UKC

The round of Area Meetings starts next week with the Yorkshire meeting taking place on Monday and the Peak meet on Tuesday. Some of the meetings can be attended online. Details of the meetings here:

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/upcoming-bmc-area-meetings

Thought it would be useful to collate thoughts on what questions people are thinking of asking their Area Reps following  last weeks surprise restructuring. These questions can be escalated to Members Council and then the Board and this week’s BMC Statement. It might be useful to forward questions to your Area Chair so they can prep the reps in advance.

These are 3 key questions I’ll be asking:

1. The BMC AGM took place on 17th June with no reports of financial problems yet only 20 days later all of the access, marketing and communications staff were issued with ‘at risk of redundancy’ notices.  Why weren’t the financial problems disclosed at the AGM?

2. At GB Climbing a few examples of significant financial overspends and safeguarding issues have come to light. There is also talk of the Climbing and Competitions Group which oversees GB Climbing being kept in the dark and not consulted on decision making. A report reviewing the CCPG was recently prepared and so far only been seen by the Board which is reportedly highly critical of the running of GB Climbing. When will it be released to Members Council? 

3. A figure for the cost of GB climbing less income and grants was provided in previous annual reports but not in the latest one for 2022. Why wasn’t that figure disclosed this time? what is it? and what costs are included to arrive at that figure?

In reply to UKB Shark:

There's going to be a temptation here for people to stand up and have a 10 minute rant with a brief unanswerable question at the end. That's a waste of time and not helpful to anyone. Try to condense it down. What are you actually asking and what do you want to hear? If you want answers, as we all do, you're going to have to make them do the talking, not just cover them in froth and spittle.

1. There's no answer they can give to this that will make you happier. Don't bother asking this 

2. Just ask for the numbers. Straight up, how much did it bring in and spend. That's all you want to hear.

3. See 2.

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

4. Who the hell thought 20k new members was going to happen?

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

I kind of agree as there are facts to be sought but the level of criticism/dissatisfaction/anger will also be relayed back ie how much members care. 1 minute rants should suffice

In reply to UKB Shark:

Please keep it short. If I do attend it'll be to listen to what the BMC has to say for itself. I'm hoping they can read the room well enough to know already that we're pissed off. If it turns into a replay of an extended version of the threads on here, which they will be reading anyway, delivered by people who love the sound of their own voice I'm out.

In reply to UKB Shark:

5. What's this ratho £90k everyone's talking about?

(Maybe someone here can answer that)

In reply to UKB Shark:

Is there a cap on the BMC's funding of GB Climbing or is it expected to pick up any shortfall between expenditure and grant funding?

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

Prior to the meetings the BMC needs to release more info, the regions can then add this info into an opening statement, or set it as an early item in the agenda. It's going to come up regardless, so any competent management chain should be fully prepared to address from the start. 

In reply to ExiledScot:

Gotta stop you there...

In reply to UKB Shark:

6. Are members allowed to see the minutes of the June AGM - when will these be published?

7. Has the CFO resigned? (I saw this mentioned in a 2nd hand Facebook message, but the BMC statement on restructuring made no mention of this.

8. What's the current status of the members 3rd party liability insurance - is this still in place?

9. Can we see the queue of IT fixes and enhancements planned? I'm aware that the Travel Insurance renewals is out of action and due fixed by 24 July. There seems to be a lack of support for RAD updates and fixes in the meantime (I've raised requests for updates and had no response). Could we see some kind of a plan?

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

That got answered on one of the recent threads. Apparently, putting on the World Cup comp at Ratho cost a bundle. The net loss was 90k. The justification seemed to be that it was hoped the comp would be the catalyst that sealed a very lucrative sponsorship deal that would cover the lost and more. Given we’ve not seen any sponsorship deal materialise it obviously didn’t pan out…

Edit: overspend replaced with net loss

In reply to JLS:

I didn't see it covered beyond people saying just that. I.e. there was an overspend and it was meant to lead to something. But that's all the detail I can find, and it sounded as if loads of people are more familiar.

