Microbiology International.

20

Principal Risks and Uncertainties

Risk Management

In addition to overseeing the annual audit, the Audit Committee undertakes detailed reviews of the Society’s Risk Register, wherein measures to mitigate individual risk are agreed and monitored. The outcomes of these reviews are reported to the Trustees and inform their deliberations when making decisions affecting the Society.

Principal Risks

The Trustees consider the principal risks to the Society to be as follows (as at end December 2023):

Mitigating activities, both pro-active and reactive, associated with each risk are identified by the ‘Risk Owner’ within the Senior Management Team and presented to the Audit Committee for discussion. The application and efficacy of mitigations are approved by the Council of Trustees under guidance from the Audit Committee. The Trustees consider that the plans outlined within the mitigations currently listed within the Group Risk Register (including the regular updating of business and strategic plans; scrutiny of the Society’s accounts against budget; review of key performance indicators throughout the year; and close engagement with trends within the sector) will address these risks.

21

Biochemical Society Trustees

The following are Members of the Council of Trustees (Board of Trustees and Directors of the Society) or were members of the Council of Trustees for the year under review and up to the date of this report:

Julia Goodfellow Society President
Sheila Graham Society Chair and Chair, Executive Management Committee
Frank Sargent Honorary Treasurer
Derry Mercer Honorary Policy Officer
Nigel Hooper Chair, Portland Press Limited Board of Directors
Helen Watson Chair, Education, Training and Public Engagement Committee (up
to 31 December 2023)
David Smith Chair, Education, Training and Public Engagement Committee
(from 1 March 2024)
Luciane Vieira de Mello Chair, Training Theme Panel
Michelle West Honorary Meetings Secretary
Susan Campbell Local Ambassador Representative (from 20 February 2023)
Hannah Chisholm-Britt Early Career Member Representative (from 20 February 2023)
Augustin Amour Industry Representative
Lisa Chakrabarti Chair, Basic Bioscience Theme Panel
Martin Lindley Chair, Clinical and Translational Research Theme Panel (up to 13
July 2023)

Directors of Portland Press Limited

The following were Directors of Portland Press Limited for the year under review:

The following were Directors of Portland Press Limited for the year under review:
Nigel Hooper Chair, Portland Press Ltd Board of Directors
Matthew Cockerill Non-Executive Director (up to 31 December 2023)
Philip Garner Non-Executive Director (up to 31 December 2023)
Sarah Greaves Non-Executive Director
Chloe Frankish Non-Executive Director (from 1 January 2024)
Kamran Naim Non-Executive Director (from 1 January 2024)
Sheila Graham Director and Chair, Biochemical Society
Frank Sargent Director and Honorary Treasurer, Biochemical Society
Kate Baillie Director and CEO, Biochemical Society
Helen Walden Director and Chair, Publications Committee

22

Senior Management Team

Kate Baillie

CEO, Biochemical Society and Managing Director, Portland Press kate.baillie@biochemistry.org

Doug Armin

Associate Director, Finance and Governance doug.armin@biochemistry.org

Kofo Balogun

Associate Director, Human Resources, EDI and Technology kofo.balogun@biochemistry.org

Clare Curtis

Associate Director, Content and Engagement clare.curtis@biochemistry.org

Gaynor Redvers-Mutton

Associate Director, Business Development and Sales - Gaynor.Redvers Mutton@biochemistry.org

Lorraine Reese

Associate Director, Events and Marketing lorraine.reese@biochemistry.org

23

Key contacts

Bankers Coutts & Co. 440 Strand London WC2R 0QS

National Westminster Bank Plc 100 The Crescent Colchester CO4 9GN

Solicitors Bates Wells LLP 10 Queen Street Place London EC4R 1BE

Auditor Sayer Vincent 108-114 Golden Lane London EC1Y 0TL

Investment consultants Epoch Consulting 12 Smithfield Street London EC1A 9BD

Investment managers Newton Investment Management Ltd (to March 2023) 160 Queen Victoria Street London EC4V 4LA

Sarasin & Partners LLP (from April 2023) Juxon House 100 St. Paul’s Churchyard London EC4M 8BU

Ruffer LLP 80 Victoria Street London SW1E 5JL

24

Brooks Macdonald Asset Management Limited 21 Lombard Street London EC3V 9AH

Registered office Biochemical Society First Floor 10 Queen Street Place London EC4R 1BE

25

Financial review

The Group results for the year are set out in the Statement of Financial Activities from page 37.

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with Financial Reporting Standard 102 – “The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland” (FRS 102), and follow the recommendations in the Statement of Recommended Practice: Accounting and Reporting by Charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) [the Charities SORP (FRS 102) effective 1 January 2019].

Total income from Charitable Activities was £4,360,000 (2022: £4,441,000) which included income of £3,592,000 (2022: £3,760,000) from publishing activities.

Portland Press continued to operate successfully throughout 2023 to generate a surplus returnable to the Society. Journal sales revenue (including subscriptions and sales under the transitional Read & Publish model) increased by £21,000 in 2023 to £3,243,334 with £720,000 generated from Read & Publish deals which supports ‘read’ access and OA (open access) publishing.

The downward trend in publications continued across the sector in 2023 and consequently, revenue generated from per-article charges (article publishing charges/APCs) reduced by £88,000 in 2023 to £263,000 (2022: £351,000).

Conferences and events (including webinars and training days) continued to be popular and well attended throughout 2023. These activities ensured that revenue for the year from Scientific Conferences activities was £495,000 (2022: £452,000) and from Policy, Education and Professional activities was £60,000 (2022: £35,000). The events continued to attract significant sponsorship across the 2023 programme from both regular and new sponsors raising £118,000 (2022: £141,000) in revenue.

Following the review of membership data, marketing campaigns and the implementation of a new membership processing system in November 2022, revenue from membership fees increased to £194,000 (2022: £186,000).

Following the increase in interest rates throughout the year and growth within the investment portfolios, investment income in 2023 increased to £245,000 (2022: £149,000).

Total expenditure relating to Charitable Activities has increased slightly to £4,737,000 (2022: £4,652,000) but was within the operating budget.

Expenditure relating to Grants and Awards for the year was £449,000 (2022: £192,000) and the upward turn in main relates to the increase in submissions and quality of applications in 2023 compared to 2022.

Total expenditure relating to Charitable Activities accounts for a credit of £253,261 (2022: £66,637 charge) to staff employment costs that is a result of the USS Pension Scheme liability at year end. See note 20 to the accounts for further information.

The Society accounted for net gains on investments of £280,000 (2022: £889,000 loss) from the equity investments.

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Net income before other recognized gains and losses for the year was £251,000 (2022: £828,000 expenditure).

The majority of the Society’s funding comes from publishing activities (see below); other major sources stem from membership subscriptions, conference registration fees and sponsorship, totaling £886,000 (2022: £822,000) and investment income of £245,000 (2022: £149,000). The Society’s charitable expenditure, excluding Portland Press trading activities, amounted to £2,407,000 (2022: £2,233,000).

Portland Press Limited, the Society’s trading subsidiary, made a pre-tax profit for the period of £1,585,341 (2022: £1,767,338 profit). These profits will be distributed to the Society during 2024 under deed of covenant and are included in the figures stated above.

