This meeting was to have been held at Roke and the room is booked. Unfortunately, a significant number of people have indicated that they cannot attend. This includes me (I shall be in the USA on an event arranged before I became chairman) and Mary-Ann Sheehy. Lynne Hayes has been away and there is no significant treasurer's business. We are currently in a period of financial Grace (It's all going very well).

Stephen Brown has agreed to be the chair but I believe it is best if we cancel or postpone this meeting. If you disagree with this course of action please let me know by email (I shall read email in the US) with copy to Mary-Ann. If sufficient members (say 8) wish the meeting to go ahead and notify Mary-Ann by cop Friday 19th, we shall reinstate it.

What follows in this report is some statements abut the items that have arisen from previous meetings together with some relevant Annexes.

  1. Correspondence with the EBU.

    • I raised with the EBU some time ago the matters that the committee asked me to bring up. The responses were mixed but mainly supportive. In summary: The treasurer is well aware that some financial things have been less than clear in the past. There is now a clear policy of becoming more open and it is being implemented — see Annex A.
    • The VAT issue has indeed been fudged and simplicity and ease for them has been a priority — whatever the government says. Accordingly, many charges have not come down but the resulting funds will go into not raising other charges — but all will be well in the end?. They did not want to go to the effort of having to deal with what are in effect tiny sums — claimed to be a common problem for small businesses — also see Annex A. The BUMP committee has reported back and is in control. There is a subtext that the EBU is now disintermediating counties more from their relationships with clubs and is putting effort into talking to them directly. See Annex B. The shareholders meeting is a very difficult forum in which to raise issues — and deliberately so as it is a large gathering. The intention seems to be that shareholders are informed and must not “micromanage” the EBU. The subsequent correspondence over the constitution has been excellent — see below.

  2. The constitution

    There has been a good dialogue with the EBU. The main thing they were keen to see on top of what we did already was the divorcing of the disciplinary code from the constitution itself. They also confirmed a lot of wording that we got from Gloucestershire and made a number of helpful comments and supplied their model constitution. The EO bit is largely new to us. However overall there are aspects that do not work for us including the fact that we have a president. But we are broadly there and in the near future a new draft will be on the county website which will be for comment and discussion before going to the AGM for approval in the summer. They took one thing from us which will possibly become model — the divorcing of the method of collection of sub from the constitution — we have given them permission to use it.

  3. The Congress

    We have decided on a charge of £23 per person per day including the plated tea — this gives us a bit to spare to improve the quality of the tea for veggies and other minorities and include a bit more fruit. The advert is a tiny bit ambiguous (“£23 to include plated tea each day”) but we can fix that in the leaflet. We have a provisional booking at Steventon for the 27/8 June. We now urgently need an organiser and any volunteers/ideas to me as soon as possible.

  4. Affiliation

    Geoff Nicholas has done some sterling work and the position is at Annex C. I talked to Highworth who confirm that they are indeed a “phoney club” like Menagerie, essentially existing to compete in the Wessex league which they intend to continue to do. With the EBU taking over the management of some of these relationships, I believe that it is good that we are up to date. As to the position of the Alternative club in division 5 of the Wessex league, if we have a rule that we do not require affiliation for that division then that rule stands until we change it which we can when the P2P position is clearer if so minded — views to me please.

  5. County Night and OBC relations

    The proposed regular meetings have not really got off the ground properly yet and Mar 25th will be no exception. There are a number of issues which Richard Sills has properly raised. These include the position of county night non OBC members and who insures them, the staffing of the bar on county night, and training. I propose to hold a meeting with Richard and his colleagues with the treasurer when we are both back which will address these issues. In the meantime if there are strong views please get back to me.

  6. The electronic working party recommendations

    These have been discussed at several clubs and individually with supportive results. Accordingly we will work up the recommendations into changes for next year. See Annex D.

  7. Website

    I am very grateful to Alan Grunwald for taking this on — he has had a handover meeting with Richard Lonsdale. In the next few months we will work on the site to make it more useful to members. Anyone with strong views should contact Alan. I propose that we buy Richard a modest gift for all the work he has done.

  8. Officers

    This year will see a major turnover in the people occupying the offices of the committee. Anyone who is interested in taking on a new role would be very welcome and perhaps this message could get out to the clubs.

jbs
18/03/09

Annex A – email from the EBU Treasurer (extract)

As you know, Barry Capal forwarded to me a copy of your e-mail so that I could respond on the financial aspects. I'm sorry it has taken me several days to do so but it has been a rather busy week.

I think the key point to make on financials is that the EBU is not a profit-making body, so any surpluses are used at some future time for the benefit of the members, albeit not necessarily in a way directly related to the specific source of the surplus. All our financial decisions are made with that in mind.