In reply to JLS:

More wishful thinking, aka the growth in membership numbers!

In reply to UKB Shark:

I'd hope people really think hard about questioning (what can and is being done) in a  constructive manner to help resolve the current issues. In particular the financial difficulties and several problems under the GB climbing remit (including the CPPG report not being released to Council) are very obvious and serious. Much of this was obvious before the AGM as well  (last year's unexpectedly large deficit is in the AGM information pack;  parental and athlete issues around GB Climbing were on social media and beyond; and David Brown and I in the Peak were not the only ones raising concerns about membership targets for nearly a year now).

Some extra speculation and blame (and told you so's) may well be inevitable given the poor BMC communication (not timely, nor well written, nor as transparent as I think it should be) and that has added to inevitable spin against the organisation from certain quarters.

Council, including local area reps, have certainly been working hard on trying to assess the situations and recommend action (a large majority favouring a 'no blame' approach) for several months (as part of their required governance function in the BMC).

It's pointless asking about things that Council know are obviously not true.

On some specifics:

Council were told, following assessment by BMC safeguarding, there are no safeguarding issues (seemed odd to a few of us with experience in this area but we can never see full details) ...  but there certainly are issues and if they are serious welfare issues (which they must be) there needs to be clear action.

A wide area of redundancy under unexpected financial constraints is standard organisational practice but most (non Board members) on Council will have realised that would impact ACES for the first time following Dave's Facebook post. As a ex senior trade unionist I warned that 'course corrections' means likely redundancy (and the disruptive processes that go with it, and sadly sometimes unintended consequences). My personnal position remains that there is no role the membership can afford to lose from the core team in ACES (speculation around two posts going, on other threads, related to areas linked to internal BMC charities, so their work won't stop). It's also near impossible to cut ACES resources now given Dave is off work for some time and others will be picking that ( and more) up.  That's aside from the furore ACES core role removal would create in the membership that might dwarf Climb Britain. Talk of 4 roles in ACES going is in my opinion highly irresponsible bs.

I would urge members to question, to ask their representatives to hold the Board and through them the Senior Leadership to account. After extensive volunteering I stood for election because my prediction 2 years ago was more bumps in the road and I wanted to help: as I care deeply about the BMC, its staff and it's work, its internal charities and the army of volunteers.

In reply to Offwidth:

Do you mean there's no point asking the same question to the same team a 2nd time, when it's been answered once and you know the answer provided is incorrect?

I think you're saying that there must be serious welfare issues even though BMC Safeguarding have assessed and advised that there aren't?

So one could either question the effectiveness of the BMC Safeguarding assessment, or provide more evidence more formally of why there are issues that need a more transparent response, or escalate the concerns over the heads of the organisation (to the police?). Are there parents / coaches / athletes making formal complaints which are so far confidential?

In reply to UKB Shark:

I know it's tempting to keep hammering on about the money, however it will not result in the current BMC management team changing its mind. 

The fundamental issue is that the BMC is incapable of achieving the right balance between amateur mountaineering/climbing (i.e. a club) and quasi- professional competition climbing. This was predicted when the BMC re-organised and became more corporate to take a lead role in GB competition climbing. The two roles are completely incompatible. 

Probably the way forward is to split organisation into the BMC and "Indoor Wall Climbing plc with separate funding streams and management oversight.

In reply to biggianthead:

I don’t know. There was a u-turn following the outcry following the Climb Britain rebrand announcement. Perhaps a third member of the access team can be spared the chop. 

In reply to UKB Shark:

Another question: what is happening with BMC travel insurance? 

I have used BMC's insurance for years. The policies were well-tailored to typical climbing activities and the premiums seem reasonable (perhaps not always the cheapest, but insurance is an area where cheapest may not be best). Until recently, when they settled a small claim for a damaged camera very quickly, I had never had reason to claim, but when friend had to be brought back from Everest with a broken leg they seemed to handle it effectively and efficiently. As far as I am concerned they are a trusted brand.

