British Parachute Association bpa.org.uk
Wharf Way, Glen Parva, Leicester LE2 9TF
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The Council
Minutes of the meeting held on
Tuesday 15 April 2014 at 1800
at the BPA Office, 5 Wharf Way, Glen Parva, Leicester LE2 9TF
Present: Martin Soulsby - Chair
Paul Applegate
Adrian Bond
Alex Busby-Hicks
Brian Cumming
Ian Marshall
Paul Moore
Craig Poxon
Mark Skarratts
Brian Vacher
Thea Westley
In attendance: Tony Butler - Chief Operating Officer
Debbie Carter - Treasurer
Jon Gretton - Financial Administrator (to item 29)
John Hitchen - Vice President & IPC Alt Delegate
Tony Knight - Adviser on Europe (to item 32)
Jeff Montgomery - Safety & Technical Officer
Martin Shuttleworth - Secretary-General (Secretary)
Weed Stoodley - Competitions Committee
Apologies for absence: Liz Ashley - Editor, Skydive the Mag
Karen Bain
Jackie Harper
Ian Rosenvinge
John Smyth MVO - Vice President & IPC Delegate
James Swallow
Observer: Jason Kelleher
Item Minute
26/14 Declarations of interest
These are recorded at the beginning of the item to which they refer.
27/14 Minutes
The minutes of the previous meeting, on Tuesday 18 February 2014, had already been approved electronically and published on the BPA website bpa.org.uk/member/agendas-and-minutes/
28/14 Matters arising
28.1 Directors’ & Officers’ Code of Conduct (minute 11)
The Secretary had sent a copy to each of the five BPA Vice Presidents. The reply from Jim Crocker had been circulated. He was willing to sign the Code but questioned the appropriateness of Council asking those bestowed the honour of a Vice Presidency to sign such a document. The Secretary read aloud the reply from John Lines, which was supportive. John Hitchen, who was in attendance, said he believed the Code to be a good idea. Chris Allen had acknowledged receipt of the Code and had said he would reply in due course. A response from John Smyth was awaited. The Secretary would progress the matter once the outstanding replies had been received.
Action: Awaiting two replies
28.2 December meeting date and time (minute 12)
After discussion, Brian Cumming proposed, and Brian Vacher seconded, a motion to hold the December 2014 Council meeting on Saturday 6 December 2014 at 1600. The vote was: For - 6, Against - 3, Abstain - 1 (Ian Marshall).
Carried
The Chair asked Brian Cumming to kindly to help to promote this arrangement as it had been his idea to hold the meeting on a Saturday, one reason being to encourage more of the membership to attend as observers.
Action: Brian Cumming
Paul Moore said that the Competitions Committee was minded to keep to its usual pattern of meeting on a Tuesday, which in this case would be Tuesday 2 December 2014. He said the Competitions Secretary was not available for a meeting on a Saturday.
Dates and start times for the December meetings of the Communications and Development Committees were to be arranged. Brian Cumming said, in case it might be required, he had identified a suitable venue local to the BPA Office that could host two concurrent meetings and provide catering.
The Chair noted that if the Committees elected to stay with their normal pattern of Tuesday meetings, Council could start at 1400 rather than 1600 on Saturday 6 December.
Action: Committees that normally meet on same day as Council
to confirm date and start time of their December 2014 meetings
28.3 Age-based rules in the BPA Operations Manual (minute 21.4)
See minute 37.
28.4 Pilot status in the BPA (minute 22.2)
In answer to a question from Alex Busby-Hicks, the Chair said that no further communication had been received from pilots, other than those of whom he was already aware, on this since the last meeting.
28.5 Competitions Committee Terms of Reference (minute 22.3)
The Secretary reported that a typographical error in the Competitions Committee’s terms of reference (BPA Form 278) had been corrected to show the quorum as 4.
28.6 Complaint by a member to the Information Commissioner’s Office about BPA’s handling of their Subject Access Request (minute 24)
The Secretary reported that the Information Commissioner’s Office had accepted the BPA’s reply (previously circulated) which agreed to re-open one part of the Subject Access Request. This had duly been done, with the help of specialist external advice, and the appropriate disclosure had been made to the member, who had asked questions about the material that had been disclosed, which the Secretary had answered.
