UKH

The British Mountaineering Council has released a further statement and video response on the organisation's restructure. 

Last week we published an article titled 'Redundancies, Deficits and Direction - What's happening at the BMC?' in response to an initial BMC statement, which did not outline staff reductions in detail. 

Read the latest statement - released today (18 July) - and watch a video response from BMC President Andy Syme below:

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This is the kind of clarity that was required and will have answered many questions that were being penned for the chairs of the upcoming area meets! Hopefully the BMC Office will have learnt from this that early, open and honest communication in simple terms is all that's needed.

Actual concrete information starts on paragraph 11, fwiw. Will be interested to see what people make of it...

A lot of sound/ fury could have been avoided if something like this had been released a week ago with a promise of an update to be issued once details are figured out.

Fair one, that's much better. Well done and thanks.

Edit: still a bit perplexed about how plans got made based on the blisteringly unrealistic membership target though.

That feels like the elephant in the room. Who set these wild targets? 
 

Nice video from Andy Syme though. Good effort. 

Is this actually clearer?

The article suggests that a 0.8FTE fixed term contract has been ended from.... somewhere. Just ended, no mention of where that person worked.

The video states that "in access, we had to terminate one short term contract". Is that the 0.8FTE that is mentioned in the article but not assigned to any specific team?

If that is the case, then the access team is actually being reduced by 1.5FTE, not the 0.3 or 0.7 suggested in the article. I'd like to give the BMC the benefit of the doubt, but with recent comms, the cynic in me suspects some slight of hand if access is being cut more than other areas.

I'm also somewhat dubious that you can cut staffing in a team and see no impact on day to day operations without a commensurate investment in productivity, which there is no mention of here.

Yeah, the statement definitely tries to imply that the missed membership target was caused by the cost of living crisis rather than in any way acknowledging that it was ludicrously ambitious in the first place!

Otherwise, nice to have a bit more clarity.

I can't answer for other board members but from my perspective:

1. The plan was ambitious, but 1) FAC supported it with the caveat it was challenging, and 2) we had a clear set of plans about how we would course correct if we didn't achieve the targets
2. If we went for a less ambitious target then we would have to restructure in Dec

In reply to SnayBoot

That is a typo, as it says in the bullets below  "Access, Conservation and Environmental Sustainability (ACES) – 0.3 (and reduced 0.4 fixed term contract)".  So to be clear 1 permanent member of staff will reduce their contract by 0.3 FTE and the Mend our Mountains co-ordinator 0.4 FTE contract is not continuing and the work coming in-house.

I understand the point, but the ACES staff are confident that, as the staff levels remain higher than 2018, by some refocussing of effort this will be the case.

If you went for less ambitious membership then you would have to restructure earlier. That shouts out to me that your cost base was too high and had been for some time. Can you throw light on what was out of kilter on your cost base v revenue and how it got into that situation?

The BMC staff growth, outside of UKS/SE funded roles has been. almost exclusively, in the access team.  We added permanent staff because of; Dave Turnbull moving roles, in order to better support access specifically in Wales; and contract roles associated work in campaigns and land management.  These decisions were made knowing there would be no direct impact on member growth but because the Board felt the changes were necessary.  Critically I understand that it was thought at the time that the costs would be covered from reserves in the short term, while membership growth caught up.

COVID completely changed the landscape.  While the furlough scheme isolated the BMC from the costs of having more staff than we could afford it meant that post COVID the gap between our income (from membership) and expenditure was bigger than when the decisions were made.  Even SE funding now paying for roles we have previously funded internally did not mask this problem.  For 2023 we agreed ambitious growth projections, supported by FAC, which if delivered meant that changes would not be necessary; but also to review these predictions as the year progressed.  The intent being to run 2023 at a £72k deficit and to be in profit again by 2024.

By May it was clear that while we were achieving reasonable growth, the projections were too ambitious, and it was clear there is some substantial foundation work to do to underpin the growth we have targeted.  Due to the reduction in income, the forecast deficit was predicted to be £270k which, while it could be covered by reserves in the short term, was not financially sustainable.  Therefore we needed to make cuts in our expenditure.

Finally it's worth noting that even our 'ambitious growth' , but still below the rate of growth in participation, in effect only reducing the rate at which the gap widens.

Does that help clarify?

So essentially the issue was that you increased the cost base in the expectation that revenue from increased membership would cover the gap eventually. Then covid happened meaning problems with membership growth, you hung on for a bit hoping the covid loss of growth would be compensated by ambitious growth post covid before biting the bullet and cutting cost base. Can understand where your coming from.

Biggest stable door ever... they started tracking membership at the beginning of the year, then put in a plan to sack people in month 7. Shouldn't they be tracking membership monthly and quarterly if so many of their plans are based on rapidly climbing numbers. This latest statement just highlights or confirms managerial incompetence. 

Edit, The trend in membership numbers from Fy 20/21, 21/22, 22/23... should have been clear ages ago that anticipated numbers were never going to be reached, a school boy line graph would have illustrated it. 

Thanks for making the effort to come on here and address some of these comments directly. I expect it felt somewhat risky but I, for one, have found your recent contributions really useful and they've assuaged some of my worst fears.

I do still wish some of this information had come out sooner. Even allowing for the fact that you can't share too much while still going through the redundancy process with staff, it seems shortsighted not to have anticipated the issue and kicked off the process in time for this to be discussed properly at the AGM just a couple of weeks before this all started coming out anyway. Or to have had a limited statement prepared in advance, ready to release as soon as the redundancy info inevitably leaked out rather than letting the speculation run unchecked. By your description, this was a situation that had been slowly building up over years and which everyone was aware of, rather than an unexpected short term crisis, so the sudden course correction without good messaging seems like an unnecessary own goal that's considerably shaken a lot of people's confidence.

Is there a plausible plan now for reaching a sustainable financial position without further cuts or unlikely levels of membership growth?

As I said the budget included plans to address the scenario where growth was slower; we started discussing/implementing plans in May and we decided it could not all be achieved without restructuring in Jun which was delivered by mid-Jul.  I don't think that's unreasonably slow.

