No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

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mjr
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by mjr »

Either way, a member of an AG still isn't an ordinary member of the public, but a member of a group that's paid CTC money for the services. Supporting AG rides doesn't seem like a charitable act.
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gaz
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by gaz »

mjr wrote:Either way, a member of an AG still isn't an ordinary member of the public, but a member of a group that's paid CTC money for the services. Supporting AG rides doesn't seem like a charitable act.

There's no reason to view supporting a MG ride as a charitable act. The MGs are controlled by the Companies, the Companies are the non-charitable subsidiaries of CTC group.

I can see how these might still be viewed as a member benefit, as CTC makes funding available to MGs from member subscriptions. The "value" of the benefit when the HMRC considers eligibility for Gift Aid is presumably limited to that cost, not some imagined "entry fee" for participating in the ride.
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by AndyK »

gaz wrote:I can see how these might still be viewed as a member benefit, as CTC makes funding available to MGs from member subscriptions. The "value" of the benefit when the HMRC considers eligibility for Gift Aid is presumably limited to that cost, not some imagined "entry fee" for participating in the ride.


No - and this is a very important point. As HMRC explains here, "The value of a benefit is always the value to the recipient, not the cost to your charity..."

For Gift Aid purposes, the value of a benefit is what the member might pay to get a similar service elsewhere. What it costs the charity to provide it is irrelevant.

The value of the third party insurance is what an individual cyclist would pay to buy similar cover elsewhere, not what CTC actually pays the insurer for each member covered.

The value of "free" club rides is whatever the member would otherwise be prepared to pay to go on regular group rides with another club or group.

Now, it's down to the individual charity to do its own research to find out what such a benefit is worth to its members. Normally HMRC will take the charity's estimate of this, but if they feel that the charity is taking the mick they will ask for evidence and justification.

So, how much is it worth to me to have the opportunity to join regular group rides? Besides the CTC I ride with a local informal group (annual membership £0) and I'm a member of the local road club (£20) so I could go on their rides, but the main reason I'm a member of the road club is to support them. So the value of group riding for me is probably above zero but much less than £20. A lot of "casual" cycling groups charge a few quid annually, just to cover miscellaneous expenses (like CTC affiliation for the organisers' insurance!). If I were putting the case to HMRC I'd argue that the rides are worth less than £5 a year to each member.
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by beardy »

However the CTC does not provide the club rides for the members. The members themselves provide the club rides for themselves. All the CTC does is...........

Actually I dont think they do anything except provide organisers' liability insurance.
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by gaz »

AndyK wrote:No - and this is a very important point. As HMRC explains here, "The value of a benefit is always the value to the recipient, not the cost to your charity..."

Thanks for your correction. That web page makes for an interesting read.

It's a long time since the Charity proposals were put forward, I'd forgotten what we were told about Gift Aid but I still know where to find it.
The need to agree Gift Aid with HMRC may be a complex discussion as it is sometimes the value to the recipient that HMRC uses in the calculation rather than the costs to the charity.

I should have checked first :oops: .
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by Si »

mjr wrote:Either way, a member of an AG still isn't an ordinary member of the public, but a member of a group that's paid CTC money for the services. Supporting AG rides doesn't seem like a charitable act.


CTC rules say that a member of the public does not have to be a member of an AG to ride with it for free as many times as they want. Thus it can be said that by supporting AGs the CTC is supporting public cycling. Of course, the AG itself may impose restrictions but it does not have to. There are two AGs (well one and one that's trying to become despite the best efforts of bureaucracy) where I live. Neither charge the public to ride with them or to get involved with other cycling activities. Both are there to promote cycling.
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by Psamathe »

Si wrote:
mjr wrote:Either way, a member of an AG still isn't an ordinary member of the public, but a member of a group that's paid CTC money for the services. Supporting AG rides doesn't seem like a charitable act.


CTC rules say that a member of the public does not have to be a member of an AG to ride with it for free as many times as they want. Thus it can be said that by supporting AGs the CTC is supporting public cycling. Of course, the AG itself may impose restrictions but it does not have to. There are two AGs (well one and one that's trying to become despite the best efforts of bureaucracy) where I live. Neither charge the public to ride with them or to get involved with other cycling activities. Both are there to promote cycling.

