UKC

The British Mountaineering Council has announced that Lorraine Brown, GB Climbing's Head of Performance, has resigned after three years of service.

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Is this a second "commuting distance" resignation at the BMC?

Google tells me the second definition of ‘commute’ is:

“reduce (a judicial sentence, especially a sentence of death) to another less severe one”

Who?

There's some more context here re a previous letter of no confidence from parents/athletes to GB Climbing, including team selection criteria:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2023/09/open_letter_gb_climbing_athletes+pa...

Also re: concerns around funding and oversight of GB Climbing here:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/crag_access/what_would_gb_climbing_look_l...

and plenty of chat on the BMC Watch facebook group.

Sadly poor moderation on BMC Watch allows personal attacks on BMC staff to remain public, including some new ones in the last few days. These are serious issues under discussion, not helped by unethical insults to people who have no right of reply. The morale in the organisation is significantly impacted by such attacks that just makes their job,  to help the organisation recover, that much more difficult. The strategic responsibility to resolve these issues lies with the BMC Board, operationalised by the new CEO, so please let's depersonalise this at the staff level. For what it's worth I think the new CEO is already having a significantly more positive impact and deserves a chance. The Board are being more open on finances to Council than anyone can remember (and we are urging this is seen by members)... we just need more movement on GB Climbing stakeholder relationships (again urged on by Council).

Head of Performance resigns before the Olympic Games, and they're not looking for a replacement until after the Games...?

Well we have one athlete who's qualified. I don't believe we're likely to get any more although it'd be nice for me to be wrong.

I doubt that athlete needs a head of performance at the games. I would guess that he'll need a physio and a coach (support, critical evaluation and feedback).

Everything is in place for the Paris Olympics, despite the problems. I think having had ongoing stakeholder relationship problems, that were not resolved  despite being very public throughout 2023, had a much more serious impact on this year's and ongoing years' elite comps for the athletes currently ranked just below those who might qualify for the Paris Olympics. It's more important these are now quickly resolved for prospects for LA.

I watched CWIF last night on You Tube and it was painful seeing UK athletes who were not selected by GB Climbing scoring ahead of some of (a small minority) of those from other countries who are in the qualifier events for Paris selection (and almost as well as some who are more likely than not to make it to Paris). It doesn't prove they are climbing better overall, as they have home advantage and have had a less disrupted training plan, but it is indicative of issues in selection that need to be heard and thought about, alongside lots of other compelling evidence.

I'd be surprised if one other didn't make it to Paris. Max in particular looked the best boulderer at CWIF and might have won it if he hadn't timed out on one problem (that he topped after the buzzer... showboating within the comp for the crowd). Molly looked pretty good despite looking frustrated with herself (and her bigger strength is in lead). It's arguably the strongest combined boulder/lead GB ever (the Paris format), certainly since Moffat and Nadin,... and younger talent is there just behind them. One wonders how things might have been if Will Bosi hadn't decided to pull out.

Does Max Milne do any lead? I don't follow all the world cups and normally only watch the finals, but I've not noticed him doing any lead.

That comment sounds unbelievably mean and small-minded.

Max is qualified for the OQS and training on rope yes. He is a boulderer at heart but he has been putting the hours in during the offseason to get the results required on lead so excited to see how he gets on when the season starts.

Exciting times. He's such a dynamic explosive climber I can't really imagine him slowly plodding up a lead route a la Ai Mori! Good luck to him!

Why? It is a shame for GB Olympic Climbing that Will Bosi isn't doing comps for whatever reason. Obviously his reasons are his own and he can do whatever he likes, and it's reasonable to muse what could be doing if he was comp climbing. In the same way we can muse about what those with a comp focus might do should they chose to focus on rock instead. He's unarguably the "best" performing brit at the moment having done nearly every 9A on offer.

Whatever happens, it will sure be entertaining but yeah, very psyched for all the GB guys going off to OQS to try and grab more spots! (I believe that more GB athletes will qualify for Paris also).

In reply to Offwidth:

Or put another way ‘hadn’t been messed about’. Their loss and his/our gain - Honey Badger, Alphane, Burden of Dreams, Return of the Sleepwalker. He deserves a medal..

It's the phrase 'pull out' that has grated with me.  It sounds like Steve feels Will has somehow 'let GB Climbing down'.  If that's just my mis-feeling then I apologise.

(Edit for poor punctuation...!)

More the case that GBClimbing let him down along with lots of other competitors. 

It's possible for someone to feel disappointed that they won't see Will competing while also recognising that he has good reasons not to compete given the issues ongoing with GB Climbing.