As to just keeping growth planning at past levels, which are well below the growth in participation levels, that will just make us ever less representative of the community.  

We need to review how we get the membership growth to more closely track participation growth and do things differently but 10% growth should be a minimum target, not rejected as an unrealistic goal, if we are to remain relevant long term. 

We missed this year but we can and I hope will get there as the work Gavin and the team are doing starts to be rolled out.

Luke, Totally agree.  Comms was slow and noise filled the vacuum.  There were various reasons/excuses (which I won't bore people with here) but ultimately we should have done better.

While there are always still risks, what has been done now looks sustainable on a growth target similar to past performance.  There has been significant work done on developing new membership offers and better targeting audiences we don't currently reach.  This was presented to Members Council after the AGM and was very positively received by everyone (except the question why so long to get here).  

The implementation is however predicated on work to update our aging IT etc, which has been progressing in the background all year. 

Assuming no major setbacks it should start delivering new offers in early 2024 and continue developing over the year.  

On a personal level I think the key thing is not repeating past mistakes, specifically, how we contain spending on things members ask for until the income supports it, rather than based on projections.  We still have, and can use, reserves but their use must be focused on growth opportunities not operational cost.

Hope this reads ok as written on phone.

Paul was very open at the Peak Area meeting tonight and agreed that communications have not been handled well. He seemed on board with my suggestion that a statement along the lines of "We have identified an issue with finances, we are applying the redundancy process to try and identify a way of mitigating the issue alongside other measures. Due to employment law and out of respect for the affected staff we can't disclose details at this point, a further statement will be issued on date X." Would have dampened the rumour mill quite a lot.

For the love of God, please get the website sorted and shout from the rooftops what the organisation does so well (and so much better than equivalent bodies in other sports).

This and get in the social media game, easy wins.

appreciated on the update but I have to ask why anyone expected any indoor climber to join the BMC unless they are at the elite level

i have worked in the business for over 10 years and the BMC’s contribution is utterly lamentable 

if you are elite it is possibly great but at the grass roots they may as well not exist

You committed to spending on very aspirational growth figures, when those figures didn't appear (which would have been very obvious if monitored monthly over the last 3 years) you had to make drastic cuts. Membership numbers didn't fall off a cliff between Jan and June, you were making financial commitments without the revenue or membership number in fy22/23,21/22 to back them up. 

Long term these actions have destroyed any hope of growing the membership even close to what you hoped for. To restore faith people need to see a change in management and accountability, not access staff being sacked. 

Membership has continued to grow, just not as fast in 23 as planned. 

The financial commitment on DT was before my time on board, and the financial commitment to Wales was made to address shortfalls in our Welsh representation and at the strong request of members.

Maybe, though I am far more confident growth is possible given the growth in participation and with the work which while not delivered yet is definitely inbound.

No Access staff have been sacked.  

If you want growth, or to even maintain numbers only with higher fees supporting better services(not climbing teams), then promote your successes. Crag ownership, access, insurance (needs addressing read the comments scattered around ukc) and more, news on podium places won't draw in the masses as bmc members. 

In the past when things have gone wrong, foot and mouth for example, the bmc played a part in securing access to some places, build a bmc that's in a position to do this in the future and you'll carry the many thousands of hill walkers and climbers with you, far more than any speed climbing will. 

Kilnsey Crag, bmc involvement? Your over spend could have bought it, unless of course it's your offer that's in! 

We did bid but we were outbid, and we did so with a partner so the costs to the BMC were appropriately limited as it was IMHO overpriced.

  LPT and access team are working on ensuring highest bidder understands the role of BMC and climbers and access remains unchanged.

The video has been removed from the BMC website which is a great shame as it came across well and offered much needed clarity. Why has it been taken down?

Hard to comment as we don't know where the bidding reached. There's always the factor that it's a one shot chance of ownership, it's a little iconic and exceedingly unlikely to ever come up for sale again. At the opening gambit of 22k/hectare it's not cheap, but then housing wise what would 150k also get in the YDNP. The grey area would be any future government agri support schemes toward SSSIs.

Then promote your work, sell yourself. 

It isn't an either or thing, the BMC can do all of the old stuff and shout about its successes (which I think the vast majority of the Peak area meeting agreed with last night except for the chap who seemed to believe that sticking to the agenda was more important than a constructive discussion) while still doing comps stuff.

Hi Andy, the growth in participation is undeniable, but what proportion of this is regular outdoors? Unless the BMC designs an offering which is relevant to the indoors majority, growth will probably remain modest. Conversion from indoors to outdoors is another route, but again prob marginal as there are multiple factors in being a predominantly indoor climber. This is only from observation, not having your sight of market intelligence. I guess that the big gains would come from converting the rest of the outdoor climbers to members?

TBH, my membership for years was for the insurance, but I would keep it up now regardless, to pay for access work which for me has become the cornerstone of the BMC. However, the bulk of the relatively small proportion of climbers who operate outdoors regularly do so at places like Stanage and Froggatt, and maybe don’t generally care about access issues because is doesn’t affect them?

Hope it goes well, and well done for the statement post. The chairman role has  been a bit anonymous for a while, but is really important in representing members interests. 

It's worth noting that Andy is president of the BMC rather than chair of the BMC's board (most important difference being that Andy chairs members council meetings and is a member of the board as that is part of the president's role while the chair of the board does not routinely attend members' council).

I look forward to the hard figures being released, which were promised to follow the Peak meet yesterday eve. 

One thing that Paul mentioned a few times was that the money they are spending on access has never been as high as it is and it has grown significantly on last year (I think the figures quoted were around 280k last year to 370k this year?). However, I believe the 370 figure was based on their projection prior to the turmoil and won't be truly reflective of where we are now, with access roles not being re-hired for and some staff redundancies. It would be good to know what the accurate figure is now the dust has settled; it may not be much (if any?) of an increase on previous years at all. The BMC membership has grown so a lack of reflecting this in the access spend would be a cut in access funding rather than growth.

When opposition parties are putting a right-to-roam in their manifestos, access in England and Wales has never been as important. 