Which logically means that MGs are discriminated against in that they are pretty restricted when it comes to allowing non-members on their rides.

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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by AndyK »

Psamathe wrote:
Si wrote:
mjr wrote:Either way, a member of an AG still isn't an ordinary member of the public, but a member of a group that's paid CTC money for the services. Supporting AG rides doesn't seem like a charitable act.


CTC rules say that a member of the public does not have to be a member of an AG to ride with it for free as many times as they want. Thus it can be said that by supporting AGs the CTC is supporting public cycling. Of course, the AG itself may impose restrictions but it does not have to. There are two AGs (well one and one that's trying to become despite the best efforts of bureaucracy) where I live. Neither charge the public to ride with them or to get involved with other cycling activities. Both are there to promote cycling.

Which logically means that MGs are discriminated against in that they are pretty restricted when it comes to allowing non-members on their rides.

Ian

But the rules don't say that.

What they used to say was that the non-member restrictions apply to both MGs and affiliates, the difference being that for MGs they are only guidelines, whereas for affiliate bodies they are mandatory and any breach of them will invalidate the organiser's liability insurance. They still sort of say that but have been garbled badly during the 2014 update.
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by CJ »

This discussion has become far too preoccupied IMHO with local cycling clubs and groups of one sort or another. The overwhelming majority of CTC members do not have any interest in local organised activities. Some of them (though not many I think) use a bike purely for transport and for very many that accounts for most of their cycling, plus the occasional leisure ride and/or cycling holiday. These rides or holidays may either be solo, or arranged informally with friends and/or family, or a holiday company. For some of the people who come on my CTC Cycling Holidays, that is the only time they ever knowingly ride with other CTC members.

I'm not saying that Member Groups and Affliated Clubs don't matter, but they don't matter anything like as much as some people think. Only about 15% of members ride with a MG. The figure for AC participation is similar, with a lot of overlap, so at least three-quarters of CTC's members will be utterly unaffected by anything CTC does with regard to local groups and clubs.

Most of CTC's staff and councillors know very little about this overwhelming majority. The only departments that have any contact with them is the membership department, when they join or renew or not and are consequently followed-up (I'd like to be fly on the wall of that department right now) and the information officers who answer their enquiries and help with their problems and thus get a pretty good feel for what kind of cycling the people who join CTC actually do. But CTC does not answer those enquiries anymore. So they will be that much less informed about what the ordinary non-group rider wants.
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by PH »

AndyK wrote:But the rules don't say that.
What they used to say was that the non-member restrictions apply to both MGs and affiliates, the difference being that for MGs they are only guidelines, whereas for affiliate bodies they are mandatory and any breach of them will invalidate the organiser's liability insurance. They still sort of say that but have been garbled badly during the 2014 update.


Please, when you say non member, be clear what it is you're referring to being a member of, CTC or an affiliated group. My local very popular affiliated club insists you're a member of it, which is free, recommends you have third party insurance and offers a way to become an affiliated CTC member.
This does put them at an advantage over a member group, which is restricted when trying to recruit new members by how much it can offer before they have to join.
I take CJs point that the vast majority of CTC members don't participate in the local groups, mine would be happy to see 15%. However I think the same could be said about touring, I don't believe more than a small minority of CTC members go cycle touring. Yet the opinion that it should go back to being a touring club is well voiced on this forum.
IMO this is the problem, we are two clubs, if it was to split into a campaigning charity and a member organisation concentrating on local activity and touring, I'd want to be a member of both. It seems to be confused and struggling to offer both under the same banner.
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by horizon »

PH wrote:IMO this is the problem, we are two clubs, if it was to split into a campaigning charity and a member organisation concentrating on local activity and touring, I'd want to be a member of both. It seems to be confused and struggling to offer both under the same banner.


Actually three clubs: charity, campaigning and rides. There's no money in campaigning, there are no members in charity and there's no charity in rides.

