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Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 7 Oct 2009, 12:38pm
by Karen Sutton
Jimmy The Hand wrote:
Regulator wrote:Well, Jimmy The Hand, this is a report to the membership - not to Council.

It is irrelevant whether Council has discussed it or not.

I have never known, or heard of, a company sending a commissioned report to the shareholders before it had been discussed by the board of directors.

As it was commissioned by Council it is they who report to the membership on what problems were found and how they are going to rectify them, so it is relevant that council discuss it first. Unless of course you want the report sent out to the members, however many thousand there actually are, first. I wonder how long that would take to get a consensus of what we need to do?


Ideally the report would be discussed by Council first. However it was the Members who asked for the review due to the fact that some of us felt that there were more problems than Council believed. Council agreed to this and commissioned the review. Some members do not believe that there will be impartial reporting of the results. That is why Simon has offered the report to those who are concerned. I have read the "final" report and sincerely hope that all the recommendations are followed up. I fear this may not be the case. As some of us are in possession of the recommendations we are now in a position to tell whether Council report the full facts to the membership after they have discussed it. We are also now able to ask for further reviews to take place in future if matters do not improve.

Don't forget that this "Club" belongs to its members. At least for the time being. Please ensure that if you want your club to continue that you take an interest in future moves to absorb it into a large charity where members will have no say in its future.

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 7 Oct 2009, 3:48pm
by thirdcrank
Jimmy the Hand

In common with probably the majority of the people reading this, my knowledge of the issues is exclusively from what I have read on here. You seem to be very upset by the OP but I'm not sure that your post takes things forward. I'm surprised that you seem to be implying that without the moderator's call for posts to be 'civil and respectful' you would not have restricted yourself to 'egotistical'.

An important issue has been raised by somebody who seems to be acting in good faith, even if you feel they are 'out of order'. Proper procedures are an important part of the good governance of a big organisation but they are not an end in themselves and if they are used to hide what is happening then I think many people would expect them to be ignored. If the OP is inaccurate or even deceitful, then the sooner the truth is revealed the better - it's the most effective way of silencing misplaced criticism. The main point, of course, is that if action is needed then delay rarely makes it more effective.

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 7 Oct 2009, 4:23pm
by Jimmy The Hand
Karen Sutton wrote: Ideally the report would be discussed by Council first. However it was the Members who asked for the review due to the fact that some of us felt that there were more problems than Council believed. Council agreed to this and commissioned the review. Some members do not believe that there will be impartial reporting of the results. That is why Simon has offered the report to those who are concerned. I have read the "final" report and sincerely hope that all the recommendations are followed up. I fear this may not be the case. As some of us are in possession of the recommendations we are now in a position to tell whether Council report the full facts to the membership after they have discussed it. We are also now able to ask for further reviews to take place in future if matters do not improve.


If people honestly believe that councillors are being dishonest or are likely to be economical with the truth then they should either stand for council or propose a vote of no confidence at the AGM. It's easy to chip away from the outside when things are not going the way YOU want it's much harder to change from the inside, but while your chipping away watch the whole structure doesn't collapse!

Karen Sutton wrote:Don't forget that this "Club" belongs to its members. At least for the time being. Please ensure that if you want your club to continue that you take an interest in future moves to absorb it into a large charity where members will have no say in its future.


I do take an interest in the future of MY club which is why I question some of the rash comments in this forum, like your comment that we will have no say in the running of the club if it becomes a charity.

It's a pity that while some people obviously have issues with individual councillors instead of focusing on those issues they tar all councillors with the same brush giving the impression that none of them are any good.

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 7 Oct 2009, 5:01pm
by hellymedic
I believe the computer bug that caused incorrect Membership Cards (see Twenty Inch's post) to be issued has now been fixed (or so I'm old).

Getting any improvement through NO/Arvato (people to whom Membership is contracted) is a S-L-O-W process. Some of us are trying...

Helen Vecht
London CTC Councillor

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 7 Oct 2009, 7:08pm
by Karen Sutton
Jimmy The Hand wrote:
Karen Sutton wrote: Ideally the report would be discussed by Council first. However it was the Members who asked for the review due to the fact that some of us felt that there were more problems than Council believed. Council agreed to this and commissioned the review. Some members do not believe that there will be impartial reporting of the results. That is why Simon has offered the report to those who are concerned. I have read the "final" report and sincerely hope that all the recommendations are followed up. I fear this may not be the case. As some of us are in possession of the recommendations we are now in a position to tell whether Council report the full facts to the membership after they have discussed it. We are also now able to ask for further reviews to take place in future if matters do not improve.


