@borntobequiet
There’s a difference between paying to keep up registration/accreditation with an established professional body and paying for the privilege of adhering to semi-fictitious rules made up by a lobbying body that exist mainly to further its bank balance.
There certainly is but, especially with large organisations, it's easy to get caught up in the latter. The long, long list of companies and Government bodies bears testimony to that.
I can remember when a company I worked for decided to go for ISO9000 accreditation. They employed an organisation to help achieve this.
That company went right through every department, disrupting work, insisting on training, documentation re-writes - it went on for about a year.
When a director found his staff re-writing the photocopier manual, they pulled the plug on the company and launched an investigation. The CEO of the rogue company turned out to be a good friend of another director...
In the end, they achieved accreditation by taking over another, already accredited company - but that's another story!
And don't get me started on the number of Early Years Accreditation programmes I've seen over the years - all paperwork heavy, all needing training.
Professional accreditation is a good thing, but the amount of money companies waste on unnecessary schemes to prove they're doing the right thing is shocking.
Stonewall saw their opportunity and took it.