Our actions following the November VAT changes are summarised on the website and will be reported in the next issue of English Bridge. The aim was to be practical, particularly given that the reduction was specifically stated to be a temporary measure. You may have seen in the press complaints from small businesses about the Chancellor's actions because the costs of making the changes are of the same order of magnitude whether your business turns over £1m or £1bn. With that in mind, let me try to re-state and, where appropriate, elaborate a little on the statements made on the website:

  1. The full VAT reduction was implemented straight away on Bridge Shop sales.

  2. Competition entry fees will not change immediately but entries for events later in the year will reflect the VAT reduction as far as possible - but you need to recognise that the entry fees are designed to cover the costs of each competition and make a small net contribution to EBU funds and there is a very complex cost web to unravel:-

    • not all the costs incur VAT (e.g. salaries of the EBU staff who run our competitions), so have not gone down
    • fuel duty increased, offsetting the VAT, so transport costs to get people and equipment to events have not gone down
    • advance payments to suppliers (e.g. for a venue up to a year in advance) may have incurred VAT at the old rate
    • even for future payments, not all our suppliers will pass on the VAT reductions
    • our entry fees are all set in whole numbers of pounds for everyone's convenience and many of the potential reductions are less than £1
    • when entry fees are changed from those published in the diary, there is mayhem - with some entrants paying at the diary rate and some at the new rate as published on the web-site
    • some members enter competitions several months in advance and it would be manifestly unfair on them if later entrants paid less (and an administrative nightmare if we tried to make refunds to them).

  3. Licence fees have not changed for nearly three years and were overdue for review - and, given that inflation in that time has been over 10%, the current price is clearly too low. That review is underway and to reduce prices for a few weeks until the new prices recommended by the review come into effect would not be sensible.

  4. New prices for Master Points were announced in November and will not change. This was more difficult. The VAT change amounts to less than one penny per certificate and the new price was already rounded down to the nearest whole penny and it is now in effect rounded up to the same number. So we decided not to change it, particularly as the total increase, even allowing for VAT, is still much less than inflation since the previous price was set, and the admin work for the new price had been done.

  5. The annual subscription for 2009-10, approved at the October AGM will not change. The bye laws of the EBU specify that the annual subscription is fixed at each Annual General Meeting, hence the resolution last October, so the Board has no power to change the amount. The only way it could be changed now is by calling an Extraordinary General Meeting (at significant cost to both the EBU and the Counties) to amend the bye laws so that that meeting could then approve a new annual subscription! You may also care to note that, because of allowable offsets, the effective rate of VAT on subscriptions is only about half the standard rate, so the reduction is only about half the 2.5%. This means that the reduction in VAT equates to about 22p on the (rounded) annual subscription of £18.

On the subject of the transparency of accounts, one of my first acts when I became treasurer 15 months ago was to put a management accounts summary on the website alongside the audited annual accounts of the company. The aim was to help members understand and interpret our finances better. I have now taken this a stage further, as your shareholders will see when they next receive a "treasurer's report", by separating "Laws and Ethics" and "Club Liaison" from the rest of "overheads" in the management reporting (and we had already promised to identify and report costs of the implementation of the Universal Membership Project). We also undertook to try to identify which overhead costs were directly attributable to specific EBU functions by the end of 2008 (which we have done) and report accordingly to the next shareholders meeting - and to use these to replace the subjective "management charge" that is included in the "management accounts" presentation of costs. We expect to plan and report that way for 2009-10. That will still leave a significant net "overheads" cost (mainly for staff who are not employed in support of one of the EBU's specific functions, the fees for our auditor and bank/card services and the costs of meetings of shareholders and Board). I appreciate your point that too much in "miscellaneous" is perceived as a cause for concern - but my experience is that the "solution" of loading every "profit centre" with a share of such costs is far worse; allocation may look good but diminishes control of the underlying costs. As you will have gathered from this, I'm afraid I don't do "spin" nor do I produce "sanitised costing papers". Such things are the territory of Governments (and Oppositions) and should remain so unless and until they can finally be eliminated.

All good wishes for 2009

Michael Hill

Annex B – email from the BUMP chair (extract)

The IT project plan is continuing apace and the team at Aylesbury are working on introducing and developing a system that delivers precisely what is required at a reasonable price. The key aspect that prevents us providing detail about the IT situation is the commercial considerations with existing service suppliers. As far as other aspects of the BUMP's work, we are still consulting and formulating the Pay to Play regulations and the club contract. This information will be distributed to the clubs, along with the benefits package we are also working on, as soon as possible after the June Shareholders meeting. This update will be given verbally at the Shareholders meeting in March.

I have provided an update on our business strategy plan and some aspects of the implementation of universal membership in the next issue of English Bridge including the information that we will be going in to a testing phase in the Spring with several clubs who have already volunteered.

Martin Pool deals with our county constitutions and I will forward your original email to him. We have already been working on a new constitution for Somerset so we may have already covered some of the issues that you have raised.

Sally Bugden

Annex C – Affiliation: Report from Geoff Nicholas (extract)

Sorry...I had to chase a few of the "culprits" and even now one person has not replied!