If people honestly believe that councillors are being dishonest or are likely to be economical with the truth then they should either stand for council or propose a vote of no confidence at the AGM. It's easy to chip away from the outside when things are not going the way YOU want it's much harder to change from the inside, but while your chipping away watch the whole structure doesn't collapse!

My response: I would love to be on Council. It would please me greatly. I tried very hard to change things from the inside during my time on Council. I was asked by David Robinson, current Chair of Council, whether I would stand again this year when nominations were being sought for my area. I did two years of my term as a National Councillor but unfortunately had to resign in March 2007 when I needed to care for my terminally ill husband. Now, as a single parent with no family to help out, I am unable to get to Council meetings on a regular basis, or undertake the other work involved. So I could not consider standing for Council at the present time. I don't try to chip away at things from the outside, I don't like members to think that Council is always acting in the best interests of the Club, so I will contribute what I know to this type of thread. I am in regular contact with Councillors and convey my views to them. That is the only way I can have any say at present.

I speak as somebody who knows first hand the views of Council on the Membership Services. I have never said that Cuncillors are not being honest. I do however believe that most of Council (and others) do not take the Membership Services problems as seriously as they should.

Karen Sutton wrote:Don't forget that this "Club" belongs to its members. At least for the time being. Please ensure that if you want your club to continue that you take an interest in future moves to absorb it into a large charity where members will have no say in its future.


Jimmy The Hand wrote:I do take an interest in the future of MY club which is why I question some of the rash comments in this forum, like your comment that we will have no say in the running of the club if it becomes a charity.


My response: It seems to me that merging the Club with the Charity will mean that Membership fees will go into the same melting pot as all the grants etc. on which CTC is now starting to depend. If the grants cease, (quite possible), and the funds from Membership have been allocated to current new schemes and initiatives, then the Club will go under.

Jimmy The Hand wrote: It's a pity that while some people obviously have issues with individual councillors instead of focusing on those issues they tar all councillors with the same brush giving the impression that none of them are any good.


My response: I do not have issues with any of the current Councillors. In fact there are some who I believe have not yet had the wool pulled over their eyes and are trying their best to ensure that the Club comes out of this in a reasonably good shape. I have been invited to the next Council meeting as an observer. I hope to make it there and even more, I hope that the Report on the Membership Services review will be discussed. If it is not then I think we can assume that the whole review was a pointless exercise.

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 7 Oct 2009, 7:12pm
by Karen Sutton
hellymedic wrote:I believe the computer bug that caused incorrect Membership Cards (see Twenty Inch's post) to be issued has now been fixed (or so I'm old).

Getting any improvement through NO/Arvato (people to whom Membership is contracted) is a S-L-O-W process. Some of us are trying...

Helen Vecht
London CTC Councillor


Thank you Helen,
I am really pleased that there are some Councillors who are continuing "chipping away from the inside", as I tried so hard to do without much obvious success. As mentioned above, I will be at the next meeting if I can find someone to be with my daughter.

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 8 Oct 2009, 12:31am
by MacBludgeon
Jimmy The Hand wrote:If people honestly believe that councillors are being dishonest or are likely to be economical with the truth then they should either stand for council or propose a vote of no confidence at the AGM. It's easy to chip away from the outside when things are not going the way YOU want it's much harder to change from the inside, but while your chipping away watch the whole structure doesn't collapse!

I do take an interest in the future of MY club which is why I question some of the rash comments in this forum, like your comment that we will have no say in the running of the club if it becomes a charity.

It's a pity that while some people obviously have issues with individual councillors instead of focusing on those issues they tar all councillors with the same brush giving the impression that none of them are any good.


Jimmy, in the general area of business I would question your loyalty to the 'need to know' ethos, I have found the lack of transparency within corporations to be a destructive force. I do acknowledge that there are specific areas it is essential to in order to maintain a competitive edge, but, IMO, it's a vastly overused tool. Where a membership organisation, or charity, are concerned there is rarely the same imperative. In fact I would deem the greatest possible/practical level of transparency to be a reasonable goal. If the aim of the council is to review this report and respond appropriately I can see no negative impact from the information being freely available to the membership. That committees have historically operated on a need to know basis is not enough reason to continue doing so.

