The British Vacuum Council is a registered charity which is charged with representing, at an international level, the professional interests of scientists and engineers in Great Britain who work in fields related to vacuum. It carries out this function by acting as an umbrella body for those professional and learned societies which have members working in such field. These societies are then the institutional members of the Council. Currently, there are two institutional members, the Faraday Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics.
The Members of Council are its Officers, elected at the Annual Meeting of the Council and two representatives nominated by each institutional member.
The British Vacuum Council is the representative of Great Britain on the International Union for Vacuum Science, Technique and its Applications (IUVSTA). As such, it nominates a Councillor and Alternate Councillor for periods of three years. It also nominates representatives to each Divisional College of IUVSTA, again for periods of three years. The Councillor, Alternate and Divisional Representatives are coopted automatically as non-voting members of Council (unless they are already full members).
The Council has no individual members or corporate members.