Will never seemed to get on that well with comps from what I remember, seems like he’s a lot better suited to rock performance? Definitely a lot more to doing well in comps than just being the strongest! 

I'm happy to apologise as well. It wasn't my intent to imply that. I'll just  miss his potential being realised on one big stage but he has actually realised so much potential elsewhere instead.

Also, he's making one heck of a name for himself on "real rock" and it might just be he finds this more enjoyable than comps.

My son (Solly K.D.) started in comps and had a year in the GB development squad before they dropped him, he's now really into his outdoor bouldering and when I suggest he might like to try a comp he has no interest.

Solly’s podcast with Aidan and Sam was super interesting, sounded like he was somewhat limited by a lot of the training events, selection etc. being in the North of England. 

That’s the way I see it too. Parallels to the chess world; 5 times World Champion Magnus Carlsen didn’t defend his last title and isn’t competing again this year; he was fed up of the grind of preparation necessary for long (5+ hours) games. He’s been having a great time with online tournaments, has collected a few other WC titles in shorter formats, made a ton of money, and is still undisputedly the best chess player in the world. 

That was a bit of a problem, but not too bad - I'd retired so "dad's taxi" was fully functional and a visit to Sheffield could be combined with a route or two on the grit. I think what Solly got from it most was the chance to climb with other climbers of his own age and ability.

Strategic improvement is all well and good, but the CEO and the board have immediate responsibility to the athletes who’ve clearly been treated unfairly this year. It’s no comfort to them if they hear that the BMC under the new CEO is going to get better at this. Even if true - and they’ve heard all this before - they need help now, not next year. Careers are incredibly short and the CEO or the interim HoP needs to immediately step in and fix the serious errors made in selection, in time to stop this season (at least) being ruined for a number of great athletes.

I think you should look at Will’s results, Numerous medals at EYC, EYCH and really good results in WYCH, and World Cups, If he had held the top hold in a bloc in Toulouse he would have qualified for the Tokyo Olympics. 

The truth why Will doesn’t compete will come out one day. I am very happy he is smiling and climbing both super hard boulders and routes, who else has climbed 3 9a bloulders and a 9b/+ route 

https://www.ifsc-climbing.org/index.php?option=com_ifsc&task=athlete.di...
 

I think 5 top ten in senior comps, no podiums? 

Sadly poor moderation on UKC allows personal attacks on athletes to remain public, including some new ones in the last few days. These are serious issues under discussion, not helped by unethical insults to people who have no right of reply.

... obviously a bit tongue in cheek but I am not sure why it okay to criticize self-supporting athletes whilst it is not okay to criticize the performance of paid staff. Lorna has had a right to reply openly and engage with the the letter of no confidence and chose not to.

How on earth is that a criticism of Max exactly?

Showboating

the action or practice of showing off.

"he spoiled his World Cup debut with rather too much showboating"

(definition from Oxford Languages)

Showing off for the crowd at a comp like CWIF is not a negative, it certainly wasn’t seen as a negative for anyone watching, it was awesome.

Edit: Fixed some rather awkward sentence structure.

These are serious issues under discussion, not helped by unethical insults to people who have no right of reply.
 

Why no right of reply? We’ve now had it proven that 75% of the national team can question your competence and it won’t lead the BMC board to do anything. Seems unlikely you’re going to get the sack for defending yourself on a public forum…

This is the letter of no confidence:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2023/09/open_letter_gb_climbing_athletes+pa...

A clear respectful description of a list of issues as the signatories see it with no personal insults.

Comments like yours that appear to defend the disgraceful action of posting such personal insults in public forums simply don't help anyone.

It is when it is suggested he didn't win because of said showboating.

Assuming winning at a competition is to be desired.

I interpreted it as him not managing to do it within the time limit and then going on to finish it to show he could do it despite the lack of a competitive reward for doing so outside the time limit.

Offwidth gets a lot of stick on here (some of it earned as he wades in and occasionally argues an obtuse point of view), but he rarely means anyone ill will based on conversations we've had and it's generally quite helpful if you talk to him.

That was not Steve’s suggestion. Steve pointed out that he came stupidly close to winning, as evidenced by him managing to do it for the crowd after the buzzer. 

Why is it that BMC related threads rapidly disintegrate into sniping from the sidelines and personal attacks or at least questions… I suspect the vast majority of BMC members (myself included) are way past caring. May be issues will get fixed one day, may be not. One thing is certain, there will always be someone unhappy about what the BMC are or are not doing. Happy climbing.

No-one on this thread has suggested Max didn't win because of showboating.

