The Buck Stops Here!

Nominet Board Member Quits Elected Role

Thursday 6 July 12:00

Phil Buckingham, 65, an elected non-executive director at Nominet UK, a company limited by guarantee that manages the registry for .uk domain names, made a dramatic decision to resign from his position on the board of directors yesterday.

In a statement published on their corporate web site yesterday, Nominet has posted “Due to personal circumstances, Phil Buckingham is stepping down from the Nominet board with immediate effect. We thank Phil for his service to the company as a member-elected non-executive director and wish him well for the future.”

“Phil is approaching the end of his 3-year term and will not be taking part in this year’s director elections, which will continue as planned.”

Buckingham's resignation comes as his first three-year term on the board nears its end. He had joined the board following the 2020 Annual General Meeting (AGM). The date for the 2023 AGM is yet to be announced, but considering that the 2022 AGM was held on Thursday, October 6, 2022, it is likely that the 2023 AGM will take place around the same time later this year.

Sources who recently spoke with Buckingham have confirmed to DomainCrawls that his resignation came as a surprise. What adds to the unusualness of his decision is the fact that he had intended to participate in the upcoming 2023 Nominet board election. The election aims to select a single candidate for the Nominet Board, serving a three-year term ending sometime in late 2026.

If re-elected, Buckingham would have secured a second term on the Nominet Board. The suddenness of his resignation, coupled with the absence of any personal statement from him (his last tweet dates back to September 2020), has raised questions and sparked curiosity.

According to a source who asked not to be named, “the sudden resignation of Phil Buckingham appears to be unusual and unexpected. This is especially surprising because he had plans to run for re-election in order to secure a second term later this year.” The source revealed that Buckingham “had recently submitted his application and was in the process of undergoing screening conducted by a third-party company.”

Although there is no indication of any issues arising from the screening process, it remains a mystery why Nominet has released a statement stating that Buckingham "will not be taking part in this year's director elections" when they have yet to publish the candidate list for 2023. It seems unusual for Nominet to explicitly mention an individual as not being a candidate in an election, especially when the candidate list has not yet been made public.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Buckingham is associated with a trading entity called Dot Advice Consultancy. There appears to be a second LinkedIn profile bearing Buckingham's name, claiming that he holds the position of Nominet CEO. However, it is important to note that this claim has no basis in reality and is not accurate. Buckingham also seems to run a website with a copyright statement dating back to 2011. However, it appears that the website has not been updated for quite some time and does not even mention his role at Nominet.

According to records of the UK Companies House, Buckingham has served as a director for two companies with identical names: Dot Advice Ltd (07364985) and Dot Advice Limited (08855934). However, it seems that neither of these companies engaged in substantial trading activities. The former was dissolved through a compulsory strike-off less than four years after its incorporation, on January 14, 2014. The latter, incorporated just eight days after the dissolution of the former, remained inactive throughout its existence and was eventually dissolved by voluntary strike-off on February 11, 2020.

DomainCrawls has reached out to Phil Buckingham for comment.