To be fair to Roger he does actually attend most MC meetings, but he is not required to and attends as an observer not a member.

Can you elaborate please as it is sounds at odds with Paul Davies’ statement last night that the contract of the Mend Our Mountains Officer was terminated early.  

you’re absolutely right, I meant to say President

cheers Paul

Like the new logo...

The Chair of the Board doesn’t need to routinely attend Member's Council, but he does.

Some other points made last night in Bamford that were key in my view [with some opinion from me in square brackets]

Paul said he wanted to attend the meeting as BMC CEO to ensure things were as clear as they could be. He answered what he could on the night and promised to go away and answer what he couldn't.  [It was an important commitment that I'm very greatful for].

Growth and income plans were hit by unexpected major external factors including covid disruption and the cost of living crisis  but the BMC seemed to be holding up better than many not for profit organisations, some of whom had seen massive membership loses. Commercial partnership had become difficult for the BMC and similar organisations.

In restructures, due process need to be followed but the outcome was no compulsory redundances. Reduction in ACES staffing was 0.7 FTE and the situation will be monitored to ensure things continue to work well. The ACES team is still bigger than it has been for most of the past decade. Some  additional work in the area will still be funded by the Trusts. The Land & Property project worker had not left the BMC.

Paul knew the half a million widely quoted as the current "members' contribution" to GB Climbing was incorrect, explained broadly why, but needed to ensure the equivalent number in the meeting was correct and would provide a figure soon.

The Ratho event cost £90k but that wasn't part of the GB Climbing spend. Prior cost estimates were much less but some expected support funding didn't come in  (nor did some possible funding). The costs were still seen as an investment. [As a Council member I can confirm that was the position Council took (to be fair... before we knew how serious the overall BMC financial situation was). However, reading these threads maybe the BMC should in future explore how accounting of such investment style costs could be spread over more than a year.]

Henry Folkard made a careful speech on the scope and importance of access locally and nationally, with the volunteer army working efficiently alongside BMC staff. Some didn't seem to get it, but I most certainly did. That's what matters most to the members who care about the work of the BMC. [As for how many members feel that way: access work is consistently top on member surveys, and conservation and sustainability and technical/safety work are not far behind. It's perhaps the key context that was forgotten in the earlier less than ideal BMC comms on the restructuring].

Someone asked how they could  be helped to go to events or walls and encourage people to join, as the BMC is important. [It would great in my view if more passionate volunteers could be utilised to do this]

[No one asked about the current insurance problems on the website (and in all the emotive discussion I forgot to remind Paul). This needs a BMC statement soon.]

[On a personal level Simon and I talked in a civil and constructive way before the start of the meeting, which I certainly appreciated. We both care deeply about the BMC even if we sometimes disagree on details. I my defence on 'tone' (I admitted I'd been grumpy): I have been frustrated that more keen observers in the membership had not noticed some core problems a bit earlier (especially when David Brown and I shared concerns on membership growth from autumn 2022).]

[Given the real progress made last night the BMC mustn't now drift back away from openess. It's fundamental that the BMC leadership ensure the membership are broadly OK where their subs are beimg spent. It needs to market itself way better, especially on the amazing work that is done and why people should join for that. It need to ensure GB Climbing is more responsive to fair concerns from athletes, parents, coaches etc (the new internal procedures I'm aware of should help) and certainly that it has improved financial control. It might also be good in my opinion if some of the leadership set an example on expenses and looked to control BMC expenses better, given some staff have agreed to leave or have reduced contract size to help BMC finances.]

Yes.  I appreciated Paul attending the meeting and don't doubt his efforts in trying to sort this out.   It was very hard though to get a fair impression of what's really going on with the finances because of the sheer complexity and the changes in procedure which, as Paul said, mean that the numbers this year can't be directly compared with last year.

However, two things stuck out for me.  One was that apparently the BMC currently has no CFO and isn't intending to appoint one.  The other was that there seemed to be no overview of what the total GB Climbing budget was.  The suggestion that it might be about £1M was met with surprise, and denied, despite it being based on the BMC membership contribution being 15% of the total (the rest being Sport England funding).  There were certainly very pertinent questions raised about how exactly it was being spent.

Something else made me think as I was driving home.  Paul spent some time talking about the BMC's poor brand recognition among the 'outdoors' community (however you define that), compared with, say, DofE.  He was also frustrated that the BMC's huge volunteer base wasn't sufficiently recognised.  It seemed to me that at least part of part of the reason he thought this was important related to impressing Sport England.  In the same way that the BMC is backing its championing of competition climbing by contributing 15% of the budget to attract the Sport England funding, the intention seemed to be to include the volunteer base as further evidence of its 'organisational capital' (my phrase, not Paul's).  

Now maybe all this is fine, and is just us doing what it takes in the, frankly rather obscure, world of elite sport promotion.  However, if volunteer engagement is to be used as a metric for support of competition climbing I would suggest a good deal of rolling the pitch (I believe that might be the appropriate sporting/political metaphor) might be in order.

One of your more lucid post and I generally agree with your comments

I brought up the value of how much members do for the organisation, the intention of this was not to consider the leverage it gives the BMC with Sport England, it was to underline the value of what is put at risk when communication breaks down between the board and the organisation's volunteers (ideally this communication would be with all members, not just those who are active volunteers).

For Andy and Offwidth: Thanks for clarifying that Roger does attend Members' council meetings, my post was not meant to disparage his efforts (which based on his attendance at council are above and beyond the requirements of the role), but instead to clarify the difference between the roles as written.

I thought about raising the insurance question, but the Zoom connection was dodgy, and in any event the website is supposed to be up and running by Monday so I decided to wait to see what that brings.  If everything is back as it was before, and the link to adventurescover.co.uk is just a temporary patch (albeit an unsatisfactory and expensive one), then fine.  If the old products are to be discontinued and adventurescover.co.uk or something similar is the new offering then we have a problem. But let's wait and see.

Yes, and that's true, but what Paul seemed to latch on to was the credibility the volunteers give the BMC...