It was mentioned by Offwidth in what was pretty clearly a positive sense. I don't know if you watched the cwif finals or not, but for context, for anyone who didn't watch, the relevant problem was M2, which had a handstand move in it which no-one got through successfully except Max, who fell off a couple of times after the handstand section, on his final go he ran out of time, but chose to stay on the problem rather than jumping off and managed to finish it, to the applause of the crowd (though actually he seemed to slip matching the top, don't think he'd have been given it even if it was within the time limit). Was a very cool problem, well worth watching if you haven't seen it, replays available on youtube.

Okay, I obviously misinterpreted Offwidth's comment. I'm obviously not the only one.

There is a small minority of the BMC membership who hate the idea of being involved in it (club members usually who just want to be part of a club and see membership as a "tax), add in frustration at things being slow to happen, poor communication, problems following processes (or not having processes) and sometimes just getting stuff wrong and you wind up with people with various grievances (some quite long standing) about various issues, sometimes towards individuals who were involved in sorting things but had other things to do (work, climbing, family stuff etc etc).

My long standing gripe with the BMC is the website, this is slowly being rebuilt into something that should be really good, but that's going to take a lot of work to get it in place (some of which tech committee is contributing to), but that's only an issue for me because I am actively involved!

The letter of confidence is an example of the the stupid dance that you would have everyone make on all forums, if you had your way, where members in the know know exactly who is being referred to in the “leadership of GB” but everyone else is left scratching their heads. 

I don’t see fans treading on eggshells in this way when it comes to underperforming football managers to say the least. 
 

There's a significant difference between "This is an issue and it needs to be addressed by the person in this role" and the kind of comments which David Lanceley has previously made on here and periodically makes on BMC Watch (which you allow to stand as the admin of that Facebook group).

The very real issues raised in the letter of no confidence aren't suddenly resolved now that Lorraine Brown has left, the GB Climbing managers collectively are still responsible for addressing the issues raised in the letter. I highly doubt that the athletes care about who resolves the issues as long as they are resolved.

I would hope that the climbing community can do a bit better than the Football community given the frequency of racist and violent incidents which take place when things don't go their way.

FYI she did reply though not openly. The BMC response at the bottom of the UKC article (where it starts “In response to the letter and UKC's reporting, the BMC said:” ) was given to her to draft by the Board who by so doing  entirely ducked their responsibility by neither backing or sacking the leadership.

This was a continuation of Board indecisiveness that dragged out throughout 2023 needlessly extending the pain in the Comps Community.

Initiating a disciplinary process should have been an obvious action when they received the damning CCPG report at the end of 2022. Instead the Board response was to try to have the CCPG report watered down then when that failed try to suppress it. Consequently the letter of no confidence was entirely a result of the Board’s inaction and has led no doubt to a costly compromise agreement when we can least afford it. 

One of the consequences of gagging criticism is that problems aren’t brought to light and dealt with. There is a culture of inertia at the BMC and the likes of you and Offwidth jumping on criticism and rebranding it ‘attacks’ is part of the problem. 

Asking for people to display some basic manners is not gagging criticism.

The BMC has serious issues, abusive and derogatory remarks about staff add to them even if they're made in discussion of a genuine issue (hence my point to Paul last night that staff, volunteers and members all need to be held accountable for their actions if they cause harm.

Very difficult to assess whether you are over-blowing specific remarks or not when you don’t quote them. If anything recent has caught your attention spit it out. 

I'm with Shark here.

And let's not get confused between profanity and manners - some of the lengthy pompous diatribes issued here from the usual suspects may not use swearing but they are far from polite and have been bordering on the poisonous.

Dressing it up in highfalutin, psuedo-academic bombast doesn't make it polite.

I don't think the football model is something to aim for. I do also think there's a difference between being a football manager and the head of performance at GB Climbing. One signs up for a life where they get publicly praised/attacked when things do/don't go well and one does not.

I do agree with you that it's very frustrating to have a group of people who are 'in the know' about what the problems are and then another group of people who know there are problems but aren't in the know about what they are.

Point taken (though I wasn’t saying it was something to aim for) and I should have chosen a better analogy than the one that sprang immediately to mind especially as I know nothing about football.

I wish I could like that twice ❤️

Public written smears targeted at employees, with no formal record of disciplinary (or other) issues, are actually about legality and organisational legal duties of care. Your views are foolish... saying "whatever the question is, X isn't the answer" is plain awful and obviously almost certainly looks libellous. Most organisations advise individual staff not to replies to such attacks on social media, some ban it.

