Extraordinary General Meeting
20th March 2008

Motion from the committee:

“That, with effect from Tuesday 8th April 2008, session fees for club attendance be as listed below:
Full members:         Adults;   £5       Juniors and other concessions;         £3

Visitors:          Adults;            £7       Juniors and other concessions;         £5.”

EGM – Background information

Some members, who have not been with the club for a long period, may not be aware of certain aspects of the club’s finances.

In order to appreciate the need for the EGM being called by the committee and the increases in fees it is intended to bring into effect, some background facts need to be known.

The most important fact is that the club has been receiving financial support from the local authority in its various guises and in various forms for over 35 years. That financial prop has been taken away and, unless, in the longer term, we can find another public purse from which to elicit some support, we are going to have to be self –sufficient.

Historical background:
Without going into detail, the club indirectly received support through payment of coaches fees from about 1971 plus annual grants towards equipment from what was then the Community department of Dudley MBC. Later a reorganization of the departments meant Community ceased to exist and we were transferred to Youth. In 1996/7 there was a crisis in local government funding and a review was held to see where money could be saved. Naturally our support was investigated.

As a result we had a visit from a senior official and after discussion she decided that future support would be payment for hall hire. So, for some ten years we have paid no hall hire charges. Later, we opened up on Tuesdays as well as Thursdays and waited to see what reaction there would be. As there was none, we continued to operate two nights without paying hall hire charges.

Current situation:
In December, we received a letter from the school notifying us that the relevant local authority department (apparently Youth Services has, in turn, been absorbed into some other department) had cut off our funding some two years ago and that the school had born the costs itself during that period but that it could no longer afford to do so. Assuming this to be the true situation, obviously no-one thought to inform us that they were cutting our funding.

They, therefore, announced that, as from 1st April 2008, we shall have to start paying hire charges. However, they asked for a meeting to discuss the situation and have expressed a willingness to phase the charges in over a period of time.

Nevertheless, whatever figure is agreed on, in the short term, it is an increased cost that we cannot afford at our current level of fees. Obviously hall hire is one of the largest outlays of any club and we have been fortunate that we have, as a result of not having to pay it, been one of the cheapest clubs in the area – and probably in the country. Many of you will have been very pleasantly surprised, when you joined the club, at how cheap it was.

Therefore, the fees will have to increase in order to meet the new level of outgoings. We cannot wait until the next AGM to do that. We need to be in a position to meet, at least some of the additional expenses, immediately they are incurred.  However, increasing the session fee is only the first step. Annual subscriptions will also have to rise. As virtually everyone has paid annual membership up to 31st August, those cannot be changed until the end of the financial year. When we have a better idea of what the final costs are going to be, we shall be in a better position to fix the new annual fee ready to take effect from 1st September 2008. Another EGM will be necessary before 31st August to do that, since the AGM is held after the end of the financial year. Note that, in the past, that has not been a problem as we have always been able to increase session fees with immediate effect and prepare for an annual fee increase at the beginning of the financial year following the AGM.