“There have been no compulsory redundancies” in bold. 
 

I’d be pretty angry if I was the Campaigns Officer whose contract had been terminated with immediate effect. This type of truth economy is one of the worst things about corporate communications. 

I'm worried that a smallish sample not controlled for similarly with BMC membership profiles or member interests is being used inappropriately. It's no surprise people don't know what the B!C does well, when it's sometimes hard to find that even on the BMC website; however, it's rare for dedicated outdoor folk, in my experience, never to have heard of the BMC. Hence, I don't believe our recognition is as poor as that survey data indicated amongst the dedicated outdoor community who broadly share the BMC ethos around access,  conservation and sustainability but are not currently members.

I'd defend Paul's view on this as I see it. We have strong potential for bids for a Volunteer Support type post in the BMC that would leverage BMC funding in the same way it is leveraged in support for indoor participation and competition as well as some other Sport England funded BMC posts right now that aren't within the GB Climbing team. We had a staff Volunteer Support post like that before and the success was significant: quite a few key volunteers were supported amd developed through that, including Lynn and I  becoming more involved in wider aspects of the BMC, after guidebook volunteering. Sport England would also gets 'more bang for their bucks' as the volunteer infrastructure is extensive and strong in the BMC compared to some other sports. It would be dumb to not bid for such funding that meets BMC and Sport England aims. I know all this as I've talked to Paul and others about it before.

If that was true I'd strongly support your view but we don't know the details of what happened in that individual's negotiations. I've forgotten how many restructures I've been involved with as there have been so many, as a leading trade unionist in Universities, but it was always the case that individual arrangements remain private unless the staff member wanted to go public about unfair treatment.

Sounds like we're off the hook for the Olympic qualifiers, so that could save a few pennies...

https://archive.ph/AaCr3

I'd understate what I really think about the IOC and stick to the fact that journalistic exposes have shown they are riddled with corruption and that 'sports washing' of really horrible regimes has very  much been part of that.

Note to self: "B!C"...... great Freudian slip there, given past naming issues!

I thought I should remind people that I too often get stability issues or get stuck replying to a deleted post and so sometimes end up frustratingly losing a reply after a quarter hour of careful work. I'm also a bit word blind and and my eyesight isn't what it was. Hence, I deliberately post here early, then do a quick edit (with a stronger incentive to ensure it reads as I intended).

If I’ve made a long post I habitually do a select all > copy so that it’s on my phone or computer’s clipboard so that if it does all disappear when I hit send I can do a quick paste to get it back.

While I don't know the exact details of the specific contract, as a general point based on my experience running a company, Contractors are employed normally to provide short term resources for specific tasks.  Contracts are priced to reflect the short term nature of the work and the 'uncertainty' of their tenure.  In simple terms they are paid more than an equivalent permanent member of staff in return for less certainty.

 It would have been difficult, and bad practice, to retain contract resources while permanent staff were at risk.

I don't think it's just semantics to differentiate between redundancies and terminating contracts.

More generally (to Simons question).  The role was to campaign and fund raise for Mend our Mountains.  There will be no impact on our access work or campaigns generally with the loss of this role. 

Clearly it will have an impact on MoM v3, but this campaign has not been anything like as successful as v1 and v2, which the same person ran, so the situation has clearly changed.  Bringing it in house while we work out why and then decide what needs to be done to reinvigorate the campaign, or to stop MoM and find a different vehicle to address the need, is a sensible decision.

Based on what was explained on Tuesday about the redundancy process I think the correct decision was made to terminate the contract, but that context and what you have raised about contractors being paid more to offset job insecurity are not necessarily going to be obvious to members if they don't have knowledge of this from a professional background. Possibly including a link to a good explanation of the redundancy process and consideration of who goes first (in a general sense, not specific to the BMC) would be helpful in communicating stuff like this in future? You have BMC members who are first year university students with no professional experience at one end of expertise and you have people who have professional experience in senior roles in both civil service and private industry, this kind of stuff ideally caters well to both (IE. Clear language and making context easily for those who don't have that knowledge of specific language relating to the topic in question and correctly applying the relevant language in a concise and clear fashion for those who do have that knowledge). This comes up lots for engineers as we often need to communicate with commercial people why we need to buy this thing that costs £100k+ to achieve a task without requiring them to have an engineering degree and 10 years of experience to understand why.

I know what you're saying, but I also think people in leadership positions have better things to be doing than explaining the minutiae of corporate governance to people like me who have no idea about it! I can use google, I don't need the BMC leadership team to do that for me.

Communicating with such a diverse group of active and passive audiences and trying to balance long and boring with short but open to interpretations or misunderstanding is very hard.

I literally spend hours of my life trying to decide when and what to say to people so that they understand why decisions are made and the constraints and variables that affect decisions.  It drives my wife nuts when I'm zoned out "in BMC Land" and more so when I comment and then get tangled into a "UKC debate".

I volunteered to do this role, so I am not complaining, but please don't think I'm not very conscious of the need to get things as clear or accurate as I can.  

Thankfully this does make things a good deal clearer, and on the face of it perhaps less detrimental to the central, to member's wishes, topic of access and conservation.

But...

First, to be clear I regard the BMC President with deep respect. He is without doubt a fantastic ambassador of BMC values and has an incredible capacity for working issues through, dedicating more time to such matters than I will ever understand where he gets the stamina from. I suspect that much of the improved communication we are now seeing will be a direct result of his intervention. (A result of his endless energy. )

Second, I'm thankful that what I think of as one of my biggest "wins" during the debate around the re-write of the Articles was that the President has a position on the board. Astonishingly to me at the time, the recommendations from the review group proposed the President did not have a seat on the board. This is the only directly elected by members position on the board. Other positions on the board are nominated by the board itself, with a follow up approval at the AGM. Sure, board members have to be BMC members, but this is ofttimes fudged by joining-up prospects as they get nominated.

