Ken Terry's decision to resign as a council member of the British Association of Social Workers highlights an important question about the setup of the organisation.
Terry criticised BASW for deciding to put proposals for a UK college of social work to a referendum without first obtaining the majority support of the council.
But it's important to note that the vote was held in accordance with BASW's constitution.
Chief exec Hilton Dawson told me: "All of our council meetings are conducted in accordance with our well-established constitution and legal advisors were present throughout the debate on the 24 February 2010."
A simple majority (in other words, half plus one) of BASW's council members have to be present in order to take a vote in the absence of the others.
This quorum rule is used to give the council authority to take decisions without having to rely on 20 or more members being available at the same time.
BASW's council voted nine-four in favour of the referendum, one member abstained from the vote and another had to leave before it was held - therefore the vote was quorate because more than half of the council attended and a majority of those were in favour of the referendum.
However, council members have told Community Care that there is rarely, if ever, full attendance at council meetings. It begs the question, and not for the first time: why have a 21 or 22-strong council in the first place?
Indeed, if there wasn't a full turn out to such a "historic" vote as this, will there ever be?
At the annual meeting of BASW's council last November, members gave the go-ahead to reduce the number of members on the council from 24 to 16. There may now be an argument for reducing this number further still.
At one time every BASW branch had a seat on Council which added up to 40 or more which proved unwieldy. It went down to 24 and after May AGM will go down to 16. As most Council members work full time and often have to take leave to attend it is understandable when the business is non controversial some may decide not to attend (there is no system of sending substitutes). Last year when proposals to change BASW's Constitution were to be debated Council met for two days over a weekend and all but one member attended. Although the last Council meeting had the necessary Quorum the decision to go for a referendum (which is not mentioned in BASW Constitution so is really just a consultation and not binding on Council or the Annual General Meeting) was made after only a 2 hour debate.