The Biochemical Society Staff Pension Scheme, a defined benefit scheme, was closed to new entrants and future accrual from March 2011. The Society currently offers staff the opportunity to be members of the Universities Superannuation Scheme, a multi-employer defined benefit scheme. In line with Pensions regulations this is the scheme in which all Society employees are initially ‘auto-enrolled’. This is summarized further in Note 20.

After accounting for actuarial losses on the defined benefit pension scheme totaling £331,000, (2022: £346,000) the Group made a net deficit of £80,000 (2022: £1,174,000 deficit) for the year, with closing reserves of £11.1 million (31 December 2022: £11.2 million).

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Reserves Policy and Going Concern

The Biochemical Society’s Reserves Policy enables management of funds to ensure an appropriate level is held to mitigate against identified risks, whilst ensuring timely and strategic use of funds to maximize available opportunities.

As such sufficient reserves are held to provide a source of funds for situations such as a change in circumstances, a sudden increase in expenses, unanticipated loss in funding, or uninsured losses, including unexpected movements in the Society’s investment portfolio. Reserves may also be used for one-time, non-recurring opportunities that build long-term capacity, such as investment in infrastructure or collaboration opportunities.

The Society plans to fund its ongoing charitable activities from its free reserves. Free reserves are the unrestricted funds not designated for other purposes and readily available in the short to medium term. For this purpose, free reserves are calculated as ‘Other Charitable Funds’ less the value of intangible assets.

The Society also holds designated reserves, referred to as ‘The Development Fund’ for the purposes of supporting the Society’s wholly owned trading subsidiary Portland Press Ltd to transition its journal titles to become fully open access by 2025. This transition to open is a core strategic commitment for the organisation, and the challenges of the external environment are such that this also presents a recognized risk to overall income. As such the designated reserve allows for additional investment to support the transition and time for such changes to be embedded and take effect.

The Trustees consider it ideal to maintain a range of free reserves between £5m and £6m in line with the above and to cover one year of anticipated operating expenditure. The reserves range is reviewed annually by the Society’s Finance Committee with a recommendation presented to the Council of Trustees for approval as part of the annual budget setting process. This policy is intended to provide a sufficient buffer without accumulating unnecessary levels of reserves.

Going Concern

The Trustees have assessed whether the use of the going concern basis is appropriate, particularly after considering the impact of open access publishing and after taking the threats to declining subscription income into account. They have reassessed the business plans, income and expenditure projections and considered the Charity’s reserves levels. Their conclusion is that there is no significant doubt about the Charity’s ability to continue operating as a going concern.

Portland Press undertook a profitability analysis for the years between 2024 and 2027 considering scenarios based on staging the transition to open access in 2025, with assumptions ranging from a best-guess outcome to a worst-case scenario. Best-guess and worst-case scenarios of the likely impacts of the transition were based on a drop in income during the 3 years (2025–2027) due to several channels of revenue either ceasing completely or being at risk of doing so. Profit is anticipated in each year, even in the most extreme scenario modelled. By April 2024, Portland Press had already received 94% of its budgeted revenue for 2024 subscription sales totaling £2.925M and forecasts to achieve budget before the end of the year.

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We remain alert to the possibility of future disruption caused by the current economic climate but note that the income-generation functions remain entirely equipped to operate at full capacity online, with remote working in place and monitoring of market conditions.

The Group currently holds significant values of cash at bank in addition to a significant level of liquid investments held as part of an investment portfolio.

The Trustees have made their assessment for a period of at least 1 year from the date of approving the financial statements and are assured that the Group and Charity has adequate resources to continue to operate for the foreseeable future.

The Charity therefore continues to adopt the going concern basis in preparing its financial statements and hence a material uncertainty does not exist.

Remuneration Policy

The Trustees, being the Non-Executive Directors of the Society, receive no direct remuneration for the duties they undertake on behalf of the Society.

All employee remuneration is benchmarked against similar positions within the sector and against comparative professional positions where possible. The Council of Trustees delegates the responsibility for setting the budget for ‘cost of living’-related increases, as well as the level of funds available for performance-related bonuses, to the Finance Committee. Responsibility for management of general staff remuneration levels, as well as the allocation of performancerelated bonuses, is delegated to the Remuneration Committee.

Investment policy

The Articles of Association give the Trustees the power to invest as necessary to support the promotion of the objects of the Society.

The Trustees reviewed the investment policy during 2021 and identified the need for a more diversified portfolio which would reduce its dependence on the performance of a single investment fund.

In 2022, new investment portfolios intended for the short to medium term were set up with Brooks Macdonald and Ruffer. The Newton investment portfolio (held for the longer term) transferred to Sarasin & Partners in April 2023.

The Society continues to engage with Epoch Consulting who assist in monitoring and reporting on the Society’s investment performance and advise on the appointment of investment managers when appropriate. Epoch provides quarterly investment performance reports and attend Finance Committee meetings annually to provide a detailed analysis of investment performance.

The investment managers were appointed not only for being skilled in generating good investment returns but who are also committed to and expert in ethical investment.

The Trustees’ expectation is that an investment manager adopts an environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria when constructing their portfolios. The investment mandate identifies

29

two categories of the expected approach to investment: the expectation of the investment manager to implement an Environmental, Social and Governance overlay (ESG) when investing and the expectation that the investment manager is a signatory to the UN Principles of Responsible Investment (UN PRI).

Whilst the most important benchmark to assess is the extent to which the portfolio has achieved its primary objectives, relative comparisons are also made. The relative performance of this element of the portfolio will be assessed against the ARC Cautious Asset Charity Index . This index incorporates portfolio performance data from over 30 leading charity investment managers encompassing more than 1,500 discretionary portfolios.

As well as benchmarking to review performance, the portfolio will be assessed for relative risk comparisons. This will be measured by volatility and maximum drawdown data.

The performance and overall suitability of the Investment Managers will be reviewed by the Finance Committee, acting on behalf of the Trustees, on an ongoing basis, with the assistance of Epoch Consulting.

Brooks Macdonald & Ruffer

The primary financial objectives relating to these portfolios are for the targeted total return (income plus capital growth) to be CPI (inflation) plus 1% per annum and for our investment assets to provide diversification, flexibility, and liquidity to cater for unforeseen changes in our situation and requirements. We wish to avoid the negative implications of selling assets at the wrong time to meet urgent funding requirements and we therefore expect to be able to access our investments within 14 days.

Given the time horizon of 3–5 years for this element of the portfolio and the higher risk investments held by the Society, the Trustees have agreed to take a cautious approach to risk regarding this portfolio. Critically, in respect of this element of the portfolio, the Finance Committee, acting on behalf of the Trustees, indicated that they would be unhappy if there was a drop of more than 10% in the value of the portfolio on a given anniversary. The Trustees understand that there is always a possibility that this amount of loss could be exceeded, which must be considered when deciding on the level of short-term reserves to be retained.

The Ruffer portfolio has underperformed against its benchmark, down 7.1% in the year, whilst the Brooks Macdonald portfolio has outperformed against the benchmark returning 6.2% in the year. The benchmark (ARC Cautious) was 5.53% and CPI +1% was 4.97% for the year.

Sarasin

The primary financial objectives relating to these portfolios are for the targeted total return (income plus capital growth) to be CPI (inflation) plus 4% per annum and for our investment assets to provide diversification, flexibility, and liquidity to cater for unforeseen changes in our situation and requirements. We wish to avoid the negative implications of selling assets at the wrong time to meet urgent funding requirements and we therefore expect to be able to access our investments within 28 days.