It seems that with the insurer they are currently directing us to we must put together our own package from a list of activities which includes cheerleading and alligator wrestling. This does not fill me with confidence, and it is likely that I will be looking elsewhere for travel insurance. As this is one of the areas where the BMC makes a profit this seems shortsighted.

In reply to UKB Shark:

I'll probably see you on Tuesday in Bamford then?

My question is will anyone at the local area meetings have any idea of the answers to these questions? I was at Stoney a few saturdays back with Andy Reeves - Peak Area Chair - we were re arranging insitu lower offs because of ash dieback, chopping spikey bushes back at the top, and so on. Andy did a great job of organising the work party, getting some spare steel krabs and cable strops for lower offs, bringing cake to feed us and so on - but will he have any more idea on these BMC head office issues than the rest of us? Is there likely to be someone at the area meetings who will have that insight?

In reply to Si Witcher:

Not quite.

Councillors can't assess the 'correctness' of any safeguarding decision  (based largely on confidential information) and I'd personally always recommend we trust the professionalism and expertise of the BMC safeguarding team. We haven’t been told yet if the incidents were assessed as constituting serious welfare issues, but questions have been asked by parents and Councillors (after we were told they were not safeguarding issues, including at the AGM). However, knowing some clear facts about some incidents, it's certain some must, at least, constitute serious welfare issues.

I'd hope any parent who's child faced legal breaches in an organisation would go to the police, irrespective of any internal organisational complaint procedure. History in other sports has shown using internal organisational process to deal with illegality doesn’t help anyone.

In reply to Offwidth:

Who has said 4? I’ve said 3. 2 have already gone. A Property guy Phil? has left and Inigo for hillwalking has not had his contract renewed. Dave Turnbull in his FB post said there’s one more scalp d sought out of the 5 left. That’s Dave himself Cath Flitcroft, Jon Fullwood and the 2 guys for Wales. That makes 7 reduced to 4 and as you say Dave will be off work for some time.

In reply to TobyA:

All area meetings are supposed to have a Director present (last minute apologies aside). I intend to be there (and attended the AGM). I haven't spoken to Sean or Sam yet, but as area rep, Sean has been extensively involved in recent Council debates (exemplary for a newish Councillor).

In reply to TobyA:

Thanks for the kind words Toby, and for your hard work at Stoney!

Direct answer to this: no, I am not privy to any information about this other than what I've read on UKC and UKB in the past week. There should be two Officers present on Tuesday, both access staff though, so I'm not sure how fair it is to ask pressing questions of them when they presumably were not part of making the decision to put themselves under risk of redundancy! I'm am asking if another representative can be present to answer questions on this, at least via zoom.

Edit: obviously took me far too long to type my reply - Offwidth kind of beat me to it with most of the information!

In reply to UKB Shark:

Firstly, not everything is about you and secondly the key sensitive issue in ACES in any restructure, at least for most responsible members, is any formal removal of work roles (as yet zero) or reduction of workload (very possible, but nothing is clear yet). You should know full well naming people instead of roles (and numbers that are not FTE) is poor form.  I'd add, on roles, Mend our Mountains work can't end, neither can crucial work on BMC land or property as the part funding from the respective charities isn't controlled from the BMC.

In reply to Howard J:

Council had an email. I'm hoping there will be a members update very soon. All I can say from what I know is it''s unfortunate timing and staff are working very hard on it as you would expect.

In reply to Offwidth:

You specifically replied to me so reasonably checking that you didn’t think I’d said 4 were going but anyway answer the question - who is the so called “irresponsible bullshitter” who said 4 were going. I haven’t seen anyone cite that figure. 

In reply to UKB Shark:

You started the post. I gave my specific views as a member representative whilst supporting the general idea of thinking about questions.