I'm just a volunteer who has put in decades of important work alongside other good people, BMC employed or fellow volunteers. I care deeply about the work done by the organisation on behalf of the climber, hill walker and mountaineer community. The BMC to me has always been the wider work done by those people. The BMC governance structure just facilitates that work. It could have a very different structure, for example a charity (with an internal company to deal with the funding bodies). Bottom line I don't care about the exact form of governance structure, as long as it's broadly fit for purpose and legal. What really matters is a stable structure so staff and volunteers can get on with things.

In my professional life I've witnessed several examples of good governance (in terms of modern business definitions) get broken by leaders failing to use it as designed and using power to undermine governance responses. This is a people problem NOT a governance problem. Governance simply can't prevent all people problems, it just reduces risks. I've also seen many examples of slightly faulty governance be made to work well by good leaders: a people benefit, working round obvious governance issues.

Big changes in governance require clear reasons, as it pretty much always has significant costs in time, money and morale. In the BMC approaching half of that money will come from members subs, so the reasons better be very clearly essential for them.

As a close insider I felt the 2018 AGM governance change seemed very necessary: we had relied for too long on good people working round some governance faults, political discontent was growing and in any case it was a requirement for any further grant funding. Since that change pretty much all major BMC governance problems very much seemed to me to be people problems; the most serious being the recent financial and GB Climbing issues. The fact that some new people (especially the CEO) are quickly making significant improvements helps confirm that.

The BMC has always had 'grumpy' members who resent part of the BMC work (most often in the last decades around comps or the Olympics). Occasionally they produce resolutions or debate (under rule, and mostly with no issues whatsoever). Yet the 2017 Motion of no Confidence was different: it was based on dishonest campaigning where good people got hurt, and had time wasted based on attacks that were unethical, misrepresented, and at times were plain dishonest. The fallout led to grants being frozen and every member paid around an extra 50p as a result on their 2018 subs. This got me into BMC politics, as it seemed to me the tail was wagging the dog and making it ill.

To reduce future risks without removing a democratic alternative the BMC, after democratic debate and agreement, set a much higher (but still felt to not be unreasonably acheivable) bar for member AGM motions.

Hence its no surprise I'm annoyed with Simon because he is using what I see as people based problems to reboot his longstanding campaign position as wanting a subsidiary for elite comps.  Alongside misrepresentation of the issues, he fails to mention this will inevitably be an expensive and highly disruptive change. Change can much more easily be achieved internally by just actually following the agreed 2018 governance position of ringfenced elite comp funding within a BMC department; the clear position now of the new CEO. Simon says the members will pay less for elite comps as a result, when nearly all those with expertise who have posted on these threads say members will pay more (a lot for the governance change, and more again because a subsidiary will have higher running costs due to admin and governance duplication). Also the athlete and parents reps say they would rather their main urgent issues were resolved as quickly as possible inside the department. This subsidiary debate distracts those involved in BMC governance and management and inevitably slows that necessary change down.

Sometimes I wonder what could be achieved if the effort put into convincing people they are right on internet forums (myself included) is put into constructively improving things. 

I sit on Council. I do other voluntary work for the organisation. I'm retired so have time to challenge proposed governance change that I know will cause damaging additional costs and disruption at a time the organisation I care so deeply about can least afford it.

Although its not an area I represent I also care about our athletes and parents it's terrible so little happened in 2023 to resolve clear issues. I was raising serious concerns on that alongside other Councillors from March last year, asking for significant action from our Board.

I rather think Offwidth has a point. Recent management of GB climbing appears calamitous, whether from the perspective of competitors or ordinary BMC members. I am not sure changing structures will address the core problem: the decisions people make. That is down to personnel, policy and training.

The argument that casting loose a department because it risks capsizing the ship financially is appealing.  Clearly, things need to change fast, and 2023 shows they haven't. Whether the proposed structural changes would be an effective way of delivering the change needed, I don't know.

I think this is the crux of the issue.  The BMC doesn't like change much, and they absolutely don't do "fast".  Look at the website FFS, can you think of any reputable organisation or business that has such a dated site?  It's not a major issue, but a very obvious symptom of the culture of inertia which Shark referred to earlier.

We live in different times, organisations need to be agile and responsive to changing conditions and situations.  

I try to be honest and helpful with my posts on here generally, or at least to try and encourage discussions to reflect reality based on what I have seen. I do also make best efforts to reference the articles and BMC policies where relevant to help people understand what is going on. I will admit I can sometimes go a bit far with a remark if I feel someone is being deliberately nasty or engaging in a dogpile.

It does however become difficult not to express my frustration when something like Simon's motion to split GB Climbing comes along without any cost or time estimates attached to it and is presented as a solution to the BMC's problems. The budget for my specialist committee (Technical Committee) has been reduced for this year due to the general budget issues and the staff that we interact with are already worked off their feet. Simon's proposal, if successful, will apply more pressure to the budget and increase the workload on staff without providing what I believe to be a useful output. So I, hopefully understandably, view it as being something with a negative impact on the BMC.