And so Thirdly, I come back to my central concern - is the BMC run by its members for its members? Yeah, on the face of it the board are members. But they are not there, even in majority, because members wanted those specific individuals to represent them? They are there largely because the board has hand picked them. And why is this governance model in place? To satisfy UK Sport and thereby help release the 85% funding for competition climbing. Therefore is it any wonder that issues like this apparent conflict of priorities between competition climbing and access can arise when so much of the BMC agenda is indirectly beholden to UK Sport? Surely, as our representative body, the overriding agenda should be set by members?

I get that Andy, it could be as simple as saying "this is the result of a legal requirement" when the decision has been forced in a particular direction.

I definitely agree that pitching it right is hard and appreciate that you do your best to issue clear and accurate statements (also that you have a much more abrasive audience who are often less willing to give you a chance to clarify than I tend to have when doing technical delivery to mixed audiences).

You may have guessed that I tend towards too much info and have to trim back...

Yep, I think this is where I am at the moment.  I think that leaked comment that 'the members are the problem' (whatever its accuracy) is an indication of the basic conflict between a grass roots membership organisation and an elite sport governing body.  It's like the AA explaining to its members that it's going to be using some of their subscriptions to run Formula 1. 

News to me. Is Paul Davies said to have made that comment?

Sometime around 2017/8, when a change in governance of the BMC Board was being put together, following a big governance review (known as ORG), an alternative governance option was proposed by those who were concerned about Sport England influence. At the time, in my view, there were risks in this bigger than the previous year's Motion of no Confidence, especially as a lot of detailed argument was produced and fronted by serious minded people who could communicate well and who had a lot of backing in some big clubs. Worst case, a vote on one option against the other could have split the BMC. There was lots of debate in local areas, online and behind the scenes. By the time we had a big open meeting in Manchester a compromise position was produced that added protections to the main governance proposals, including a stronger Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the proposed new Members Council (replacing National Council) and the new Board Structure. This crucially included Reserved Matters, where the Board must seek Member's Council approval. I was genuinely surprised by this outbreak of compromise, but delighted, as it seemed we had somehow produced something that the vast majority of members would almost certainly back. Plus if there was any governance overstretch from anywhere, trying to block clear members influence in the organisation, members had genuine protections in the proposed BMC governance through their elected representatives.

The second option case still went ahead but it had lost most of its support after the compromise. I remember Andy Say's presentation of the alternative option in a debate at the 2018 AGM with Andy Syme presenting the BMC recommendations, including the new compromises.

I had watched these governance debates carefully alongside Lynn, my partner, as both being dedicated in preserving what we knew was good and essential in the BMC,  on behalf of members and the wider community,  in any structural change. She stood for Vice President and to our surprise won (in a rare contest position) and subsequently stood for President and as expected won (in a rare contested position), I'm now on Council (sadly elected unopposed). The BMC needs more people who know just how important the BMC is, to stand for governance roles, be they Local Area officers, Council representatives, Specialist Committee members, add hoc working groups or even senior leadership volunteers like the President and Board. It can't ossify when facing a changing world.

Part of the problems we have faced recently in the BMC (to be fair under some unusual circumstances and genuine constraints), is that communication between Board and Council was for a while less than ideal on a number of big areas of concern (that are now public). Council and Board are working on this, as they should under the MoU. The MoU certainly isn’t intended to have operational impact, but it does requires Council input on overall strategic and financial planning. This is how it should be in my view, in such a complex and important member's organisation. Sport England may not prefer such a model but we are a democratic organisation that forms its governance on membership AGM votes. I'd sincerely hope members continue to support the MoU model that came from genuine compromise on behalf of the membership.

Ah ha, the "MoU", the other big "win" I secured. But how did it help in the lead up to this surprise apparent conflict? It appears that it didn't... Is that right? And why not?

To be clear Members are not THE problem, and I have never heard that said by anyone, staff or volunteers. 

Members, or maybe specific members, can be A problem when they post things about staff or are being abrasive in comments, but if that was the view of the BMC I would have resigned long ago.

It is sometimes frustrating that people don't seem to recognise the commitment and time people (volunteers and staff) put into trying to do the best they can to balance the needs of our broad community or when people state things as facts which are not correct but as I said in the video even these unfiltered comments are useful.  Ultimately it's up to us to try and get better at explaining things so people don't have to guess or are more able and willing to check stuff before forming opinions.

We are a membership organisation and members are at the centre of every decision we make.  We will never please all the members all the time but the people who provide the majority of our funding and all our volunteers are NOT the problem.

I thought Lynn got elected as VP at the MoNC AGM at PyB and then to President (contested by Les Ainsworth) at the 2018 AGM where the two sets of articles were presented to the membership in Kendal (and John Roberts was elected to VP at the same time)?

Am I right in thinking that the ORG managed to do all of the surveys and prepare recommendations between July and January and then Andy Syme and Andy Say produced the Option A and Option B articles in time for the AGM? Looking back there was a huge amount of work completed in that time period!

Yes Spencer, from my side I averaged 40 hours a week for BMC during that period, on top of the day job.  Being President is a breeze compared to that

Remind me why Lynn didn't stand for a second term as President?

Firstly the MoU is nothing like your win, a large number of people worked on it. Also,  from memory, you opposed the main option with compromise changes to the MoU in the Manchester meeting.

I was personally disappointed more felt they couldn't support the compromise.  We need to be able to function in realistic situations. That to me included not throwing away the possibility to attract significant Sport England grants to do good work. Giving up on idea we would likely be able to defend our membership ethos seemed crazy to me.

In my experience the MoU does work... usually it's straightforward,  but when Directors face real world constraints (like dealing with contentious reports) under huge workloads in the middle of planned major change and then unexpected major events like the cost of living crisis, working out what and when Council can be informed of under the MoU can be slower than ideal, and can get overtaken by events. I've been involved in BMC politics for years alongside a few others in Council but I was seriously impressed with ordinary newish Councillor's responses: working to improve communications in the spirit of the MoU in a no blame manner.

No it was an aside in another thread that, frustratingly, I can't now find. It wasn't attributed to a named person and I'm not going to elaborate unless I can find it.

I think it was you that said it in the FB BMC Watch post

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2241207952632038/permalink/6316180491801410...