Maybe you need a stickie on your fridge saying "stop making speculatative assumptions".  '

'Frank' jokingly suggested the whole team was going (as a strong ACES supporter), others communicate on other social media or even elsewhere.

In reply to UKB Shark:

Good point.

In reply to Offwidth:

In reply to Offwidth:

Anything else you want to get off your chest? 

In reply to UKB Shark:

Yes!

Please explain why you think the unannounced departures you claim in those two roles indicate that the current roles are ending,, ie. if they are going, that they are not at least partly or wholly being replaced? I certainly don't know that and I sit on Council. As I said, I know quite a lot of ongoing work in those areas absolutely has to happen,  and given some BMC spending in the roles is from the related internal charities whos funds seem healthy. Why are you risking being seen as exaggerating the scale of the problem and potentially negatively impacting staff you name? Is the news of redundancy notices in ACES not serious enough?

In reply to Offwidth:

If they are being made redundant, then surely they can't be replaced as it's the role that is no longer required and not the person.

In reply to Offwidth:

Because in a cost cutting exercise to meet an annual budget it is highly unlikely that re-hiring will happen at least in that timescale. That much seems obvious. It certainly wasn’t mentioned in the BMC statement that re-hiring is on the cards.

More than happy to have that refuted. No one has yet on or off line. In the meantime the Access team have gone down from 7 to 5 and in Dave Turnbull’s words another scalp is being sought.

Why are you playing things down? 
 

In reply to FactorXXX:

To my knowledge the two that have recently gone weren’t redundancies. 

In reply to UKB Shark:

They left on their own accord to go to another job, etc?

In reply to FactorXXX:

The Property guy I don’t know the circumstances though understand it wasn’t redundancy, the Hillwalking rep apparently didn’t have their contract renewed as stated above.

The message I want to make clear is that the department is intended to go down from 7 to 4  although the Board might then legitimately claim there has ‘only’ been one redundancy which to my mind would only be a third of the truth.

In reply to FactorXXX:

^^This.

Althogh there isn't a minimum period of time before which recruitment into the same or similar post can't take place, an employer needs to be able to demonstrate that the economic conditions that led to the redundancy have changed (In this case I suppose a sharp increase in membership numbers, if it is to avoid scrutiny from the solicitors of the person being made redundant...... Redundancies are always difficult, and given there are several posts on this and other threads questioning the overall competence of BMC management, getting something like a redundancy event wrong would be, shall we say, not the best look.

In reply to Ian W:

Unless the person has been in continuous employment for less than 24 months in which case the only grounds to bring a claim of unfair dismissal is on equality/discrimination grounds.

In reply to J72:

Yes that's true. Still wouldn't reflect well on the competency of the SLT......

In reply to UKB Shark:

It seems to me that the BMC is now torn between two quite separate aims and that the organisation hasn't figured out a happy way to balance the two.

On one hand we have the comp side which is full of QUANTIFIABLE things, such as competition costs, the number of competitors and wins at events.  This is the kind of stuff you would expect any management team to get a handle on.

On the other hand, we have the original core brief of managing access and conservation whose benefits are largely UNQUANTIFIABLE.  They cost money but won't really be appreciated by non-mountaineering types.

I feel this fundamental difference in the nature of the activities isn't going to sit well within a single organisation with a common source of funding.   The half with unquantifiable benefits is always going to be under pressure.  I think the BMC needs to split into two sepatately funded organisations.   For all of us, whether direct members or members of affilated clubs, it needs to be clear where our subs are going.

In reply to Offwidth:

As a member who believes that the staff should be well treated I would suggest that if speculation were to be harmful to the staff that the board should have done a better job of informing the membership of what is going on:

Faster

More open

In plain English

The board's statement achieved none of this.

Generally I would hope that the board is taking the presumption of "what can we legally inform the members of? What do ordinary grassroots members need to make informed decisions about their participation?", I get the impression that they instead ask what the minimum they need to put out is and do that (based on the quality of Comms at various points since the changes to the articles in 2018). I understand there is a sweet spot in terms of keeping members informed and giving them so much information they disengage, however they aren't getting near that.

