Directors of IfL (the 'company limited by guarantee') as required by Company law. The NEB has the facility to appoint up to three co-opted Board members to provide expertise in areas where the Board feels it is lacking. Joseph Lee, editor of the FE Focus supplement of the Times Educational Supplement commented: "Members cannot exert meaningful leverage on the leadership of the IfL as it stands. Yes, there is an elaborate apparatus of an advisory council and non-executive board. But a review of governance in 2009 merely resulted in adding more committee members, up to an unwieldy total of 60: that is a recipe for lip-service to special interests, not focused decision-making." Lee's opinion was expressed in 2011, when IfL was a mandatory, regulatory body. It is not a statement of fact regarding the current efficacy of governance. After government repealed regulations requiring membership of IfL, Barry Lovejoy (UCU's National Head of Further Education) criticised IfL's governance process whilst commenting on its failures by saying: "Part of the reason for these failures was its governance processes which left real decision making to a small leadership group, often ignoring what its own Advisory Council suggested". Dan Taubman, a member of the Institute for Learning's Council since inception, criticised IfL's failures when he stated: "IfL purported to be the voice of profession but IfL members didn’t really have channels to tell IfL how they felt and what they wanted". Dan Taubman (UCU Senior National Official) was a member of IfL's Transitional Council, the successor Advisory Council and a Director of IfL throughout this period through his position on IfL's Non-Executive Board (the 'small leadership group' referred to by Lovejoy). The Professional Associations Research Network (PARN), a not-for-profit research and membership organisation, publishes governance research and benchmarking data based on its work with professional associations, including a governance strategic review of IfL in 2011. The Chief Executive of PARN, Andrew Friedman, was a contributor to the BIS Review of Professionalism. Friedman believes that in creating and refining governance structures "a balance must be struck between achieving strategic direction and democratic participation of members and stakeholders." In May 2012 Friedman reported on his assessment of the effectiveness of IfL's governance structures, recommending that to be effective "the board should be smaller than the current NEB." Bea Groves, President of IfL, responded by stating that "in the interests of democracy, stakeholders must not have undue