Given the long-term nature of this portfolio and the other lower risk investments held by the organisation, the Finance Committee, acting on behalf of the Trustees are happy to take a balanced to speculative approach to risk with the regard to this portfolio. Critically, in respect of

30

this element of the portfolio, the Trustees indicated that it would be unhappy if there was a drop of more than 25% in the value of the portfolio on a given anniversary. The Trustees understand that there is always a possibility that this amount of loss could be exceeded which must be considered when deciding on the level of short-term reserves to be retained.

The Sarasin portfolio has outperformed against its benchmark, returning 5.9% in the year since inception. The benchmark (ARC Steady Growth) was 5.04% and CPI +4% was 5.61% for the year since inception.

Auditor

Sayer Vincent were reappointed in 2023 and offer themselves for reappointment as Auditor.

Trustees’ Approval

In approving the Trustees Annual Report, the Trustees are also approving the Strategic Report in their capacity as Trustees of a charitable group.

Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow Professor Sheila Graham President Chair, Executive Management Committee Biochemical Society Biochemical Society

Date: 2 July 2024

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Independent auditor’s report to the members of The Biochemical Society

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of The Biochemical Society (the ‘parent charitable company’) and its subsidiary (the ‘group’) for the year ended 31 December 2023 which comprise the consolidated statement of financial activities, the group and parent charitable company balance sheets, the consolidated statement of cash flows and the notes to the financial statements, including a summary of significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including FRS 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

In our opinion, the financial statements:

Basis for opinion

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the group financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the group and parent charitable company in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC’s Ethical Standard, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the trustees' use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on The Biochemical Society’s ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

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Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other Information

The other information comprises the information included in the trustees’ annual report, other than the group financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. The trustees are responsible for the other information contained within the annual report. Our opinion on the group financial statements does not cover the other information, and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon. Our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the group financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the course of the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether this gives rise to a material misstatement in the group financial statements themselves. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact.

We have nothing to report in this regard.

Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion, based on the work undertaken in the course of the audit:

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In the light of the knowledge and understanding of the group and the parent charitable company and their environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the trustees’ annual report.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Companies Act 2006 and Charities Act 2011 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

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Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the statement of trustees’ responsibilities set out in the trustees’ annual report, the trustees (who are also the directors of the parent charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the group’s and the parent charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the group or the parent charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

We have been appointed auditor under the Companies Act 2006 and section 151 of the Charites Act 2011 and report in accordance with those Acts.

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance, but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud are set out below.

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Capability of the audit in detecting irregularities

In identifying and assessing risks of material misstatement in respect of irregularities, including fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations, our procedures included the following:

Because of the inherent limitations of an audit, there is a risk that we will not detect all irregularities, including those leading to a material misstatement in the financial statements or non-compliance with regulation. This risk increases the more that compliance with a law or regulation is removed from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, as we will be less likely to become aware of instances of non-compliance. The risk is also greater regarding irregularities occurring due to fraud rather than error, as fraud involves intentional concealment, forgery, collusion, omission or misrepresentation.

A further description of our responsibilities is available on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

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Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company's members as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006 and section 144 of the Charities Act 2011 and regulations made under section 154 of that Act. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company's members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company's members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

Jonathan Orchard (Senior statutory auditor)

3 July 2024

for and on behalf of Sayer Vincent LLP, Statutory Auditor 110 Golden Lane, LONDON, EC1Y 0TG

Sayer Vincent LLP is eligible to act as auditor in terms of section 1212 of the Companies Act 2006

36

The Biochemical Society

Consolidated statement of financial activities (incorporating an income and expenditure account)

For the year ended 31 December 2023

For theyear ended 31 December 2023 For theyear ended 31 December 2023
Unrestricted
Note
£'000
Income from:
2
118
3
495
3
194
3
60
3
3,592
3
19
4
224
4,702
5
15
5
10
5
303
5
336
5
1,257
5
389
5
2,017
5
4
5
308
4,639
221
7
284
-
284
(331)
(47)
Reconciliation of funds:
10,038
9,991
Investments
Total income
Expenditure on:
Donations and sponsorship
Charitable activities
Scientific Conferences
Membership fees
Policy, Education, Professional
Journals
Other
Raising funds
Net income / (expenditure) for the year
Total expenditure
Net income / (expenditure) before net gains /
(losses) on investments
Charitable activities
Membership recruitment
Membership
Grants and Awards
Scientific Conferences
Policy, Education, Professional
Net gains / (losses) on investments
Journals: Production
Journals: Distribution
Administration: Portland Press Limited
Transfers between funds
Net income / (expenditure) before other
recognised gains and losses
Actuarial gains / (losses) on defined benefit pension
schemes
Net movement in funds
Total funds brought forward
Total funds carried forward
63		 Restricted
£'000
-
-
-
-
-
-
21		 2023
Total
£'000
118
495
194
60
3,592
19
245
4,723
15
10
303
449
1,257
389
2,017
4
308
4,752
280
251
-
251
(331)
(80)
11,161
11,081
(29)		 Unrestricted
£'000
141
452
186
35
3,760
8
130		 Restricted
£'000
-
-
-
-
-
-
19		 2022
Total
£'000
141
452
186
35
3,760
8
149
4,702 21 4,712 19 4,731
15
10
303
336
1,257
389
2,017
4
308		 -
-
-
113
-
-
-
-
-		 18
3
531
110
1,175
332
2,094
5
320		 -
-
-
82
-
-		 18
3
531
192
1,175
332
2,094
5
320
4,639 113 4,588 82 4,670
221
63		 59
(92)		 (754)
124		 (135)
(63)		 (889)
61
284
-		 (33)
-		 (630)
-		 (198)
-		 (828)
-
284
(331)		 (33)
-		 (630)
(346)		 (198)
-		 (828)
(346)
(47)
10,038		 (33)
1,123		 (976)
11,014		 (198)
1,321		 (1,174)
12,335
9,991 1,090 10,038 1,123 11,161

All of the above results are derived from continuing activities. There were no other recognised gains or losses other than those stated above. Movements in funds are disclosed in Note 22 to the financial statements.

37

The Biochemical Society Balance sheet

Company no. 00892796

As at 31 December 2023

The Biochemical Society
As at 31 December 2023
Balance sheet		 The Biochemical Society
As at 31 December 2023
Balance sheet		 The Biochemical Society
As at 31 December 2023
Balance sheet		 Company no. 00892796 Company no. 00892796
2023
2022
Note
£'000
£'000
Fixed assets:
12
4
8
13
10,518
10,099
10,522
10,107
Current assets:
16
427
459
3,630
4,523
4,057
4,982
Liabilities:
17
(2,308)
(2,553)
1,749
2,429
12,271
12,536
Pension scheme provision
18
(1,190)
(1,375)
11,081
11,161
22
1,090
1,123
4
8
9,986
10,029
1
1
Total unrestricted funds
9,991
10,038
11,081
11,161
Total funds
Investments
Cash at bank and in hand
Tangible assets
The group
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
Net current assets
Total net assets
Restricted income funds
Unrestricted income funds:
General funds
Fair value reserve
Non-charitable subsidiary funds
Total assets less current liabilities
Debtors
Funds:		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
4
8
10,518
10,099
10,522
10,107
1,702
1,692
451
1,180
2,153
2,872
(405)
(444)
1,748
2,428
12,270
12,535
(1,190)
(1,375)
11,080
11,160
1,090
1,123
4
8
9,986
10,029
-
-
9,990
10,037
11,080
11,160
The charity
10,522
427
3,630		 10,107
459
4,523		 10,522
1,702
451		 10,107
1,692
1,180
4,057
(2,308)		 4,982
(2,553)		 2,153
(405)		 2,872
(444)
1,749 2,429 1,748 2,428
12,271
(1,190)		 12,536
(1,375)		 12,270
(1,190)		 12,535
(1,375)
11,081 11,161 11,080 11,160
1,090
4
9,986
1		 1,123
8
10,029
1		 1,090
4
9,986
-		 1,123
8
10,029
-
9,991 10,038 9,990 10,037
11,081 11,161 11,080 11,160