In reply to UKB Shark:

The Property guy might well have found a new job, etc. and I suppose the BMC don't have to renew someone's contract if there is no longer a need for that role.
Think the term that is used is Natural Wastage.
Though in this case, it seems that the BMC has conveniently lucked out with the timings of those two circumstances... 

Absolutely agree and it should be made perfectly clear to all what Departments in the BMC have lost personnel and those that haven't.

Slight side issue.
A lot of the comments about the 'Access Two' on UKC has said that they were sacked.
I assume that this isn't the case and if it isn't, maybe some clarification should be made as being arbitrarily labelled as being sacked on Social Media can't be a good thing on both a personal and professorial basis.  

In reply to FactorXXX:

That’s not something I’ve heard and think it would have been mentioned if it was the case. 

In reply to spenser:

I totally agree. Such rumours as 'the access two' being sacked then arises.  I know most money for those two roles won't change (as it's in BMC Trusts), the work still needs doing, and the money for it exists outwith BMC budgets. I'd add that Simon said GB Climbing had gone from one to nine staff in four years. I make it 5 to more than 9: nearly 3 FTEs four years ago and I dont know right now what the FTE count is. I'd rather we clear this on UKC than in the limit time of an area meeting, but without the risks attached to naming people.  I always think we should count FTEs as that relates much more to expenditure and potential savings.

I criticise Simon more than most as I think he should know better than most being one of the most powerful and well informed voices in climbing. However, I totally share his concerns over BMC budgets and how all this negative information about GBClimbing coming from elite athletes youth,  parents and coaches is being dealt with (the BMC almost seems to have 'buried bad news' which then almost inevitablly surfaced at the AGM ). Most of this is not new news: Council have been dealing with this for 3 months, grant funding rules were always clear, parental Facebook posts raising serious concerns are well known,  David and I raised concerns about projected member growth several times in area meetings. The new bit is the at risk notices.

I want it to be clear to BMC leadership that I cant see how  losing any of the 4 core access roles (two each in England and Wales) can be vaguely sensible, or feasible under current circumstances, and will likely lose us large numbers of members, adding to financial pressures (the loss of a thousand members is not far-off a single FTE cost). I don't want exaggeration or misinformation to distract area meeting debate.

I see things more in shades of grey but I made my concerns known in my first post in this thread.

In reply to UKB Shark:

I'd appreciate if you could ask;

1) On what assumptions were the projections of income made

2) How far off the projection we are

3) how far ahead do the projections go

4) have the projections altered in light of recent and semi-recent trends etc

5) what are the projections now and what is the consequence if they fail?

A lot of questions I know but all relate to the general issue where financial projections were made, failed, and had consequences. Are we going to find out we needed 5k new members in 2024 and cos we got Jim from down the wall, his belay partner and his belay partner's grandma who thinks that they're doing Everest we now are going to see more redundancies.

In reply to Offwidth:

I agree that making access staff redundant is the equivalent of putting a car into reverse at 70mph, not clever and not confidence inspiring.

Comparing FTE numbers is important if there are people working part time, but it is also important to note where that FTE is made up of multiple people (particularly if any of those FTEs are made up of multiple people with specialist skillets that do not overlap).

I am not sure how the board's statement could be viewed as fast, open or in plain English? They left the issue to fester for a week while the rumour mill merrily started up, the statement answered almost none of the membership's questions beyond "Has something gone wrong? How many people are going because of this?" and it isn't written in any form of plain English. Personally I would have preferred a message stating "We have made a pig's ear of this, here is the impact, we will have a report prepared by 5pm on Friday to give members time to read through and understand the details of the situation before the area meetings occurring on these dates". I trust people more if they own up to making a mess of stuff and ask for help/ explain the solution, if I find them sweeping stuff under the carpet I am usually unimpressed and am much more likely to go poking around under there.