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 8 Oct 2009, 7:23am
by Regulator
Jimmy The Hand wrote:
Regulator wrote:Well, Jimmy The Hand, this is a report to the membership - not to Council.

It is irrelevant whether Council has discussed it or not.

I have never known, or heard of, a company sending a commissioned report to the shareholders before it had been discussed by the board of directors.

As it was commissioned by Council it is they who report to the membership on what problems were found and how they are going to rectify them, so it is relevant that council discuss it first. Unless of course you want the report sent out to the members, however many thousand there actually are, first. I wonder how long that would take to get a consensus of what we need to do?



Well, Jimmy the Hand, at the Management Committee meeting the other week, when this report was discussed, the Chair of Council expressed surprise that the report had been kept private* (as those of us who were present will recall). He indicated that he didn't see there was a problem with the membership having it.



*Until some of us present reminded him that he had wanted it kept secret...

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 8 Oct 2009, 7:36am
by Simon L6
Jimmy - you're missing the main point. The Annual Report assured us that the collection of subs was in good shape. The subs are still the Club's principal income, indeed the income that members rely upon for services. You won't read the report, which is up to you, but I've not heard from one person who has read the report that the Annual Report to the AGM is vindicated by it - and, if you were at the AGM you will recall that I questioned it at the time, and you might have noticed that I abstained on the acceptance of the Annual Report in the absence of a satisfactory reply from the Director. You may also recall that I asked how many 'members' across the country were out of time on their subs. I was told 300-400. The month before (Karen will correct me if I'm wrong) 470 dropped off the Manchester roll.

Now this is a serious matter. Get over your concern about who should know (and on that score, I'm pretty clear - it was promised to us for April 2008), and get hold of the idea that the Annual Report is governed by the Companies Act. Get hold of the idea that the Annual Report is relied upon by the members. If it is misleading then the least we can expect is a formal apology.

Now, if any of the folk who have received the report from me think that it does vindicate the Annual Report, then they can say so, and I'll stand corrected. But, as I say, the universal response so far is that it's a bit of a mess.

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 8 Oct 2009, 9:08am
by Regulator
I find Jimmy the Hand's use of language interesting... lots of 'we' when referring to CTC Council. Perhaps Jimmy is a member of Council or CTC staff?

I wonder if Jimmy might like to identify himself, as the other councillors (and past councillors) on this thread have?

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 8 Oct 2009, 10:12am
by Jimmy The Hand
Karen, I didn’t aim my comments at you as an individual and I apologise if that is how they came over

Karen Sutton wrote: My response: It seems to me that merging the Club with the Charity will mean that Membership fees will go into the same melting pot as all the grants etc. on which CTC is now starting to depend. If the grants cease, (quite possible), and the funds from Membership have been allocated to current new schemes and initiatives, then the Club will go under.


Then as members we need to ensure that the constitution specifically states what membership fees can be used for i.e. they are ring fenced for a specific purpose

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 8 Oct 2009, 10:48am
by Jimmy The Hand
Regulator wrote:I find Jimmy the Hand's use of language interesting... lots of 'we' when referring to CTC Council. Perhaps Jimmy is a member of Council or CTC staff?

I wonder if Jimmy might like to identify himself, as the other councillors (and past councillors) on this thread have?


I’ve had a quick look through my posts on this subject and can only find three occasions when I used the word ‘we’ two in reply to Simon

Simon L6 wrote:......... I have a copy....... ...... You can have a copy too if you care to e-mail me on simon_legg@yahoo.co.uk . Obviously I can only post it to members
Jimmy The Hand wrote: I'm not in the legal profession but I wonder just how legal you having a copy is, and how much trust we can have in the Councillor who passed it to you
.

and


Simon L6 wrote:......... It's eye-wateringly bad. Scarily bad, given that it's as easy to lose members than it is to gain them.
Jimmy The Hand wrote: And how many members have we lost by these comments?
.