Approved by the trustees on 2 July 2024 and signed on their behalf by

Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow President

Professor Sheila Graham Chair

38

The Biochemical Society Consolidated statement of cash flows

For the year ended 31 December 2023

For the year ended 31 December 2023
Note
Net income / (expenditure) for the reporting period
(as per the statement of financial activities)
Depreciation charges
Amortisation of intangible asset
(Gains)/losses on investments
Dividends, interest and rent from investments
Decrease/(increase) in debtors
Decrease in creditors
Closed pension scheme deficit funding
Pension scheme costs charged
Pension schemes interest
Net cash provided by / (used in) operating activities
Net cash provided by / (used in) investing activities
Change in cash and cash equivalents in the year
Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year
a
Purchase of fixed assets
Proceeds from sale of investments
Purchase of investments
Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the year
Cash flows from operating activities
Cash flows from investing activities:
Dividends, interest and rents from investments		 £'000
£'000
251
6
-
(280)
(245)
32
(245)
(285)
(254)
23
(997)
245
(2)
6,979
(7,118)
104
(893)
4,523
3,630
2023		 £'000
£'000
(828)
9
2
889
(149)
(83)
(196)
(285)
67
(35)
(609)
149
(8)
46
(3,955)
(3,768)
(4,377)
8,900
4,523
2022
(997)
104
(893)
4,523		 (609)
(3,768)
(4,377)
8,900
3,630 4,523

39

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

1 Accounting policies

a) Statutory information

The Biochemical Society is a charitable company limited by guarantee and is incorporated in England and Wales.

The registered office address is First Floor, 10 Queen Street Place, London EC4R 1BE.

b) Basis of preparation

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) - (Charities SORP FRS 102), The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) and the Companies Act 2006.

These financial statements consolidate the results of the charity and its wholly-owned subsidiary Portland Press Limited on a line by line basis. Transactions and balances between the charity and its subsidiary have been eliminated from the consolidated financial statements. Balances between the two entities are disclosed in the notes of the charity's balance sheet. A separate statement of financial activities, or income and expenditure account, for the charity itself is not presented because the charity has taken advantage of the exemptions afforded by section 408 of the Companies Act 2006, A summary of the result for the year is disclosed in the notes to the accounts.

Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant accounting policy or note.

The trustees do not consider that there are any sources of estimation uncertainty at the reporting date that have a significant risk of causing a material adjustment to the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities within the next reporting period.

c) Public benefit entity

The charity meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102.

d) Going concern

The trustees consider that there are no material uncertainties about the charity's ability to continue as a going concern.

The Group is forecasting a small deficit for the 2024 financial year and currently holds in excess of £3.5m cash at bank which is in addition to a significant level of liquid investments held as an investment portfolio which had a market value in excess of £10.9m at March 2024.

Whilst the Society benefits from the gifting of profits by Portland Press Limited, enabling it to widen its reach, given the strength of its financial position, the Society does not need to rely on future profits in Portland Press to support its operations.

e) Income

Income is recognised when the charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions attached to the income have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and that the amount can be measured reliably.

Income from government and other grants, whether ‘capital’ grants or ‘revenue’ grants, is recognised when the charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions attached to the grants have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and the amount can be measured reliably and is not deferred.

Income received in advance of the provision of a specified service is deferred until the criteria for income recognition are met.

f) Donations of gifts, services and facilities

Donated professional services and donated facilities are recognised as income when the charity has control over the item or received the service, any conditions associated with the donation have been met, the receipt of economic benefit from the use by the charity of the item is probable and that economic benefit can be measured reliably. In accordance with the Charities SORP (FRS 102), volunteer time is not recognised so refer to the trustees’ annual report for more information about their contribution.

On receipt, donated gifts, professional services and donated facilities are recognised on the basis of the value of the gift to the charity which is the amount the charity would have been willing to pay to obtain services or facilities of equivalent economic benefit on the open market; a corresponding amount is then recognised in expenditure in the period of receipt.

40

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

g) Interest receivable

h) Fund accounting

Restricted funds are to be used for specific purposes as laid down by the donor. Expenditure which meets these criteria is charged to the fund.

Unrestricted funds are donations and other incoming resources received or generated for the charitable purposes.

Designated funds are unrestricted funds earmarked by the trustees for particular purposes.

Irrecoverable VAT is charged as a cost against the activity for which the expenditure was incurred.

j) Grants payable

Grants payable are made to third parties in furtherance of the charity's objects. Single or multi-year grants are accounted for when either the recipient has a reasonable expectation that they will receive a grant and the trustees have agreed to pay the grant without condition, or the recipient has a reasonable expectation that they will receive a grant and that any condition attaching to the grant is outside of the control of the charity.

Provisions for grants are made when the intention to make a grant has been communicated to the recipient but there is uncertainty about either the timing of the grant or the amount of grant payable.

k) Allocation of support costs

Support costs are those functions that assist the work of the Society but do not directly undertake charitable activities. These costs have been allocated between costs of raising funds and expenditure on charitable activities. Costs are allocated through activity-based costing using the most appropriate method e.g., staff time, transaction numbers, headcount.

Governance costs are the costs associated with the governance arrangements of the charity. These costs are associated with constitutional and statutory requirements and include any costs associated with the strategic management of the charity’s activities.

Rental charges are charged on a straight line basis over the term of the lease.

Where fixed assets have been revalued, any excess between the revalued amount and the historic cost of the asset will be shown in the Fair value reserve.

Depreciation is provided at rates calculated to write down the cost of each asset to its estimated residual value over its expected useful life. The depreciation rates in use are as follows:

41

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

1 Accounting policies (continued)

n) Intangible assets

The costs of developing the new membership fulfilment system and publishing online hosting system were capitalized as an intangible asset. These costs are being amortized by equal annual instalments over 3 years.

o) Listed investments

Investments are a form of basic financial instrument and are initially recognised at their transaction value and subsequently measured at their fair value as at the balance sheet date using the closing quoted market price. Any change in fair value will be recognised in the statement of financial activities. Investment gains and losses, whether realised or unrealised, are combined and shown in the heading “Net gains/(losses) on investments” in the statement of financial activities. The charity does not acquire put options, derivatives or other complex financial instruments.

p) Investments in subsidiaries

Investments in subsidiaries are at cost.

q) Debtors

Trade and other debtors are recognised at the settlement amount due after any trade discount offered. Prepayments are valued at the amount prepaid net of any trade discounts due.

r) Cash at bank and in hand

Cash at bank and cash in hand includes cash and short term highly liquid investments with a short maturity of three months or less from the date of acquisition or opening of the deposit or similar account.

s) Creditors and provisions

t) Financial instruments

The charity only has financial assets and financial liabilities of a kind that qualify as basic financial instruments. Basic financial instruments are initially recognised at transaction value and subsequently measured at their settlement value.