In reply to spenser:

That and more. I've seen many redundancy processes in action with all sorts of unintended consequences, even when run well. For example: some staff just left in disgust for a better job, those who remain always have to pick up extra work after dealing with the at risk process (including working under more stress); some get ill, reducing work capacity and increasing overload ; reputation damage unfortunately sometimes reduces further income more than the original planned savings.

See! That's grey now with that "almost". You are speaking as a stalwart BMC volunteer on a specialist committee.

In reply to Offwidth:

Luckily I haven't dealt with redundancy processes before, although that has more often been the result of the company making juniors so fed up they leave which is something Atkins specialised in before I left!

I am indeed, if someone like me can't make head nor tails of what is going on what hope does a less involved member have? (Noting that I have never been an amazing finance person as everyone on the CC committee would attest from the incident with me sitting there stroking the mini Schnauzer the meet secretary at the time brought along!).

Coincidentally my gripe about them not getting the tech committee role up has been addressed, it's just well hidden!

In reply to Offwidth:

That is good news but doesn’t sit with the narrative that Inigo’s contract wasn’t renewed 

When I was there, 5 years ago admittedly rather than 4, there was just Zoe as comps officer reporting to Nick who managed other areas too. I counted 9 on the current staff list including safe guarding. Is the list not up to date? 

WTF! You need to get out more and is the weirdest justification for unrelenting rancorous personal insults.
 

In reply to UKB Shark:

Saying I can't see how removing core ACES roles is feasible (given all the recent events and likely membership response) is hardly playing things down. I may be speaking more calmly than most here but I'm the one saying the situation is so serious it needs an urgent BMC leadership rethink.

The two roles you imply have already gone, simply haven't: even if the people in them have, as the work still needs doing and the BMC Trusts have the money. It's certainly looks like a serious impact on the individual employees, and will impact ACES. When what happened is clearer, I think its something Council may even need to look at. However it's a distraction in my view from the much bigger problem of core ACES roles being 'at risk' and the clear requirement for more sensible planning for overall BMC finances, that is better consulted with Council and much more transparent with membership. Not far behind this is the situation in GB Climbing: where we urgently need improving financial control, and improvements in the processes to deal with critical reports and in dealing with generic issues arising from complaints.

In reply to UKB Shark:

Saying I can't see how removing core ACES roles is feasible (given all the recent events and likely membership response) is hardly playing things down. I may be speaking more calmly than most here but I'm the one saying the situation is so serious it needs an urgent BMC leadership rethink.

The two roles you imply have already gone, simply haven't: even if the people in them have, as the work still needs doing and the BMC Trusts have the money. It's certainly looks like a serious impact on the individual employees, and will impact ACES. When what happened is clearer, I think its something Council may even need to look at. However it's a distraction in my view from the much bigger problem of core ACES roles being 'at risk' and the clear requirement for more sensible planning for overall BMC finances, that is better consulted with Council and much more transparent with membership. Not far behind this is the situation in GB Climbing: where we urgently need improving financial control, and improvements in the processes to deal with critical reports and in dealing with generic issues arising from complaints.

PS can you please for a moment try and put yourself in the shoes of the peple you keep naming (unless you know they are happy for you to do so). In the area of work that became GB Climbing there were at least 4 staff, plus some staff safeguarding time that I remember and maybe some stuff I forgot, plus proportionally loads more funded contract work.

Sounds like a new CAC T-shirt. I'm tying to present facts as I see them.

In reply to UKB Shark:

You’re the second person I’ve recently said WTF to Offwidth. He has BMC through him like a stick of Blackpool rock, no ifs or buts, BMC are correct. Always.

In reply to Philb1950:

Weird, given I strongly disagree with at risk notifications in ACES and with various inaction around GB Climbing. I'm trying to figure out how to include that criticism of BMC management and governance by a seaside candy metaphor

I guess the actual consistency is my UKC disagreement with misinformation from regular BMC critics.