Mainly because the first term was too hard and caring about the organisation doesn't stretch to damaging one's health. Being President in times of change and major world events is difficult, as it was for all BMC leadership roles, and although she always tried her very best to meet her responsibilities as members' champion, alongside that of the responsibility of being a company Director, others sometimes disagreed with her. She always respected majority decisions.  After being reprimanded by Council on her responses to confidential internal Board disagreements. I would say company law was on her side,  the Chair backed her, the CEO backed her, the staff backed her and a big majority of members afterwards told her they still supported her but she quietly took 'the hit' as the BMC needed solutions not political fights. She wasn't the first and won't be the last. Rehan was publicly blamed for Climb Britain and it turned out he kept quiet about being the only one to vote against it on National Council.

I've made the points many times on forums  that a few Directors behaved very badly publicly, up to and including breaching their legal collective responsibilities (in particular one publicising they voted in an AGM against a Board majority position without resigning first). Hovever pressures were immense, and got worse during covid (quarterly Board meetings became almost weekly).

One strong message I took from that period was we should try more to avoid the tendencies to fall into 'blame and demand punishment' positions, and rather look to recognise mistakes happen and look to forgive where they are well intentioned and don’t breach serious rules, and then try to repair and move on more positively. Board Collective Responsibility has to be maintained under law and so it does mean some conflict of interest is built into the President's role. However I'd rather we had that than dilute the power to influence on behalf of members. Andy Syme has faced that pressure on genuine financial and strategic Board matters, and it's hard. Governance roles in a membership organisation involve doing the best we can for the membership.

As a Councillor who read the report I know Simon seems to have been misinformed (or has misconstrued what was said). What was said about BMC watch is confidential for now, but other Councillors can confirm my position. I've been clear in my view the BDO governance report was seriously flawed, especially for failing to triangulate and confirm some major concerns.

Slightly lost about what I’m being accused of here but yes I am given to understand that the BDO report expressed concern about Member influence on the Board presumably because 3 from Members Council sit on the Board and I can totally understand from an SE / UK Sport perspective why they don’t want that influence.

I’m also told that the BMC Watch Facebook was mentioned in the report snd criticised Directors for posting in the Group to explain things which from a Members engagement point of view is a positive thing to do.

For reference the majority of people posting in the group are BMC volunteers of one sort or another and despite appearances is pro-BMC or at least pro the BMC doing a good job and bring things to attention when it wasn’t. One of the reasons I started the Group is because a lot of BMC issues are regarded as tedious by UKC and UKB audiences and a lot of insiders don’t tend to post on the forums. Also I don’t know if it’s the case now but there wasn’t much in the way of communication and discussion between Area reps before NC/MC meetings and hoped this would provide a suitable platform.

So something seen by the Members Council is confidential to the members, doesn't seem like openess to me.

When is the BMC going to learn the lesson that they need to share things with the members otherwise they will fill the vacuum on social media.

Are they concerned about members taking an interest in the governance of the BMC, or are they taking issue with the fact that some people have used it as a means of harassing and abuse members of the board/ staff/ volunteers? I know I ask the odd awkward question and state my views strongly at times but I would hope that has never been interpreted as an attack on board/ staff members/ volunteers as the intention has always been to challenge and understand rather than to castigate.

There is definitely a mix of genuine criticism, discussion and curiosity about ongoing issues on there, along with at least one member who seems to have a personal vendetta, against at least one member of the board if not the entire organisation. 

If the report in question is significantly flawed I hope they were requested to provide evidence that they have fulfilled the scope of work they presumably received at the start?

Edit: Seen Simon's post now, surely if board members are willing to engage with members in such a group it should be encouraged? I could readily wind up sat round a table with certain board members and a pint and discuss the same topic over a beer during a meet (if they were up for shop talk after a day out), or it can be discussed in a more public fashion with people's ability to participate being determined by interest rather than by who they happen to know (very likely driven to be driven by where they live in the world of clubs). As long as the board members are confident putting up a boundary saying "that bits confidential at present, can't go there" and people don't hound them it seems that this could be used as a really useful tool for getting those who are interested to engage with governance and to allow those with no interest to stay away (there have been previous complaints on here of governance swamping other stuff).

The scope wouldn’t have been set by the BMC as it was commissioned by SE or UKSport or both so would be down to them to judge whether the brief had been complied with

I would still hope that whoever has paid for it asks them to do rework if it doesn't fulfil the brief!

Exactly. However, we are not SE/UKSport/BDO Governance wonks and even though I’m trying to put myself in their shoes I can’t work out what their objection is. 

Anyway, Andy Syme’s contributions were invariably helpful in the past and I’m glad he’s started posting on there again. 

Yep, Andy's openness is really useful as he normally does a really good job of tearing off the management speak and saying stuff in a way that makes sense.

I would suggest BDO came away with the impression that BMC Watch was 'a small group' that wasn't necessarily 'representative of the members' and not very positive (some parts definitely are not).  I try and balance responding when there is a genuine point I can help with and ignoring stuff when it is abusive or when I feel it's clear I can't improve the discussion.

The cooler tone of debates like this, albeit there are strong opinions and some differences, would not have tweaked their radar maybe? Broadly the recommendation I should not engage with members via BMC watch, or any other channel, gets a big fat NO from me.  

Edit: but that doesn't mean I will always reply to everything

I agree that certain parts of the group aren't.

I think you generally get the balance right when your hands aren't tied by other stuff (like the period between rumours starting and the resolution of restructuring process). If I were in your position I would probably have just blocked the worst offender by now.

Not much point having a president of a membership organisation who isn't allowed to talk to members, do they propose that you find a new climbing partner each time you persuade the last that being a member of the BMC is worthwhile? (I am being deliberately facetious as the idea of a volunteer president not engaging with members is ridiculous).

I totally get that you won't respond to everything!

Well said.

Agree with all those posts. I don't set what's confidential though. Mostly I agree with the boundaries set and try and follow them. The idea that no information on Council should be confidential (if that's what Steve implied) is just ridiculous.