42

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

u) Pensions

The Society operates defined benefit pension provision through two Schemes, the Biochemical Society Pension Scheme and the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).

Biochemical Society Pension Fund

Biochemical Society operates a pension scheme for all qualifying employees. The assets of the Scheme are held in a separate trustee-administered fund. The Biochemical Society Staff Pension Scheme was closed to new entrants and future accrual with effect from 1st March 2011, and employees were given the opportunity to join the USS from this date.

The defined net benefit pension asset or liability in the statement of financial position comprises the total of the present value of the defined benefit obligation (using a discount rate based on high quality corporate bonds), less the fair value of plan assets out of which the obligations are to be settled directly. The net surplus or deficit is presented separately from other net assets on the statement of financial position. A net surplus is only recognized to the extent that it is recoverable by the Society and a pension asset is only recognized when rules entitle the Society to either reduced contributions in the future or a refund.

The cost of providing benefits is determined on an actuarial basis using the projected unit credit method, which attributes entitlement to benefits to the current period (to determine current service cost) and to the current and prior periods (to determine the present value of defined benefit obligations). The current service cost and costs from settlements are charged against operating surplus. Past costs are spread over the period until the benefit vests. Net interest on the net defined liability during the reporting period is included in other finance costs.

Re-measurements, comprising actuarial gains and losses and the return on the net defined benefit liability (excluding amounts included in net interest) are reported as other recognized gains and losses in the statement of financial activities.

Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS)

The Society participates in the USS. Throughout the current and preceding periods, the Scheme was a defined benefit only pension scheme until 31 March 2016 which was contracted out of the State Second Pension (S2P). The assets of the scheme are held in a separate trustee administered fund. Because of the mutual nature of the scheme, the scheme’s assets are not hypothecated to individual institutions and a scheme-wide contribution rate is set.

The Biochemical Society is therefore exposed to actuarial risks associated with other institutions’ employees and is unable to identify its share of the underlying assets and liabilities of the scheme and therefore, as required by Section 28 of FRS 102 “Employee benefits”, accounts for the scheme as if it were a defined contribution scheme. As a result, the amount charged to the income and expenditure account represents the contributions payable to the scheme in respect of the accounting period. Since the Society has entered into an agreement (the Recovery Plan that determines how each employer within the scheme will fund the overall deficit), the Society recognizes a liability for the contributions payable that arise from the agreement to the extent that they relate to the deficit and the resulting expense in the income and expenditure account.

Income from donations and legacies
Sponsorship Unrestricted
£'000
118		 £'000
-
Restricted		 2023
Total
£'000
118		 Unrestricted
£'000
141		 £'000
-
Restricted		 2022
Total
£'000
141
118 - 118 141 - 141

43

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

Scientific Conferences
Membership fees
Policy, Education, Professional
Journals
Other
Total income from charitable activities		 Unrestricted
£'000
495
194
60
3,592
19		 £'000
-
-
-
-
-
Restricted		 2023
Total
£'000
495
194
60
3,592
19		 Unrestricted
£'000
452
186
35
3,760
8		 £'000
-
-
-
-
-
Restricted		 2022
Total
£'000
452
186
35
3,760
8
4,360 - 4,360 4,441 - 4,441
Income from investments
Dividend income
Interest receivable from banks and
financial institutions		 Unrestricted
£'000
180
44		 £'000
20
1
Restricted		 2023
Total
£'000
200
45		 Unrestricted
£'000
124
6		 £'000
19
-
Restricted		 2022
Total
£'000
143
6
224 21 245 130 19 149

44

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

t year)
Raising
funds
£'000
-
15
-
-
-
-		 Charitable activities Governance
costs
£'000
165
-
-
16
8
23		 Support
costs
£'000
-
-
-
-
282
-		 2023 Total
£'000
2,059
15
10
2,355
290
23		 2022
Total
£'000
2,163
18
3
2,245
276
(35)
Membership
recruitment
£'000
-
-
10
-
-
-		 Membership
£'000
256
-
-
10
-		 Grants and
awards
£'000
57
-
-
392
-
-		 Scientific
Conferences
£'000
360
-
-
759
-
-		 Policy,
Education,
Professional
£'000
175
-
-
149
-
-		 Journal and
Books:
Production
£'000
861
967
-
-		 Journal and
Books:
Distribution
£'000
-
4
-
-		 Administration:
Portland Press
Limited
£'000
185
58
-
-
15
-
-		 10
-
-		 266
21
16		 449
-
-		 1,119
79
59		 324
37
28		 1,828
108
81		 4
-
-		 243
37
28		 212
-
(212)		 282
(282)
-		 4,752
-
-		 4,670
-
-
15 10 303 449 1,257 389 2,017 4 308 - - 4,752

45

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

5b Analysis of expenditure (prior year)

Staff costs (Note 8)
Cost of investment
Membership recruitment costs
Other costs
Other support costs
Pension schemes interest
Support costs
Governance costs
Total expenditure 2022		 Raising
funds
£'000
-
18
-
-
-
-		 Charitable activities Charitable activities Governance
costs
£'000
133
-
-
80
25
(35)		 Support
costs
£'000
-
-
-
-
251
-		 2022 Total
£'000
2,163
18
3
2,245
276
(35)
Membership
recruitment
£'000
-
-
3
-
-
-		 Membership
£'000
226
-
-
200
-
-		 Grants and
awards
£'000
-
-
-
192
-
-		 Scientific
Conferences
£'000
438
-
-
645
-
-		 Policy,
Education,
Professional
£'000
216
-
-
76
-
-		 Journal and
Books:
Production
£'000
966
-
-
985
-
-		 Journal and
Books:
Distribution
£'000
-
-
-
5
-
-		 Administration:
Portland Press
Limited
£'000
184
-
-
62
-
18
-
-		 3
-
-		 426
58
47		 192
-
-		 1,083
51
41		 292
22
18		 1,951
79
64		 5
-
-		 246
41
33		 203
(203)		 251
(251)
-		 4,670
-
-
18 3 531 192 1,175 332 2,094 5 320 - - 4,670