Six of us took a bit of flack on Council for pushing hard on our concerns, on finances, membership growth plans, and inaction around aspects of GB Climbing, doing our volunteer role as stated for elected Councillors, on behalf of members.

In reply to UKB Shark:

Just back from the BMC Peak Area Meeting. 

Obviously it was relief to see the BMC statement just prior to the meeting and learn that there would be no redundancies in the Access team just some reduced working hours

Credit where it is due - Paul Davies, CEO turned up in person to field questions. Many were asked and I quizzed him on two areas.

Firstly I asked about the other two members of staff who gone prior to the redundancy exercise. It turns out the Property Officer (Phil) is a flexible contractor who is part funded by the Land and Property Trust who is so flexible in fact that he has chosen to take the summer off and Paul expects him to re-commence his work in September. However, the Hillwalking Officer did have his contract terminated early and will not be replaced. They worked 4 days a week with 2 days devoted to fund raising and 2 days to project management and their responsibilities will be absorbed by other people in the Access team which represents a reduction in the headcount. 

Secondly I pressed Paul for a figure on how much GB Climbing cost the BMC less grant funding and their other income. He refuted the figure of £530k and said that it was £180k. Quite frankly this stretched my credulity as in 2021 the cost was £327k and he had already confirmed that last years IFSC Ratho competition alone was an unsubsidised cost of £90k (budget £40-50k) and no such competition was held in 2021 not to mention the increase in staff numbers in 2022. However, he promised to provide a full breakdown of the figures in due course and at the end of the meeting reiterated that I could follow him up on that which of course I will and I now have his email address. 

The other concerning piece of news was that they don’t intend to replace the Chief Financial Officer to save costs. IMO this is shortsighted and represents a risk. 

In reply to UKB Shark:

+1 to the last part; the BMC finance dept and output has been weak for years and years. The organisation needs a strong finance function and a strong leader to fight it's Corner. If it was fit for purpose, Paul would have had answers to your question above to hand - you asking it must have been the least surprising part of the evening! So yes, a huge risk.

In reply to UKB Shark:

The £180k is shown in the Financial Report, which is part of the Annual Report.  It is the difference between £0.96m GB Climbing costs (including expenditure related to the grant funding) and £0.780M income to support the activities of GB Climbing (including £0.421M funding from UK
Sport and £0.166M funding from Sport England).  As I have pointed out before, this amounts to 2/3 of the total financial shortfall for the year of £217k.  However it does not include the IFSC World Cup, which is included under "Other Costs".  Is this Ratho? If so, it suggests that almost all the £financial shortfall for 2022 can be attributed to supporting competition climbing.

I had hoped to attend the Peak meeting in person but ended up on Zoom, where the audio and video kept dropping out so I missed a lot of what was said. I share your disappointment that more information was not forthcoming about the costs of competition climbing, especially in view of the complaints from a competition athlete's parent that these weren't being properly controlled.  For any single area of the BMC's activities to contribute so much to its overspend would be concerning, and even more so when it is an area which is probably of low priority to many of its members (although it may be of more interest to the indoor climbing cohort which the BMC is struggling to attract). 

For the time being I continue to hold the view that competitions are an aspect of climbing and as such should fall under the BMC. However we need better transparency on what it is costing, how that money is spent, and what controls are in place if we are to be reassured that it is not a drain on resources which will end up damaging more highly valued areas of the BMC's work.

In reply to UKB Shark:

One issue might be a lack of internal 'attribution' of costs. The BMC has 1.6 FTE Safeguarding staff costing £x. If half their work is directed at issues  arising from GB Climbing (and that is a wild stab in the dark!) then GB Climbing 'costs' 50% of £x which doesn't show in the financial reporting. The same with the costs of simply running the office, providing IT support etc. Since about 20% of BMC staff now work for GB Climbing presumably 20% of those costs might be attributed to that department?