Noted
29/14 Finance
29.1 Management accounts and membership numbers update
Management accounts for the 9 months to 31 March 2014 and membership statistics to month 12, the full membership year, had been circulated in advance. Council was delighted to note that the total of full members was 5,950, just shy of 6,000. It was a year-on-year increase of 4.5%. This suggested that Council’s multi-pronged strategy to encourage retention may well be working.
Ian Marshall asked about the bank charges of £5,364 shown in the management accounts, which had increased by £540 over the year. The Treasurer said that payment methods used for online renewals attracted higher transaction fees which, as a matter of policy, BPA did not pass on to members. There was a note on the printed renewal form to say that payment by debit card was preferred as it attracted the lowest transaction charge for the BPA. The Council asked that this note should be added to the payment screen for online renewals.
Action: Jon Gretton, Financial Administrator
29.2 Budget 2014-5
The Chair orally summarised the projected budget kindly prepared by the Treasurer for the financial year ending 30 June 2015 with reference to the Action Plan budgets for the Committees. These had been calculated on the established share of the projected surplus after routine expenditure, viz: 35% to investments, 5% each to Communications and Development, and 55% to Competitions. The projected surplus was £203,680 and the allocations for the Action Plan were £10,184 each to Communications and Development, and £112,000 to Competitions. The Treasurer said that the budget had been prepared on the customarily cautious projection of 5,000 full members and 50,000 provisional student members during the year.
Noted
29.3 External review of internal financial procedures
The Treasurer suggested that rather than commission this as a separate project, it could be added to the annual financial audit due to take place after the end of the financial year on 30 June. In the last 5 years, the auditors had provided clean management letters. This signified that they had been content with BPA’s financial control procedures and that we had adhered to them. The Treasurer suggested that she and Jon Gretton, Financial Administrator, should brief the auditors on the weaknesses that had come to light and ask them to target these areas with an in-depth pre-audit review. Council agreed to the Treasurer’s suggestions.
Agreed
A further point raised by the Treasurer was that Committee terms of reference made no reference to budgetary or financial sign-off responsibilities. She and the Financial Administrator therefore planned to draft a ‘financial responsibilities’ document for Council members, etc.
Action: Treasurer & Financial Administrator
Paul Moore said that financial responsibilities would be included in the new Competitions Committee Handbook that was currently in preparation.
Noted
29.4 Examiner expenses
Alex Busby-Hicks asked for a review of the rate of expenses paid to examiners. The Treasurer said that other groups such as instructors and judges may expect the same, and therefore it was important to forecast any increase in expenses as a total annual increase based on the number of claims expected. The Chair referred the item to the Development Committee for consideration.
Refer to the Development Committee
30/14 BPA Magazine
This item was held in camera with elected members, the Treasuer, and staff: others left the room.
A paper by Adrian Bond, Communications Chair, had been circulated in advance. It had set out independent advice on possible solutions to reported confusion by some contributors to BPA’s Skydive the Mag between it and the website of its former Editor Lesley Gale skydivemag.com (which had been the URL of the BPA Mag when she had been its Editor - the BPA Mag was now at skydivethemag.com).
One option was for the BPA Magazine to rebrand, for which the paper cited a number of positive reasons. However, neither Liz Ashley, Editor of BPA’s Skydive the Mag, nor Archant Dialogue, were in favour of a rebrand. Archant Dialogue had advised BPA to expand and build BPA’s established ‘Skydive’ brand.
The paper had included advice from an intellectual property specialist that had revealed an issue about registration of a trademark related to the BPA Mag that had apparently not been registered in BPA’s name. Adrian Bond proposed, and Paul Applegate seconded, a motion that this should be rectified.
Carried unanimously
Council referred to the Communications Committee the issue of safeguarding BPA’s intellectual property by registering present and possible future trademarks, etc, which would involve taking specialist external advice.
Refer to the Communications Committee
Council asked the Secretary to write to Lesley Gale to say that when the Communications Committee had agreed to her suggestion that the content republished on her website that had originally appeared in the BPA Mag, during her time as its Editor, should include a reference to its first publication - and had asked that the acknowledgement ‘First published in the Journal of the British Parachute Association, [month, year]’be included - it had taken as read that any such republication would be once she had also secured the agreement of the originators of the content concerned.