Easy to hide behind the confidential label, a bit like the Conservative government and the covid papers.

Any thing that is truly confidential because it's about an individual etc can be redacted, but even this should not be used unless really necessary because sometimes it's appropriate to name people.

The BMC is suppose to be a member organisation and that means being open and honest with the members

That's as maybe, but the BMC is also legally an employer, and has statutory responsibilities towards its staff. As a member led organisation, members have a right to be informed, but that has to go with due and legal process - no different to any other employer.

No argument with that, but my point is that neither the Board nor the Council should use confidentiality to hide things from the members and shall be open and transparent at all times and redaction should be the exception, rather than the norm.

We went through this before back in 2020 and I had hoped that the lessons from that affair had been learnt.

Andy Syme's video is a truly excellent example of good communication. Personally I felt it was a climber talking to fellow climbers about an important and difficult topic. Well done. I trust this is the way the BMC will approach such difficulties in the future. So refreshing to hear somebody who is willing to apologise for some aspects of the way this was handled.

I also appreciate the time and effort he has put in to giving individual replies to some UKC comments. 

DH

There were similar membership issues back in 2014/15. One has to remember that the BMC is a "business!" This notion never seemed to be addressed by the board at the time. For some unknown reason, any talk of commercialism was frowned upon and regarded as going against the Council's "core values!" Well that's fine if there is a massive monthly revenue stream coming in ...which there never has been. We are also talking about employee's livelihoods here and their commitment to make the BMC a great place to work.

Back in 2015, the post of "Commercial Manager" was discussed, with the sole aim of promoting the BMC via other commercial organisations and retailers in order to boost BMC membership,  awareness of the work it does and the benefits to members. I set up a meeting in Sheffield between John Graham (the CEO of "Go Outdoors retail chain.. now part of JB Sports!) and the BMC CEO at the time. John has been a lifelong friend of mine and was also excited to promote the BMC via his 50+ stores using the idea of membership discounts on certain product lines etc. Go Outdoors also had a massive database of their 1,000's of customers via their online operation at the time.

The meeting happened. Then nothing.... Errrrrrr? okaaaaay. What's the outcome? I spoke with John a week or two later and asked how things had progressed? He too had heard nothing further. To the point where he gave up on the idea as it wasn't his duty to "drive" the proposal any further. That need to come from the BMC. To say the enthusiasm to generate increased membership revenue in this way was lukewarm is a gross under-statement! They had the chance to tap into 1,000's of new outdoor user email addresses and in-store promotion ...BUT, NO. The idea sank faster than the Titanic! 

Yes, sure the BMC has always had a fairly healthy bank balance and the finances are handled very well. But there seems this resistance to explore any new money-generating schemes. Sales schemes are not like making a pact with the Devil!! There comes a point where membership fees, insurance and book sales aren't sufficient.

Then came along Covid in 2019... decimated the outdoor industry with lockdowns etc. and here we are today... 2023 and the BMC restructuring...again (this is not for the first time!).

It came as no surprise when some members challenged the board with a vote of no confidence some years ago. Reading what's happened here over the last month or so also comes as no surprise. The organisation still refuses to evolve with the times. Fine, but when you're playing with staff's salaries and jobs that's a very bitter pill to swallow!  (JIM KELLY)  

The whole name change issue was handled really badly. I recall being at PyB on National Council when the idea for a BMC "re-brand" was initially being kicked around the room. At the time, the idea wasn't so bad...and the "CLIMB BRITAIN" suggestion wasn't overly being criticised by members in the room.

Again, if you read my earlier post today, this was all at a time when the likes of me, Brian Smith and Nick Kurth were trying to foster and encourage more of a business mentality in order for the BMC to generate more revenue and appeal to a wider hill, mountain and climb clientele! 

Action like this doesn't affect core values or traditions, as it appeared some senior board members thought at this time (or maybe it was unchartered territory and they were afraid to dip their big toe in!?).

Change (evolution) is good and, handled in the correct way, by the correct people, would have enhanced and taken the BMC into a new, exciting era! Sadly, none of this happened and those in positions to make radical change suddenly became "deaf ears" and those creative ideas were simply kicked into the tall grass!! It was so sad! RESILIANCE TO CHANGE.... and here we are now 10 years on.. same old BMC, same old culture, pandering to the needs of Government departments because it hasn't got the balls to decide for itself and address the wants and desires of the grass routes walker, mountaineer or climber.... they pay the salaries ... not the few, elite men and women on the competition circuit!      

Would this not have been the precursor to Simon Lee's Commercial Partnerships role?

I think that's more than a bit unfair Jim. The resistance to change was really in the membership, and you can't sensibly try to force change on them. It was always obvious to me that it was possible to have commercial partnership without selling out the ethos of the organisation. Good business leaders should know that and seek to ensure membership communication was top of the agenda and that partners supported our ethos.  Despite this view I'm far from convinced Go Outdoors was ever the right partner (they are certainly not now): it's not just about the money and marketing links,  it's not snobbishness either: these days conservation and sustainability are way more important and Go Outdoors don't sadly seem to discourage kit as being disposable (say tents for festival crowds).

I always saw Climb Britain as a really good sub brand for British comp climbing efforts (still run across Britain by the BMC on behalf of the other nations). I'm mystified to this day how National Council agreed it near unanimously without membership input being clear (Rehan, who got blamed, being the cautious one).

There was no tall grass. Massive change definitely happened after Climb Britain. The BMC started looking for a new governance model that would suit a more commercial outlook (ie a proper company Board with significant independent members). Nick stayed as VP and became President. The commercial manager happened. Commercial partnerships started and some still exist, even in difficult commercial times. The para team had excellent sponsorship for a while and sponsorship is  always being sought for competition and more.... just in a tricky economic times.

Oh yes, for sure. The detail within the MoU was most certainly the work of many people. I simply proposed the idea of having an MoU; it was an attempt to retain some means to assert member's input in to board business. I sincerely hope it is helping, hence my query.