In reply to Howard J:

Thanks Howard for confirming where he got his £180k from and yes absolutely the IFSC Ratho cost of £90k should be included. 

I’m currently drafting an email to Paul to get a more transparent breakdown of costs with items such as an apportionment of support staff and other office overheads which I suspect also might not be included in the £180k figure so we can arrive at a fair figure for the net annual financial support provided by the BMC to GBClimbing

Edit: Howard if you want to take a look at my draft email and make comments drop me a message via the UKC messsging system 

In reply to UKB Shark:

From memory of what Paul said last night they don't account for overheads that way as they are treated as a fixed cost of running the organisation (i.e. the amount of office space would not vary based on numbers of staff present, this may be a sensible approach if the BMC owns the office and has to maintain additional desk space that would only used for part of the week (so if there is usually a council member working in the office for 2 afternoons a week and someone on a 0.5FTE contract joins the office, the office overheads won't scale as the desk would be needed anyway).

I would agree that the overheads which scale with numbers of staff members (IT, HR, employers NI and pension contributions and first aid provision etc etc) should be split across departments, less scalable costs possibly not accurately apportioning them would require quite a bit of work.

In reply to spenser:

I think the point is that GB Climbing should carry their fair share of the overheads, do we know that is the case?

In reply to Steve Woollard:

I agree that it should, it is fairly straightforward to allocate the scalable part of the overheads to GB Climbing, it's more difficult to accurately allocate overheads for the physical office to GB climbing given that the office would be there anyway. I don't know how, or if, this is being done.

In reply to spenser:

It’s obviously not being done because there are separate line items in the annual report (I can still only find the 2022 one) for “Administration Costs including governance Costs, AGM and Area meeting support” as well as another for “partnerships” as well as other shared costs. Physical office space is probably one of the smaller shared overheads.

In reply to Andy Say:

Thats not an equitable way of doing it, it would have to be the %age of staff allocated to a specific function after removing the number, from the total, of staff who are shared, I.e. CEO, CFO, HR, IT etc

In reply to UKB Shark:

My initial reaction was horror too but having looked at the ARA I'm not so sure it's a problem. They have a chartered accountant in the FC and the finances really aren't all that complex from what I can see. On the face of it, the finance team of 2 that they are left with ought to be enough. (With the caveat that I am basing that opinion only on what I can glean from the accounts and the audit opinion)

In reply to IainWhitehouse:

YHM

In reply to spenser:

Apportioning overheads may or may not be useful for internal purposes, but they don't really represent a cost to the BMC of supporting GB Climbing. If GBC were not there those costs would simply have to be borne by other departments.

On the other hand, the true costs of GB Climbing are undererported as these should also include these overheads. I see nothing wrong with this, but if GBC were to become fully independent then these are additional costs it would have to find.

If GB Climbing were to become entirely separate from the BMC (which is not something I am advocating) then it might well be the case that it would remain at BMC HQ and share its resources, in which case an actual payment for these services would be appropriate, and this would represent a source of income to the BMC.  Whilst it is part of the BMC that would just be moving money from one pocket to another and would not alter the BMC's financial position.

It might be argued that the cost of these overheads should be included when calculating the BMC's minimum 15% contribution to GBC, but that will depend on the terms of its funding.

We now have a statement from the CEO addressing most of the issues that have been raised on the forums:

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/ceo-qa

My personal take is that this doesn’t fully and transparently answers all the issues but for any further meetings attendees might want to drill further into the answers provided

In reply to UKB Shark:

I know nothing about the personalities involved here, and don’t particularly want to. But in general terms my view is that an organisation of this size doesn’t necessarily need a CFO in addition to a competent FC; what is far more important is that the rest of the senior leadership team understand finance (at the right level)  and are engaged in the numbers

In reply to UKB Shark:

Sorry for the apparent silence, I tried to reply to you but for some reason the servers bounced it. Just to say, it's not a huge surprise, can't say miuch more than that really.