If I were a "corporate being" called CTC, I too would double-quick convert to a charity, organise some projects and get some grants in. I think what the CTC has done is logical, inevitable and possibly sad. This playing-out of the CTC as a touring organisation is just prolonging the misery. A very, very clever CTC could have managed the three roles but it would have made for an uncomfortable list of corporate objectives. They've plumped for survival - who are we to judge and would we not have done the same?
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by mjr »

CJ wrote:Only about 15% of members ride with a MG. The figure for AC participation is similar, with a lot of overlap, so at least three-quarters of CTC's members will be utterly unaffected by anything CTC does with regard to local groups and clubs.

Source for that, please? In the 2013 survey report in Cycle, it was 19% with CTC groups and 32% with any group, once a month or more. The largest common activity was commuting/utility riding 2+ times a week, done by 53%.
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by CJ »

PH wrote:I take CJs point that the vast majority of CTC members don't participate in the local groups, mine would be happy to see 15%. However I think the same could be said about touring, I don't believe more than a small minority of CTC members go cycle touring. Yet the opinion that it should go back to being a touring club is well voiced on this forum.

You may believe that. Successive member surveys however, during my 42 year membership, have failed to show any decline in the percentage of members who are interested in touring, i.e. between 75% and 80%. The percentage who use a bike for commuting and/or other utilitarian purposes has always been similarly high. Clearly most members do both. Only 10 to 20% use a bike for road or MTB sport, the individual percentages varying with current fashion. I guess that no sporting cyclist joins CTC without also being interested in using a bike either for travel or transport.

Until recently, CTC was consistent with how it surveyed members' cycling, always tick as many as apply from Utility, Touring, Racing, and MTB (the descriptions of the latter have varied a bit but kept the same meaning). So successive surveys were easy to compare. Latterly however, management has asked this question in different ways, salami-slicing touring into leisure rides, day-rides, longer tours, etc., etc. and restricting the number ticked. By only counting longer tours as touring, management have contrived to prove a diminution of interest in touring. But when you amalgamate the options that in previous surveys would have counted as touring there is no evidence for such a trend.

This is borne out by magazine content surveys too, where the popularity of touring articles shows no decline. It is probable that many members may presently lack the time and have too many other commitments to actually go on tour, but they aspire to do so and keep their interest alive by riding a bike to work and at weekends and by remaining a member of CTC.

My job of answering members' technical enquiries gave me a better insight into the sort of cycling they were doing than pretty much anyone else. And in my time of doing that I did not notice any significant change. Touring (in it's broadest sense) and utility ruled throughout. Enquiries with any relation to racing or sport were always rare (thank goodness because I don't care or reckon to know very much about that). The MTB boom brought an increase in related enquiries, but it was clear from their nature (e.g. how do I put a rack on this?) that our members were using these bikes to achieve a deeper love and understanding of the countryside rather than just have sex with it! And when 'road bikes' became all the rage, the problem of how to get lower gears on them mushroomed in my inbox. Our members are consistently doing more or less the same kind of thing with whatever the cycle trade is pushing at them. The trade sells bikes upon their merits as sporting equipment, but the public - and our members - mostly use them for travel and transport.
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gaz
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by gaz »

mjr wrote:Source for that, please? In the 2013 survey report in Cycle, it was 19% with CTC groups and 32% with any group, once a month or more. The largest common activity was commuting/utility riding 2+ times a week, done by 53%.

I'm not sure I'd consider the results of the membership survey to be representative of the membership.
mjr wrote:CTC could ask properly if they wanted instead of the occasional self-selected large opinion polls (SLOPs) we've seen so far.

I'm sure you'd agree :wink: .

However I'd consider CJ's 15% of members to be fair. The last time I looked at figures for my local member group (2010) around 20% were riding once in a year, falling to 11% riding at least 5 times and just 6% riding 17 times or more.
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Re: No more CTC technical officer ** NO HOAX **

Post by thirdcrank »

I presume that the attraction of associate groups is that things like child protection and equal opportunities are kept at arms length from the CTC.
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