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updated 19.4.16
ECF NEWS
ECF FINANCE COUNCIL MEETING
16.4.2016 at the Euston Thistle Hotel, London NW1 2LP. Approximately 40 attended, although the number of votes at the disposal of all Council members totalled 322. In the absence of the President, Non-Executive Director Julie Denning took the Chair. This report needs to be read in conjunction with the detailed motions on the published Agenda which can be accessed via the ECF Website.

Minutes of the previous meeting (in October 2015) were quickly dispatched with just two relatively minor corrections as notified earlier via the Office.

Matters arising elicited the information that the Board recognised that voting at Council meetings (particularly in elections) had to be tightened up. It was also confirmed that the Library was now consigned to storage with no immediate prospects of any change to what was an unsatisfactory situation.

Approval of Accounts for year ended 31st August 2015 Finance Director David Eustace presented the Accounts which showed a welcome surplus of £55K with the net sum of £44K added to reserves which now stood at very nearly £100K. Questions were raised as to the true total reserves at the disposal of the Federation and it was stated that the Board had plans to carry out a review of the situation in the near future. The Accounts were approved nem con.

Budget for 2016/17 and related matters For the purpose of this report, Agenda items 6, 7, 8, 10 & 11 are combined. Finance Director David Eustace presented his report together with Budget Proposals for 2016/17. The proposed Budget had Options A (recommended by the Board) and an alternative Option B which would involve no increase in either Membership Subscriptions or Game Fees. Option A included expansion of activities in a number of areas and details were given in presentations by several Directors including International, Junior and Home together with a contribution from the recently appointed Publicity Officer. Option A envisaged a planned series of increases in both Membership Subscriptions and Game Fees.
     A detailed discussion ensued during which it emerged that whilst Council wished to support the expansion in activities detailed, it was of the opinion that the additional costs should be found from reserves rather than by any increase in Membership Subscriptions or Game Fee. A formal vote confirmed this decision.

Pay to Play fees in FIDE rated events. Motion carried with just two votes against

British Go Association. Council agreed that the Board should investigate a request from the British Go Association to establish a venue for Mind Sports in Central London.

Amendments to the Articles and Bye laws
to implement the recommendations of the Independent Constitutional and Governance Review Commission. The nine resolutions under this heading were all agreed except for items (E) & (F) which means that the FIDE Delegate will continue to be elected by Council.

County Championship Rule Changes
(A) A proposal that from 2016/17 onwards the ECF Open and Minor Counties Championships be FIDE-rated was amended to refer to the Open event only, after which change the motion was agreed. (B) A proposal that the default dates for the QF and SF stages be split over two weekends to allow Counties to field more teams in the Final Stages was agreed.

At this point the meeting was closed at the extended time of 6.30pm, which meant that Agenda items 16 (Transparency of Council voting), 17 (Investigation of PQASSO Quality Mark) and 18 (AOB) could not be considered.
DS 17.4.16

ECF AGM
17.10.15 in the ECF's regular London venue, the Euston Square Hotel. In the regular basement room, which is maybe a bit on the small side for 50 people. We made it 51 or 52, plus a handful of officials / observers. According to the voting register the total number of votes available on a poll (sorry, card vote) was 324. However, 15 of them belonged to people who were not there and had appointed no proxy.
    It was always going to be a difficult meeting, and chairman Julian Clissold obviously knew it. He acquitted himself well, though he will not have been prepared for the lesson we learned afterwards.
(1) Minutes (strictly, Matters Arising) from the April meeting. As you know, the April meeting discussed the future of the annual Yearbook and Diary. The latter got the thumbs down, and "will not be produced after 2016" (Minutes, April meeting). So the 2016 one you have now will be your last. So we thought as we embarked on that sentence, and we emerge from it in doubt. It's a 15-month diary, running from October 2015. It says 2016 on the front, but it was produced in 2015, so there's one more to go. Isn't there? Is there?
     What we were going to say was that the Yearbook got a stay of execution in April, and it's got another. They're not quite so short-staffed in the Office now. The decision will be made after the 2016 edition appears, which is probably a distinction without a difference.
(2) Morning's Board meeting. The CEO gave a brief report of that morning's meeting. (The minutes are now on the ECF site.) The ECF's Protection Policy is being/has been updated; there is a new FIDE Academy in Durham; and the ECF has settled for £1200 to recompense a coach for loss of earnings when the coaching team got downsized. And Melville Rodrigues is the ECF's new legal adviser. He stood, but did not speak.
(3) Directors' and Officers' Reports, selectively
(a) President. The President was absent through work commitments. "But in any case I have from the outset believed that my main use as President to members is to raise public awareness of chess and to fund raise for the game in England, rather than attend disputatious meetings."
(b) CEO. It was now about 2 pm, half an hour into the meeting. The CEO's report on the ECF website had been published very late, but made up for it by its remarkable 24 pages.
     "It is not meant to be totally positive." Council's response wasn't either. The Report covered a lot of ground, as you'll have gathered, and a number of specific instances were rehashed and argued over. A lot of it seemed to be infighting between factions. "Can we move on?", someone said half way through. The Chairman stepped in after 20-odd minutes. This was already seven minutes more than he had allocated; did Council wish to apply a guillotine? Council did.
     The CEO's report was accepted by 12 votes to 7. Your Webmaster, perhaps unwisely, asked the meaning of accepting a Report. Getting no answer he made a point of voting against (abstaining might have been more appropriate) on the remaining Reports. Well, what is the answer?
(c) Finance Director. 2014-15 looked like turning out rather better than the April forecast. "The setting up of The Chess Trust is progressing. Unfortunately the opening of a bank account has taken much longer than anticipated because of identification and regulatory issues raised by our bank." Ring any bells? But that hurdle is negotiated.
     The International budget reared its head, as always. We're potentially £5K short. This time the Chairman guillotined first and asked questions afterwards, but he did ask afterwards and Council agreed with him.
(d) Home Director started at 2.38 pm and was over in four minutes. Much had been already said. Those who might have said more, if such there were, were reticent or somnolent.
(e) Membership Director. The Director gave a rough update of the figures in his written report. He had not done a detailed breakdown, but Members currently were about 180 fewer than 12 months ago. Someone asked, "Do you think the shortfall is due to the increased Membership fees?" Director: "Yes."
     The shortfall as we write, a fortnight after the meeting, is around 700. But what about the MOs who hang on to their lists and money until the end-October deadline? We've no idea how many there might be, but they may be distorting comparisons.
(f) Commercial Director. The ECF Forum - the other place, if you prefer - got some flak. It was effectively set up the Director, and he himself thought he could have done it better. The Board has decided to review the format of the forum.
     There was also the Grand Prix, with added sponsorship from Tradewise. The new rules, announced on 1st July, were still not on the website at the time of the AGM (unless you had the password, and it was suspected by some that the page behind the password was empty). It's our belief everyone left it to someone else. Perhaps spurred by the meeting they had a version on the website five days later.
(g) Non-Executive Directors. The two NEDs reported jointly on paper, though only one spoke at the meeting. He spoke of the EBU's court case against Sport England, if that's the right way to put it. (The EBU lost, but can appeal.) If we understood it correctly, the ECF's peripheral involvement in the case cost £2½K.
     We mention the next bit only as a curiosity. In the course of this Report we became aware of a snorer sitting a few feet from us. "It's not quite that boring," we thought. But he raised a hand at once when a vote was called for.
(h) Chairman, Governance Committee had little to add to his written report, which expressed his disappointment over most aspects of the Board's performance. "It seems plain that we cannot re-elect the same team as they seem to be incapable of working with each other."
__________