46

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

For the year ended 31 December 2023
6
Grants to
institutions
Grants to
individuals
Support
costs
£'000
£'000
£'000
52
208
-
15
-
-
96
-
-
19
-
-
2
-
-
184
208
-
6b
Grants to
institutions
Grants to
individuals
Support
costs
£'000
£'000
£'000
46
54
-
15
-
-
65
-
-
11
-
-
1
-
-
138
54
-
7
Net income / (expenditure) for the year
Auditor's remuneration (excluding VAT):
This is stated after charging / (crediting):
Depreciation and amortisation
Payments to current auditor - Sayer Vincent (2022 audit fees)
Foreign exchange gains or losses
Bursaries and honorarium payments
Grant making
Cost
Loss or profit on disposal of fixed assets
Grant making (prior year)
Cost
Payments to current auditor - Sayer Vincent (2023 audit fees)
Payments to current auditor - Sayer Vincent (2023 taxation services)
Royal Society of Biology
Summer Vacation Studentships
At the end of the year
Scientific Outreach
In2science UK
Summer Vacation Studentships
Scientific Outreach
Payments to previous auditor - BDO (2021 audit fees)
Under / (over) accrual for 2021 audit fees
Payments to current auditor - Sayer Vincent (2022 taxation services)
Payments to previous auditor - BDO (2021 taxation services)
Irrecoverable VAT
Royal Society of Biology
In2science UK
At the end of the year
Bursaries and honorarium payments		 Grants to
institutions
£'000
52
15
96
19
2		 Grants to
individuals
£'000
208
-
-
-
-		 Support
costs
£'000
-
-
-
-
-		 2023
£'000
260
15
96
19
2		 2022
£'000
100
15
65
11
1
184 208 - 392 192
Grants to
institutions
£'000
46
15
65
11
1		 Grants to
individuals
£'000
54
-
-
-
-		 Support
costs
£'000
-
-
-
-
-		 2022
£'000
100
15
65
11
1		 2022
£'000
11
-
13
-
32
45
4
-
3
6
(67)
138 54 - 192
2023
£'000
-
-
30
33
-
-
-
5
-
-
29

47

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

8 Analysis of staff costs, trustee remuneration and expenses, and the cost of key management personnel

Staff costs were as follows:

Staff costs were as follows:
Closed pension scheme deficit funding
Salaries and wages
Social security costs
Employer’s contribution to defined contribution pension schemes		 2023
£'000
1,796
196
67		 2022
£'000
1,623
183
357
2,059 2,163
285 285
2,344 2,448

Included in pension costs is £67,000 (2022: £357,000) in respect of the defined benefit Universities Superannuation Scheme.

The following number of employees received employee benefits (excluding employer pension costs and employer's national insurance) during the year between:

employer's national insurance) during the year between:
2023 2022
No. No.
£60,000 - £69,999 - 1
£70,000 - £79,999 3 1
£80,000 - £89,999 1 1
£90,000 - £99,999 1 1
£170,000 - £179,999 1 1

The total employee benefits (including pension contributions and employer's national insurance) of the key management personnel were £744,000 (2022: £702,000).

The charity trustees were neither paid nor received any other benefits from employment with the charity in the year (2022: £nil). No charity trustee received payment for professional or other services supplied to the charity (2022: £nil). No charity trustee (2022: 2) received payment in respect of a Guest Editor Honorarium for Essays in Biochemistry (2022: £550). In addition, 1 Trustee (2022: none) received payment in respect to a Local Ambassador Grant totalling £200.

Trustees' expenses represents the payment or reimbursement of travel and subsistence costs totalling £3,784 (2022: £2,396) incurred by 11 (2022: 11) members relating to attendance at meetings of the trustees.

48

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

9 Staff numbers

The average number of employees (head count based on number of staff employed) during the year was 43 (2022: 42).

10 Related party transactions

The Charity has one wholly owned trading subsidiary, which is incorporated in England & Wales as Portland Press Limited. All transactions between the two entities during the year have been concluded under normal market conditions.

During the year, Portland Press Limited paid the Society £1.767m (2022: £1.223m), being the amount distributable to the Society under gift aid for the year ended 31 December 2022.

At the year end, the Society was owed £1.495m (2022: £1.449m) from Portland Press Limited due from group undertakings.

Academic Support Grants were paid to the following university departments and organisations to cover time spent by Trustees on Society business:

L Vieira de Mello - University of Liverpool £nil (2022 £4,812); M Pool & N Hooper - University of Manchester £nil (2022 £9,624); S Graham - University of Glasgow £nil (2022 £4,812); M West - University of Sussex £nil (2022 £4,812); F Sargent - University of Newcastle £nil (2022 £4,812); D Mercer - Novabiotics Limited £nil (2022 £4,812); M Lindley - Loughborough University £nil (2022 £4,812); L Chakrabarti - University of Nottingham £nil (2022 £4,812); D Gruszka - University of Oxford £nil (2022 £4,812).

These grants contributed towards research activities that are in alignment with the objects of the Charity.

11 Taxation

The charity is exempt from corporation tax as all its income is charitable and is applied for charitable purposes. The charity's trading subsidiary Portland Press Limited Gift Aid available profits to the parent charity. Its charge to corporation tax in the year was:

12 Tangible fixed assets

Tangible fixed assets
At the end of the year
At the start of the year
At the end of the year
At the end of the year
At the start of the year
Charge for the year
At the start of the year
Additions in year
The group and charity
Cost or valuation
Depreciation
Net book value		 Fixtures
and fittings
£'000
267
2		 Total
£'000
267
2
269 269
259
6		 259
6
265 265
4 4
8 8

All of the above assets are used for charitable purposes.

49

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

13 Listed investments

Listed investments
Additions at cost
Disposal proceeds
Net gain / (loss) on change in fair value
Fair value at the end of the year
Fair value at the start of the year		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
10,099
7,079
7,118
3,955
(6,979)
(46)
280
(889)
10,518
10,099
10,518
10,099
The group		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
10,099
7,079
7,118
3,955
(6,979)
(46)
280
(889)
10,518
10,099
10,518
10,099
The charity
10,518 10,099 10,518 10,099
10,518 10,099 10,518 10,099

50

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

14 Subsidiary undertaking

The charity owns the whole of the issued ordinary share capital of Portland Press Limited, a company registered in England and Wales. The company number is 02453983. The registered office address is 10 Queen Street Place, London, EC4R 1BE.

The subsidiary is used for non-primary purpose trading activities. All activities have been consolidated on a line by line basis in the statement of financial activities. Available profits are distributed under Gift Aid to the parent charity.

The trustees Sheila Graham, Nigel Hooper and Frank Sargent are also directors of the subsidiary.

A summary of the results of the subsidiary is shown below:

A summary of the results of the subsidiary is shown below:
Profit / (loss) for the financial year
Profit / (loss) on ordinary activities before taxation
Retained earnings
Total retained earnings brought forward
Assets
Liabilities
Reserves
Profit / (loss) for the financial year
Distribution under Gift Aid to parent charity
Total retained earnings carried forward
Profit/(loss) on ordinary activities before interest and taxation
Exchange gains / (losses)
Gross profit/(loss)
Administrative expenses
Turnover
Cost of sales
Interest receivable and similar income
The aggregate of the assets, liabilities and reserves was:		 2023
£'000
3,641
(1,668)		 2022
£'000
3,701
(1,619)
1,973
(385)
(29)		 2,082
(385)
67
1,559
26		 1,764
4
1,585 1,768
1,585 1,768
1
1,585
(1,585)		 1
1,768
(1,768)
1 1
3,398
(3,397)		 3,559
(3,558)
1 1

Amounts owed to/from the parent undertaking are shown in note 10.

51

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

15 Parent charity

The parent charity's gross income and the results for the year are disclosed as follows:

2023 2022
£'000 £'000
Gross income 2,670 2,798
Result for the year (80) (1,102)

16 Debtors

Debtors
Trade debtors
Other debtors
Prepayments and accrued income
Amounts due from group undertakings
Social security and other taxes		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
112
106
23
33
-
-
78
101
214
219
427
459
The group		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
14
11
23
33
1,495
1,449
78
101
92
98
1,702
1,692
The charity
427 459 1,702 1,692
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
Trade creditors
Other creditors
Taxation and social security
Accruals
Deferred income (note 19)		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
71
122
101
102
218
137
239
263
1,679
1,929
2,308
2,553
The group		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
66
118
101
102
7
2
112
136
119
86
405
444
The charity
2,308 2,553 405 444

52

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

18 Provision for liabilities

Provision for liabilities comprises an obligation to fund deficit on USS pension.