Action: Secretary
Brian Vacher commended Lesley Gale’s website. He said that the future of communication was online and she was driving it hard, which was good for the sport.
The meeting then returned to open session.
31/14 Strategy
31.1 Pursuit of excellence > good governance > appointment of an external consultant
This item followed from the presentation to the last meeting (minute 8) by Amanda Bennett, Governance Adviser to the Sport & Recreation Alliance, and the ensuing discussion (minute 18.3.1) in which a motion was carried to appoint an external consultant on governance.
A paper from the Secretary had been circulated in advance suggesting the appointment of Amanda Bennett as the consultant and outlining a project brief, based on interviews, acceptable to the Chair and Vice Chair, and that had been discussed with her. The Chair read aloud an e-mail from Ian Rosenvinge that asked for an addition to the project brief to bring in a broader range of input by himself taking part in an interview, with others. Council agreed to this suggestion, and invited Paul Moore (as a Council Member) to take part too, to which Paul Moore kindly agreed.
Council agreed to the amended brief and noted that the budget would need to be adjusted accordingly.
Agreed
31.2 Premises
A paper had been circulated with the agenda. The Chair summarised the present position, which the paper set out (see minute 97/13 of the minutes of the meeting on 3 December 2013 and minute 18.2 of the meeting on 18 February 2014). The position was that Council had agreed in principle to refurbish the existing BPA Office building, but the cost of a full refurbishment had been too high.
Discussion continued and the Treasurer said there was an element of our going round in circles. It was difficult to know what works we could get done for what cost, and where to draw the line on a more limited refurbishment. What was needed was some sort of framework to help to focus the various views around the table. Observer Jason Kelleher said he was training to become a Chartered Quantity Surveyor and believed the appropriate framework to be a ‘business case’. Although his speciality was in a different area of construction, he said he had transferable skills that he believed might assist Council in finding a way forward. Council gratefully accepted Jason Kelleher’s kind offer, and asked the Secretary to send him the past papers on premises that traced the position to where we were today.
Action: Jason Kelleher
31.3 Staff succession planning
This strategic objective had been completed in (minute 67.3/12 of the meeting on 9 October 2012 refers): plans were now in place.
32/14 EPU & European update
32.1 European Parachute Union financial account
The Treasurer reported that, pursuant to the discussion at the last meeting (minute 16.2), BPA had invoiced EPU for the amount BPA had paid to Europe Air Sports on behalf of EPU. This left the EPU account credited with the 2014 EPU subscription payments received from Norway and the Netherlands.
There followed further discussion on the role of EPU. The consensus was that EPU was not as important now as it had formerly been in seeking to influence new pan-European aviation legislation because the development of this new legislation had progressed beyond the consultative stage and was now being implemented through national aviation regulators in member states. Therefore, BPA was now liaising with CAA about implementation of the new European regulations in the UK, rather than with EASA about the formulation of these regulations. However, European legislative and administrative processes being what they were, there always remained a possibility that EPU could prove useful again.
[Secretary’s note: Minute 16.2 of the meeting on 18 February 2014, concerning the European Parachute Union, refers to a time-sensitive commercially confidential matter in a proposal by James Swallow which could not be recorded in those minutes, and which would therefore be recorded at a later date. It is now recorded here. It was for Paul Moore to send out final-demand invoices for EAS subscriptions, and for BPA to pay EPU’s subscription to EAS at the latest possible time if non-payment would preclude participation by UK representatives in the EAS General Conference in Instanbul from 21-23 March 2014. In the event, BPA did not pay the EAS invoice to EPU, and it had not prevented participation by our sport parachuting delegates from the UK in the EAS General Conference.]
The invoice for €9,230 to EPU for its 2014 subscription to Europe Air Sports remained unpaid. The Chair said that Council had three options: to (i) pay the balance, (ii) pay just our share, or (iii) pay nothing. The Chief Operating Officer urged Council to pay nothing as he did not believe there remained any case for BPA to shoulder a disproportionate financial burden for EPU compared with other member states with active sport parachuting bodies. Adrian Bond proposed, and Brian Cumming seconded, a motion that BPA should pay nothing.