The position is as follows:

All best wishes,
Geoff

Annex D – Update on eWP recommendations
mar 09

  1. Having looked at other options and consulted, we recommend the P2P option (Option ii). This would be subject to the same capping algorithms that the EBU places on the number of times overall that one needs to pay. The overall revenue raised should be approximately cost neutral with the status quo. (Agreed)

  2. We recommend that the OBA follow the EBU in any changes of year, as and when necessary, modifying our competitions accordingly. (Changes would mainly be to dates for ladders etc.) (Agreed)

  3. We propose minor changes in the following competitions for 2008/9 onwards

    1. Beck/Harwell cup

      Ensure the Harwell date does not clash with any major national competition. (Swap this and golfprint)

    2. Congress

      Hold it as a single 2 day event with green pointed pairs on the first day and green pointed teams on the second day. (agreed) Organiser to be asked to look in detail at whether straight Swiss or some of the newer options being used elsewhere. Ensure that food suitable for all is available. (straight swiss, food in hand)

    3. National Pairs heats

      Encourage more heats to be held in Oxon, possibly including a county night heat. (strong support)

    4. Swiss pairs

      Consider having a non playing Director (NPD) (cost and decide) (Possibly)

    5. Chester cup

      In the case of two divisions, have semi-finals in which the winner of one division plays the runner up of the other, followed by a final. Divisions should always have 4 or 5 teams determined by draw. In the case of more than 10 entries have further divisions leading to more qualifiers in a subsequent knockout phase. (Agreed — details to be worked up and title for any runner up — Deva plate?).

    6. Mixed pairs

      Consider having a NPD (cost and decide). (Probably not)

    7. Oxford Times

      To become dual venue (possibly Oxford and Roke) with identical boards. Consider changing the time of year and involve the teachers more in getting entries. Confirm as level 2 conventions. (Strong support)

    8. County nights and ladders etc.

      Consider holding a heat of the County Pairs (see below) on county night (and possibly one of the National Pairs). Look at premiership algorithm in the light of other changes. (Strong support)

    9. Visiting lectures

      Consider expanding as part of education. (Support)

  4. For mens and ladies pairs. We thus recommend that in 2008/9 there should be a NPD, shared by the two competitions, and that clashes with national events should as far as possible be avoided. The extra cost of the NPD should be factored into the fee on the assumption of an 8 (respectively 10) table entry for the Ladies' (respectively Men's) pairs. If this level is not met then the events would be discontinued after next year. (Agreed)

  5. For the county pairs, we thus recommend that

    1. Each club should hold a heat, perhaps shared and perhaps by holding a county night heat sponsored by closed clubs.

    2. Heats should always follow the normal club/county procedures with no special arrangements.

    3. Pairs will be asked to indicate if they wish to opt out of the county pairs and hopefully will not be encouraged so to do. However, a player can only compete once (but can play as a non competitor in a club heat). In the event of there being 80 or more pairs entered, two semi- finals of 20 pairs each will be held as at present. Entry to the semi-final should be a reflection of the numbers taking part at each club. Reserves will make up numbers on a club basis with “ties” being resolved by percentages. As pairs pull out, the numbers will be adjusted on a “current count” basis, essentially as at present.

    4. In the event of an original total entry of 41-79 pairs, a single semi-final will be used to reduce the field to a 20 pair final. This should never have fewer than 30 pairs but apart from that should be for about half the original field save that it should contain an even number of pairs.

    5. The county pairs should be viewed as one of a number of representative competitions where actions in clubs determine the entry. (Strong support)

  6. We recommend that the Sandra Landy takes place outside Oxford, possibly at Roke, and that an element of club forwarding of names be introduced with a view to publishing the clubs involved in the results as well as the pairs. A fairly leisurely number of boards should be involved, as at present. (Support)

  7. Interclub ladder winner event. We recommend that such a proposal be looked at and worked up into something that could be tried in 2009/10. (Support)

  8. We recommend that we review the published deadlines before finalising the next prospectus so as to be more realistic. The entry list should normally be available on the web and catering will be based on the entry typically 72 hours before the competition start time. (In hand)

  9. Consistency of approach to non primary allegiance persons “representing” Oxon. We recommend that the Management Committee discusses this issue to come up with a consistent approach or a rationale for non consistency. (TBD)

  10. We recommend that

    1. The youth and education roles have separate lines of responsibility

    2. A budget be agreed with the treasurer and made available to enable the overall activities to be ramped up in this area.

    3. That some element of club involvement in the expenditure be agreed.

    4. That senior county players should expect to offer some of their time essentially free of charge to help with the education and youth activities. (Strong support)

  11. We recommend that the person taking over from RL should look to bring the OBA site into something more coherent, establish Service Levels for currency etc., and link the site better with other relevant information. (In hand)

Annex D – Report From Geoff Nicholas re President/Chester/Wessex

All competitions are on course to complete on schedule.

jbs
18/03/09