Balance at the beginning of the year
(Decrease) / Increase in provision in the year
Balance at the end of the year		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
1,375
1,282
(185)
93
1,190
1,375
The group		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
1,375
1,282
(185)
93
1,190
1,375
The group		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
1,375
1,282
(185)
93
1,190
1,375
The charity		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
1,375
1,282
(185)
93
1,190
1,375
The charity
1,190 1,375 1,190 1,375

19 Deferred income

Deferred income primarily arises from journal subscription receipts received in advance, which is then unwound through the year.

through the year.
Balance at the beginning of the year
Amount released to income in the year
Amount deferred in the year
Balance at the end of the year		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
1,929
2,157
(1,929)
(2,157)
1,679
1,929
1,679
1,929
The group		 2023
2022
£'000
£'000
86
126
(86)
(126)
119
86
119
86
The charity
1,679 1,929 119 86

53

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

20 Pension scheme

The Biochemical Society operates a defined benefit pension provision through two Schemes, the Biochemical Society Staff Pension Scheme and the Universities Superannuation Scheme.

The amounts recognised in the statement of financial position are as follows:

Biochemical Staff Pension scheme (See Note 20A)
Universities Superannuation Scheme (See Note 18)
Provision for liability recognised in the statement of financial position		 2023
£'000
-
1,190		 2022
£'000
-
1,375
1,190 1,375

A. The Biochemical Staff Pension Scheme

The Biochemical Society Staff Pension Scheme provides final salary defined benefits for service up to and including 28 February 2011. The scheme is closed to new entrants and future accrual. The assets of the scheme are held in a separate trustee administered fund and subject to independent triennial actuarial valuations.

The level of benefits provided by the Scheme depends on a member’s length of service and their salary at their date of leaving the scheme.

The pension fund is subject to triennial valuations by an independent actuary. The last valuation as at 1 January 2020 showed a deficit of £2.3m and a funding level of 89%.

In conjunction with the valuation a recovery plan and schedule of contributions was agreed with the trustees of the pension fund.

The actuarial estimate is that the pension fund will be balanced by mid-2027 and the Society is paying deficit contributions of £285k each year from 2021 to 2027 with a one-off additional payment of £400k which was made during 2021.

The figures in the following disclosure were measured using the Projected Unit Method.

The pension scheme asset has not been recognised in the accounts on the basis it is irrecoverable.

The principal assumptions used to calculate the liabilities under FRS102 are set out below:

Main financial assumptions

Main financial assumptions
31-Dec-23 31-Dec-22
%pa %pa
RPI inflation 3.15 3.2
CPI inflation 2.35 2.4
Pension increases in payment (Pre 2030) 3.15 3.2
Pension increases in payment (Post 2030) 2.95 3
Discount rate for Scheme liabilities 4.7 4.9
Main demographic assumptions
31-Dec-23 31-Dec-22
Mortality
Base table 100% of 100% of
S3PxA_L S3PxA_L
Scaling table 101%/104% 101%/104%
M/F M/F
Future improvements CMI 2022 CMI 2021
Long term rate 1% pa 1% pa

54

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

Pensions continued

Scheme asset allocation:

Scheme asset allocation:
Target return funds
Bonds (including insured pensioners)
Swaps/Gilts (including cash)
Closing fair value of scheme assets		 31-Dec-23
£'000
1,386
5,221
6,751		 31-Dec-22
£'000
1,288
5,024
6,889
13,358 13,201

The scheme has no investments in the Society or in the property occupied by the company

Changes to the present value of the defined benefit obligation during the year:

Changes to the present value of the defined benefit obligation during the year:
Net benefits paid out
Closing fair value of scheme assets
Actual return on Scheme assets
Reconciliation of funded status to Statement of Financial Position:
Fair value of assets
Present value of funded benefit obligations
Funded status
Interest expense on DBO
Actuarial (gains) / losses on scheme liabilities
Net benefits paid
Closing defined benefit obligation
Changes to the fair value of scheme assets during the year:
Opening fair value of scheme assets
Interest income on scheme assets
(Loss) / Gain on scheme assets
Contributions by the employer
Opening defined benefit obligation (DBO)		 2023
£'000
12,393
593
90
(595)		 2022
£'000
18,558
359
(6,263)
(261)
12,481 12,393
2023
£'000
13,201
639
(172)
285
(595)		 2022
£'000
21,530
420
(8,773)
285
(261)
13,358 13,201
467
2023
£'000
13,358
(12,481)		 (8,353)
2022
£'000
13,201
(12,393)
877 808

The pension scheme asset has not been recognised in the accounts on the basis it is irrecoverable

Amounts recognised in Statement of Financial Activities (SOFA):

Amounts recognised in Statement of Financial Activities (SOFA):
Interest on defined benefit liability
Pension (credit) / expense recognized in the Statement of Financial Activities		 2023
£'000
(593)		 2022
£'000
(359)
(593) (359)

55

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

Pensions continued

Pensions continued
Gain / (loss) arising in the Statement of Financial Activities
Return less interest income on scheme assets
Actuarial gain / (loss) on liabilities
Irrecoverable surplus on pension scheme		 2023
£'000
(172)
(90)
(69)		 2022
£'000
(8,773)
6,263
2,164
(331) (346)

Universities Superannuation Scheme

The institution participates in Universities Superannuation Scheme. The assets of the scheme are held in a separate trustee administered fund. Because of the mutual nature of the scheme, the assets are not attributed to individual institutions and a scheme-wide contribution rate is set. The institution is therefore exposed to actuarial risks associated with other institutions’ employees and is unable to identify its share of the underlying assets and liabilities of the scheme on a consistent and reasonable basis. As required by Section 28 of FRS 102 “Employee benefits”, the institution therefore accounts for the scheme as if it were a defined contribution scheme. As a result, the amount charged to the profit and loss account represents the contributions payable to the scheme. Since the institution has entered into an agreement (the Recovery Plan) that determines how each employer within the scheme will fund the overall deficit, the institution recognises a liability for the contributions payable that arise from the agreement (to the extent that they relate to the deficit) with related expenses being recognised through the profit and loss account.

A new deficit recovery plan was put in place as part of the 2020 valuation, which requires payment of 6.2% of salaries over the period 1 April 2022 until 31 March 2024, at which point the rate will increase to 6.3%. The 2023 deficit recovery liability reflects this plan with £1,190,000 (2022: £1,375,000) being recognised in the statement of financial position.

The Society employer contributions for the year ended 31st December 2023 amounted to £319,982 (2022: £290,280). There was neither a prepayment nor an accrual at the end of the financial year in respect of these contributions. The disclosures below represent the position from the scheme’s financial statements.

The latest available complete actuarial valuation of the Retirement Income Builder is at 31 March 2020 (the valuation date), which was carried out using the projected unit method. Since the institution cannot identify its share of USS Retirement Income Builder (defined benefit) assets and liabilities, the following disclosures reflect those relevant for those assets and liabilities as a whole.

