Statement re Officer positions

Please click the links for the documents

There has been a lot of speculation around discrepancies in the election of two officers of the Birman CC committee and it is hoped this will dispel a lot of that speculation.

At the 2012 AGM the members agreed to stagger the terms of the Chair and Vice-Chair positions to ensure that the club were not in the position of having both step down at the same time. 2012 AGM Minutes

At the 2013 AGM the members were reminded on the Agenda that the positions above would be varied. This was reflected in the 2013 Minutes. 2013 AGM Agenda / 2013 AGM Minutes

At the 2014 AGM the above was implemented  2014 AGM Agenda / 2014 AGM Minutes

At the 2015 AGM it seems that it started to go wrong. The Table of Elections which Mr Porter says he was working from showed that the Chairman and Secretary term of office expired. As the Secretary is the person to keep these records correctly up to date the committee did not challenge this, assuming the Secretary was correct. This table appears not to have been updated for the 2017 and 2018 AGM elections. However the AGM Agenda correctly only noted the Secretary to be elected for 3 years. At this point the Vice-Chair was also elected for 3 years. 2015 AGM Agenda / 2015 AGM Minutes

At the 2016 AGM Mrs Kilby stood down and it is noted on the Agenda "Chairman: Mrs Anne Madden is nominated by the Committee for 1 year 2016 AGM Agenda / 2016 AGM Minutes

At the 2017 AGM Mrs Madden stood down and the AGM were notified that Mr Warrender was standing for Chair for 1 year and the members voted for this length of term and it was duly minuted. The recording is available on request, but the transcript is: Mrs Madden speaks about standing down, tells the meeting Mr Warrender is willing to stand, there is a show of hands and then Mrs Madden declares: "he wants to do it for a year which is the end of my term, for now, and he can then stand for another 3 years if necessary". These minutes were duly signed by Mr Warrender as correct at the 2018 AGM. 2017 AGM Agenda / 2017 AGM Minutes

At the 2018 AGM nothing was put to the members for either the Chair or the Secretary posts and again as the committee relied on the Secretary to ensure the records are straight, the elections for these two posts were overlooked for a reason we don't know. 2018 AGM Agenda / 2018 Draft AGM Minutes

The Club rules state the committee must consist of elected or co-opted members and as Mr Warrender and Mr Porter did not come under the criteria, they were essentially ordinary members. The committee decided that they would need a Special Meeting to address this sooner rather than later and both Mr Warrender and Mr Porter have been invited to apply to be co-opted with a view to being voted into the vacant posts for formal election at the 2019 election.

It is now not possible to go back and implement the 2012/13 changes as the Statute of Limitations UK states that a time limit of 6 years applies to all Acts. However, due to the aforementioned having taken place, this will in effect apply the intentions of the 2012/13 AGM.

Please read everything completely, download the AGM Agendas and Minutes and the Table of Committee and Officer terms that Mr Porter was working from and work your way through the appointments as per the schedule above. Note that appointments are usually in cycles of 3 years.

Additionally the Membership Secretary post needs to be elected on an annual basis and that has not been done since the 2013 AGM.

There is also the matter of one other committee member who's term expired at the 2018 AGM and again they were not put forward for re-election. That member has also been invited to standing for co-option.

Should you need any further clarification or a link to the 2017 AGM recording, please email birmancc@gmail.com. Signed copies of AGM Minutes are currently held by Mr Porter.

Should Mr Warrender or Mr Porter wish to post a reply on this page, this will be accommodated.

20th December 2018