ECF Council Meeting 12 April 2014

[Matthew Carr]

Keep up the updates, good work so far.

[John Philpott]

Sean Hewitt wrote

The result of the board motion to appoint Andrew Paulson as ECU proxy

For : 79
Against : 153
Abstentions : 30

Sean just beat me to it: this sensibly went straight to a card vote.

To my relief the 2012/13 accounts were approved, subject to any fine tuning arising from the audit. Malcolm Pein commented that the most striking feature of the picture presented by the accounts was the success of the membership scheme.

[John Philpott]

Sean Hewitt wrote

A quick headcount shows about 50 are here. There were a lot of abstentions on Andrew Leadbetter's motion.

I make it 47 Council members in the room plus four guests.

[Matthew Carr]

Sean Hewitt wrote

A quick headcount shows about 50 are here. There were a lot of abstentions on Andrew Leadbetter's motion.

I make it 47 Council members in the room plus four guests.

How did the proposal go though. Did it win, lose or draw?

[Michael Farthing]

It's been given earlier in the thread Matthew

[John Philpott]

The International Director's proposal to be allowed to use £5,500 out of the expected surplus for 2013/14 to make good the shortfall in Olympiad funding indicated by the forecast was carried by 28 to 8 on a show of hands. Hopefully this will enable England to prepare and send its strongest teams for both the Open and Women's events.

[Sean Hewitt]

Membership fees left unchanged.

[Mick Norris]

The International Director's proposal to be allowed to use £5,500 out of the expected surplus for 2013/14 to make good the shortfall in Olympiad funding indicated by the forecast was carried by 28 to 8 on a show of hands. Hopefully this will enable England to prepare and send its strongest teams for both the Open and Women's events.

Good news on the Women's side if it turns out that way

Would like to see Senior teams be given high priority, though, as they might be more competitive at full strength

[Sean Hewitt]

Hastings proposal on internal club fees lost 9 votes to 29 on a hand vote.

[John Philpott]

Game Fee for 2014/15 was set by the median vote approach at £2 (9 for £1, 167 for £2, 74 for £2.25, 6 for £2.40 and 1 for £2.50)

The establishment of a Charitable Incorporated Organisation to be called "The Chess Trust" was approved with one vote against. We have now switched into BCF code.

[Mick Norris]

So no changes to game fee, pay to play or membership fees

That saves a lot of explaining

[John Philpott]

The BCF meeting is over. 3 years's worth of accounts were approved. There were some modifications to the Charity-related proposals on the agenda. The original proposal had been to extend the PIF trust deed for a further 21 years. The Board in the morning had considered that a one year extension was more appropriate: Council decided on a compromise of 2 years. The motion to transfer all but £1,000 of the PIF to The Chess Trust was not put to the meeting: the Board had concluded that a period of consultation was appropriate and will bring proposals to the AGM in October.

[Carl Hibbard]

A nice job on all fronts then John.

[John Philpott]

The end of the BCF meeting simply meant the resumption of the ECF meeting. However, the rest of the agenda has been gone through without a great deal to note, and we are onto any other business with every sign of an early finish.

[John Philpott]

The ECF meeting closed at 17.38 following a vote of thanks to Mike Gunn for coming out of retirement to chair a potentially difficult meeting that passed off rather well.