The 2020 valuation was the sixth valuation for the scheme under the scheme-specific funding regime introduced by the Pensions Act 2004, which requires schemes to have sufficient and appropriate assets to cover their technical provisions. At the valuation date, the value of the assets of the scheme was £66.5 billion and the value of the scheme’s technical provisions was £80.6 billion indicating a shortfall of £14.1 billion and a funding ratio of 83%.

Defined benefit liability numbers for the scheme have been produced using the following assumptions:

83%.
Defined benefit liability numbers for the scheme have been		 produced using the following assumptions:
2023 2022
Discount rate 4.50% 5.00%
Pensionable salary growth n/a n/a
Price inflation (CPI) 1.10% 1.10%

The main demographic assumption used relates to the mortality assumptions. These assumptions are based on analysis of the scheme's experience carried out as part of the 2020 actuarial valuation. The mortality assumptions used in these figures are as follows:

Male members’ mortality 101% of S2PMA "light" Female members’ mortality 95% of S3PFA

56

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

Pensions continued

Use of these mortality tables reasonably reflects the actual USS experience. To allow for future improvements in mortality rates the CMI 2019 projections with a smoothing parameter of 7.5, an initial addition of 0.5% p.a. and a long-term improvement rate of 1.8% pa (male) and 1.6% (female) were also adopted. The current life expectancies on retirement at age 65 are:

on retirement at age 65 are:
2023 2022
Males currently aged 65 years 24 23.9
Females currently aged 65 years 25.6 25.5
Males currently aged 45 years 26 25.9
Females currently aged 45 years 27.4 27.3

21a Analysis of group net assets between funds (current year)

Net assets at 31 December 2023
Tangible fixed assets
Provision for liabilities
Investments
Net current assets		 General
unrestricted
£'000
4
9,433
1,744
(1,190)		 £'000
-
-
-
-
Designated
funds		 Restricted
funds
£'000
-
1,085
5
-		 Total funds
£'000
4
10,518
1,749
(1,190)
9,991 - 1,090 11,081

21b Analysis of group net assets between funds (prior year)

Tangible fixed assets
Investments
Net current assets
Provision for liabilities
Net assets at 31 December 2022		 General
unrestricted
£'000
8
9,081
2,324
(1,375)		 £'000
-
-
-
-
Designated
funds		 Restricted
funds
£'000
-
1,018
105
-		 Total funds
£'000
8
10,099
2,429
(1,375)
10,038 - 1,123 11,161

57

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

Movements in funds (current year)
Total restricted funds
Fixed asset fund
Other charitable funds
Non-charitable trading funds
Total funds
Morton Memorial Lecture Fund
Harden Legacy Fund
Centenary Award Fund
Krebs Memorial Scholarship Fund
Eric Reid Fund for Methodology
Randle Lecture Fund
Synthetic Biology Fund
Unrestricted funds:
Total unrestricted funds
Restricted funds:
Keilin Memorial Lecture Fund		 £'000
61
62
184
121
380
278
8
29
At 1
January
2023		 £'000
3
3
13
6
39
16
-
-
Income &
gains		 £'000
(2)
-
(2)
(13)
(43)
(43)
(2)
(8)
Expenditure
& losses		 £'000
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Transfers		 £'000
62
65
195
114
376
251
6
21
At 31
December
2023
1,123 80 (113) - 1,090
8
10,029		 -
-		 (4)
(43)		 -
-		 4
9,986
10,037 - (47) - 9,990
1
11,161		 -
80		 -
(160)		 -
-		 1
11,081

The brought forward balance of Other Charitable Funds, now incorporates the Revaluation Reserve of £1.785m which was shown separately in the 2022 financial statements

The narrative to explain the purpose of each fund is given at the foot of the note below.

58

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

22b Movements in funds (prior year)

Movements in funds (prior year)
Total restricted funds
Fixed asset fund
Revaluation reserve
Other charitable funds
Non-charitable trading funds
Unrestricted funds:
Krebs Memorial Scholarship Fund
Total unrestricted funds
Pension reserve
Total funds
Eric Reid Fund for Methodology
Randle Lecture Fund
Restricted funds:
Keilin Memorial Lecture Fund
Synthetic Biology Fund
Morton Memorial Lecture Fund
Harden Legacy Fund
Centenary Award Fund		 £'000
65
68
208
134
458
347
12
29
At 1
January
2022		 £'000
1
1
3
1
9
4
-
-
Income &
gains		 £'000
(5)
(7)
(27)
(14)
(87)
(73)
(4)
-
Expenditure
& losses		 £'000
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Transfers		 £'000
61
62
184
121
380
278
8
29
At 31
December
2022
1,321 19 (217) - 1,123
9
2,645		 -
-		 (1)
-		 -
(860)		 8
1,785
9,641 - (975) (422) 8,244
12,296 - (976) (1,282) 10,038
1
(1,282)		 -
-		 -
-		 -
1,282		 1
-
12,336 19 (1,193) - 11,162

59

The Biochemical Society Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 December 2023

Purposes of restricted funds

Keilin Memorial Lecture Fund

The Keilin Fund was instituted in 1964 by means of an appeal to commemorate the late David Keilin and income is used to pay for the costs of the speaker in giving a lecture, generally every other year.

Morton Memorial Lecture Fund

The fund was instituted in 1978 following an appeal at which some £3,400 was received in donations. Income from the fund is used to pay for the speaker’s costs in giving a lecture biennially at a meeting of the Society and at the University of Liverpool. The lecture commemorates R.A. Morton.

Harden Legacy Fund

In his will in 1940 Sir Arthur Harden left funds to support publication of original scientific research. The income from the fund can be applied to assisting scientists with their travel and accommodation costs incurred in attendance of Harden conferences.

Centenary Award Fund

In recognition of the Society’s centenary in 2011, this fund was created through the merger of the former Jubilee Lecture and the Hopkins Memorial Lecture funds. The Centenary Award Fund facilitates an annual award to a biochemist of distinction from any part of the world, with the award winner presenting a Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins Memorial Lecture.

Krebs Memorial Scholarship Fund

The Krebs fund resulted from an appeal launched in December 1982 to commemorate the life and work of Sir Hans Krebs. Income from the fund is used to fund a postgraduate scholarship in Biochemistry or allied biomedical science, tenable at any British university. The Scholarship, awarded every year, is primarily intended to help candidates whose careers have been interrupted for non-academic reasons beyond their own control and/or who are unlikely to qualify for a grant.

Eric Reid Fund for Methodology

This fund has been renamed from the Guilford Bench Methodology Fund in memory of the late Dr Eric Reid, and was set up through funds provided by him from a trust which he co-founded in 1981. It was set up with the aim of assisting ‘non big league’ investigators in bypassing benchwork bottlenecks. The fund’s Capital is sufficient to award about eight grants each year. The fund is akin to the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Research Fund, but extends to paying for vacation help.

Randle Lecture Fund

This fund was instituted in honour of the late Professor Sir Philip Randle who was one of the world's foremost researchers into mammalian metabolism. Income from the fund is used to finance a biennial award lecture by globally selected nominated scientists on the basis of their contribution to the understanding of mammalian metabolism.

Synthetic Biology Fund

This fund has been created by the organisers to underwrite future years’ conferences.

In the opinion of the Trustees, all funds have adequate resources to fulfil their ongoing obligations.

The charity is a company limited by guarantee and has no share capital. The liability of each member in the event of winding up is limited to £1.

60