And one in reply to Karen

Karen Sutton wrote:Don't forget that this "Club" belongs to its members. At least for the time being. Please ensure that if you want your club to continue that you take an interest in future moves to absorb it into a large charity where members will have no say in its future.
.
Jimmy The Hand wrote: I do take an interest in the future of MY club which is why I question some of the rash comments in this forum, like your comment that we will have no say in the running of the club if it becomes a charity.
[/quote]

I can’t find any when I mentioned Council or Councillors, but in any case what does it matter who I am? I am a CTC member and have a right to have my say on these boards

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 8 Oct 2009, 10:59am
by Jimmy The Hand
Simon L6 wrote:.......You may also recall that I asked how many 'members' across the country were out of time on their subs. I was told 300-400. The month before (Karen will correct me if I'm wrong) 470 dropped off the Manchester roll.

Simon you and I both know that figures quoted at an AGM refer to the previous financial year therefore the 470 from Manchester will, should, appear in this years Annual Report

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 8 Oct 2009, 12:12pm
by Karen Sutton
Jimmy The Hand wrote:
Simon L6 wrote:.......You may also recall that I asked how many 'members' across the country were out of time on their subs. I was told 300-400. The month before (Karen will correct me if I'm wrong) 470 dropped off the Manchester roll.

Simon you and I both know that figures quoted at an AGM refer to the previous financial year therefore the 470 from Manchester will, should, appear in this years Annual Report


OK I will expand on this. This is actually worse than if it was the whole of Manchhester (which is a bigger area than that which I cover). I am Membership Registrar for South Manchester CTC. I was previously DA Secretary for Manchester DA (now Manchester & District CTC). When I left Manchester DA there were approximately 2500 members on that database. Around 1250-1300 of those moved across to the South Manchester CTC database when South Manchester became an independent Member Group in October 2008.
When I took over as Registrar for South Manchester in October 2008 I was sent a database for that area. I did not scrutinise the list over much at the time. The next list I received was in February 2009. The numbers on that list were similar to the previous one. Then I got the April list. (At the beginning of May). I was surprised that the number of members had dropped considerably.
I do not recall the exact figure at the moment but as I still have these lists I could check it if necessary. I looked closely at the three lists. I discovered that the October and February lists contained members whose membership had lapsed as far back as February 2007 (ie two years previously). The April 2009 list had been stripped of those members, which was why there was such a reduction in numbers. If there were so many lapsed members in such a relatively small area as ours, what is the impact on this across the entire CTC membership database?

Jimmy has said that the figures quoted in April 2009 refer to the year 1.10.07 to 30.09.08. So that means they included all the lapsed members who were deleted in April 2009. So we must assume that the figures given at the April 2009 AGM were too high, and unless membership numbers increased dramatically from 1.10.08 to 30.09.09 we will see a big drop in the numbers quoted in April 2010.

Re: CTC Membership Services

Posted: 8 Oct 2009, 2:33pm
by Jimmy The Hand
Karen Sutton wrote: …..When I took over as Registrar for South Manchester in October 2008 I was sent a database for that area. I did not scrutinise the list over much at the time. The next list I received was in February 2009. The numbers on that list were similar to the previous one. Then I got the April list. (At the beginning of May). I was surprised that the number of members had dropped considerably.
I do not recall the exact figure at the moment but as I still have these lists I could check it if necessary. I looked closely at the three lists. I discovered that the October and February lists contained members whose membership had lapsed as far back as February 2007 (ie two years previously). The April 2009 list had been stripped of those members, which was why there was such a reduction in numbers. If there were so many lapsed members in such a relatively small area as ours, what is the impact on this across the entire CTC membership database?

Jimmy has said that the figures quoted in April 2009 refer to the year 1.10.07 to 30.09.08. So that means they included all the lapsed members who were deleted in April 2009. So we must assume that the figures given at the April 2009 AGM were too high, and unless membership numbers increased dramatically from 1.10.08 to 30.09.09 we will see a big drop in the numbers quoted in April 2010.


Karen you are assuming that all areas had a large number of lapsed members, however some areas may have no lapsed members but an increase in memberships in others the lapsed/new may be equal which across the board would balance out. As with all numbers it’s how you present them!

Are you also saying that neither Manchester group have has an increase in membership since 2007? That would be a bigger cause for concern, if we can’t get new members then we do have problems

Going by Simons figure it looks like Manchester lost 200+ a year has anyone tried to find out why they didn’t renew?