I can't reference the most egregious remarks by David as I reported them to the moderators on here and they were rightly removed. I will take a look for comments on BMC Watch this evening. I do take issue with the immediate assumption of wrongdoing or ill intent which is taken against the BMC and many of its volunteers (and the quality/ openness/  speed of communication from the BMC to members which I have raised with Paul). 

A dogpile?

So to what do you attribute the failure of the Board to address those concerns?

And do you feel that things have changed sufficiently that those concerns are now being adequately addressed?

I wondered if you were referencing that exchange on BMC Watch. 

It is only libellous if it’s untrue. If the parent (I assume it’s a parent) had in fact been told by someone senior that a specified staff member wouldn’t be involved in GBClimbing due to past mistakes and that person is then involved again in GBClimbing then writing that wouldn’t constitute libel if it was true. I don’t know anything about the circumstances so don’t know if it’s true or not. Do you know the circumstances and exactly what was said? If not you shouldn’t be claiming it was ‘obviously libellous’.

Assuming it is true (why would someone make that up?) why shouldn’t they speak up if they’ve made a promise that has been broken.  You putting out baseless claims of libel is exactly the kind of thing that kept parents in their place with their heads down till very recently. 

Tensions between leaders and in that, failure of people to follow our clearly defined governance processes. The broader governance checks and balances largely did their job in my view: the CCPG under Paul R (our new CEO) listened to the athletes in late 2022 onwards and passed views to the Board. In terms of these, Council were initially not even informed we had obvious major stakeholder concerns in the area, but having found out from members we acted as quickly as we could last March,  and have supported as fast as possible a response ever since. Some members in the elite comps area wrote a respectful and detailed no confidence letter at the end of 2023 when still not enough had happened in their view (which I support).  Our Indoor Climbing Nationally Elected Councilllor obviously led on much of this in Council as part of the role and he has been fabulous in my view, as have several others on Council who kept pushing on behalf of their local area members.

I'm much more optimistic given very recent actions under our new CEO and really hope things move fast now.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Ignoring the misquote, I think the context for the statement is likely irrelevant, as a statement saying 'Whatever the question, X is not the answer.' is clearly denigrating someone's general professional ability. In law a statement is presumed false until proven otherwise and it's really hard to see how such a statement could meet that test. As per the link below: A is liable for saying anything to C about B which would be apt to make the average citizen think worse of the latter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law 

Please tell me where I've made 'baseless claims', I just see risk and sometimes raise that risk. I've seen too many people write stupid things when angry that led to risk and very occasionally settlement to avoid prosecution or more often disciplinary action, and would want everyone to be aware what those risks are.

I'm fully aware of how some parents (and others) felt and regard it as a sign of failure in the stakeholder relationships. I think it's mainly a seperate issue: raising specific concerns (with perception of risk of retaliation on selection decisions) is not the same as broad insults on someone's professionalism. The BMC is hardly litigious: I've seen various legal threats and insults made to the organisation, staff and key volunteers and am not aware of any legal action taken.

I do wonder if sometimes silence would be a better response and just rely on other more formal channels to sort it out. All you are doing is keeping the thread going, when it would have dropped off the radar sometime ago. 

Anyone but you would see it for what it was - a throwaway line at the end of a complaint.

I don't believe that's correct in legal terms. In legal terms I believe it's libellous if it defames someone whether true or false - but the kicker is that if it's true and you sue someone for libel, you're rather unlikely to win any damages and quite likely to end up paying the other side's legal costs as well - the recent Rooney v Vardy case being a good example.

Opinion is not defamatory. 

"I think Messi is a rubbish footballer."

Not defamatory. 

Its something that my UKB partner at the time took paid advice on from a barrister. Their advice was that to be defamatory it has to be factually untrue. One of our specific concerns at the time was whether calling someone a c**t online was defamatory or not. It isn’t because it isn’t something that is factually untrue! 🤣

You have mentioned 'people problems' a couple of times now. And yet one of your earlier posts was a request that complaints should not be made against individuals:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/ukc/lorraine_brown_resigns_as_gb_climbing...

If 'people problems' are the problem, surely complaints about those people are justified?

In reply to ebdon:

Offensive maybe. Untrue though?

The finances were completely out of control with no one able to understand or provide definitive figures on for example how much GBC costs the BMC. There should be an independent investigation into how the double counting of £200k projected grant income came about. The Chairs ‘explanation’ that it was ‘systemic’ with no one to blame is inadequate.