It was now 3.44 pm and time for the tea break. It accommodated the BCF FINANCE MEETING, which lasted 8 minutes and approved the accounts it was supposed to approve. (You can download them.)
__________

Now 4.05 pm and back to the ECF meeting.
(4) Elections. Let's start with the mechanics of it. Everyone, as last year, got five minutes to speak whether opposed or not, and voters had a single-sheet voting form which they filled in at the end. Practice varies from one AGM to another, and one thing was different. Last year, unopposed candidates were voted on at once by show of hands. This year, everyone went on the voting form. This was, perhaps, unwise given that the vote took place about an hour later this time. To be specific, the forms were collected at 5.35.pm and the tellers returned about five minutes before the extended finishing time of 6.30. They made no bones about the fact that the count had been hurried and some of their less critical figures were skipped or approximate. It emerged, next day, that at the tellers' suggestion the Company Secretary had done a recount in the closest - the only close - case, and concluded that the original count had elected the wrong person. A complete recount followed and the full correct results, more complete than usual, appeared on the ECF website on the Monday. We'll copy them out one of these days, but bear with us for the moment. This report has hung fire long enough.
     The miscounting, if you hadn't guessed, is the lesson we mentioned at the start. Find a better way of doing it! But, to backtrack, there's a couple of election addresses we ought to mention.
(a) Home Director. Two candidates, including the incumbent. His opponent attacked, by scarcely hidden implication, some of the incumbent's perceived shortcomings. This did not prevent the incumbent's comfortable victory. But both advocated changes to grading, leading eventually to monthly grades. The incumbent went into this in some detail. An essential(?) first step would be the introduction of an ECF league-management program which organisers could use at their discretion. (There are already, of course, several such programs in local use.) He proposed to invite tenders for the software. "Any idea how much it will cost?" - No, but expenditure would have to be approved by the April Council meeting. "I am merely seeking election to start the investigation."
(b) Chairman, Governance Committee. The officer, who had been outspoken in his Report, went further in his election address. He would resign if the CEO was re-elected. This caused some consternation. A delegate, who held a lot of proxy votes, asked how he could reconcile it with his now-conflicting instructions. Others will have been in like case. Another member of the Governance Committee roundly condemned his chairman's stance. You know the voting figures, but repercussions have not ended with the meeting.
(5) Governance & Constitutional Review Commission. 5.41 pm now, and not much time for this. We won't summarise the Commission's report; you can download it. But a notable feature was that it did not recommend OMOV. Few of those consulted had expressed much interest in OMOV; apart from which the ECF at this moment had more pressing things to do than reform its voting structure.
     Council heavily approved a motion calling on the Board to bring proposals to Council for implementing the Commission's recommendations. It was now 6.15 pm.
(6) Two SCCU Proposals. You know what these were. The first, on ECF insurance and Protection, was redundant in view of ECF work already under way. However, an SCCU person spoke to the proposal at length before finally withdrawing it. This left no time for the second proposal, on County match entry fees in the national stage. We don't know that there would have been time for it anyway, but we were puzzled by the self-destructive tactic.
(7) Future meetings. Finance 2016: Saturday 16 April in London. AGM 2016: Saturday 15 October in Birmingham.

The meeting closed at 6.30 pm, near enough exactly, after the tellers had told their best.
rjh 31.10.15. Please say if you find errors.
We have not tried to be exhaustive. Ben Edgell has much detail on the EC Forum.

Earlier material is in the Archive.