But no, I did not oppose "compromise changes to the MoU" as it didn't have any content at that meeting in Manchester as I had only just proposed it be created. However, I did oppose the re-write of the Articles that gifted authority to the board and removed accountability to members. I did that because I feared that having a board exposed to vested interests* (such as securing UK Sport funding which is overwhelming linked to competition climbing) rather than focusing on issues directly dictated by members (inc. clubs) risks the sort of apparent conflict we saw here. Should matters that are paramount to members (e.g. access) be exposed to being trumped by more glitzy minority matters like competitions? I'm not saying competitions are important, I'm just saying that access matters to us all...

* Note, I refer to vested interests because: the likes of UK Sport funding has strings attached; some of it ends up paying salaries; the board have a vested interest in protecting, so far as they can, the organisation and therefore the staff they manage. Turkeys never vote for Xmas. So, I wonder if the board has explored, as I recommended, divorcing itself from external funding and its attached strings so as to provide an independent representative body for grass-roots activities?

A recycled idea firmly rejected by members during the motion of no confidence debate and then again in the governance option debates. Providing us with an organisation that would probably shrink slowly to irrelevance. There are of course risks in the other direction but I'd rather we face those, with significant additional assistance from the compromise changes to the MoU.

I'm no fan of Sport England as they currently function but they do ~85% fund staff in several parts of the BMC, not just for comps. Yes those staff contracts are linked to that funding but while the funds are there we can do more for less contribution from members subs. Worst case, we lose some grants but we are still better funded than a governance system that means we can't apply for any grants. I'd add there are risks with any Board format: the BMC was almost broken financially from an ethos in the other direction, when run by traditionalists who allowed the Rheged fiasco to happen.

I expect the 'politics' around Sport England will change when the tories are out in 2024. The BMC offers easy cheap wins-wins for public health gains, especially on the indoor side, and on better responsible access and protection for the outdoor environment of prime interest to members and voters. The planning for that is already happening in BMC lobbying efforts.

Pete

The issue we have now is not UKS/SE funding it is that membership fees don't cover the costs of the services we provide members.

I know it's slightly counterfactual which is never a great place to go but...

GBC costs us as members circa £260k (there is an exact figure in the Q&A but this is close enough for my point).  If we didn't take SE funding, we would need to fund some of the 4 roles they currently fund in the rest of the BMC (lets say 2 roles at £30k each including pensions etc etc). 

That leaves us £200k which sounds great but only if we gave up being NGB for all activities, stopped all funding of grass roots comps, etc etc.  If we didn't want to go that far then We would also need to fund the grass roots Comps that currently cost £100k, and our funding for para, skimo, ice climbing etc is currently £125k so now we are in a worse position than we started.  Yes we could, and should, find ways to make these comps self sufficient, but of course the ABC and others would no longer have any ties to the BMC as their SE funding has stopped so how much would they help us?

If we did want to be 'just outdoors' then I question how we engage with the majority of climbers who start indoors these days?  By the time they came outdoors would the BMC be relevant to them?  Would the independent body dealing with indoors and comps, who would obviously align with NICAS, ABC etc, hand these members to the BMC or might they be tempted to extend their 'offer' to the outdoors community too?    

There are millions of variants and options in these scenarios but I hope you get my point.

As I said in 2018 being a broad community is the best way for the BMC.  It definitely makes life more 'interesting' for people trying to balance the various constraints and requirements of all the groups but when we work our way through that we will be in a position where all of us contribute and all of us benefit from a bigger pool of money which can fund the things we want it to because we:

1. Have more members; hence more subs
2. Have the 'clout' to leverage money from the public sector (where membership numbers, demographics etc count)
3. Are working hand in glove with partners the rest of the sector so we can pool and share resources to meet common aims and objectives.

Maybe you think I'm too optimistic but despite being in the thick of the challenges I am still convinced this remains the way to go.  Giving up on NGB has superficial attractions but would IMHO long term be the death of the BMC, working through the problems now, however painful, is the right thing to do if I am to leave my Presidency with a feeling that the BMC has a long and sustainable future.

Andy

maybe at the point at which they decided they wanted to be involved with outdoor climbing, as many new wall climbers never will? Indoor to outdoor courses, information re BMCs access work in socials, guides and guide apps etc. etc.  

DAV research says around 10% of people starting indoors will go on to climb outdoors, the CEO of DAV said this means about 800,000 new climbers will be going outdoors in Germany within the next 5 years.  How that translates to UK climbers I don't know.

The indoor to outdoor courses are, and would be, delivered predominantly by the walls and clearly the 'independent body'  might not be very supportive of the BMC taking their members.  

I do think the BMC needs to better show its campaigning and access side, but obviously you don't need to join the BMC to benefit from all the access work we do.

As I say these are all counterfactuals so they are not predictions or definite risks.  My point is if there are 2 bodies then the BMC will lose members and potential members and that would not be good for us, and I believe not good for the sector more generally.

Personally I was relaxed about GBClimbing up to the point all the Access team were handed at risk of redundancy notices. This has been a wake up call.

Whilst the GB staff has exploded to what 11 staff now? (including safeguarding) and all these positions are protected because of SE/GB Sport commitments. The forecasting cock up is in part a smoke screen. If the forecast was ‘no growth’ at the start of the year then the cuts would just have been made earlier. If you could magically extract GBC there would be no projected deficit and no need for cuts. 

The original ORG recommendation of an independent subsidiary was overturned with the Board decision/fudge of an “independent department” which was never going to work as there was never the internal will to make it work. The finances currently associated with GBClimbing are opaque which makes me deeply uncomfortable.

I think it’s time to have a proper discussion discussion with the Membership about separating it out due to the financial, reputational and distractional risks GBClimbing that have become all too apparent recently.  It also means GBClimbing can develop its own vision and culture without BMC interference.

Its time to cut the apron strings IMO but having an independent subsidiary isn’t giving up on the NGB. However, if this option goes ahead there should be a constitutional protection against any future financial bailout otherwise there is less incentive for egregious overspend (a bit like the banks). I’d also suggest a supportive 3-5 year glide of reducing BMC subsidies to £zero to allow the subsidiary to plan and develop its own income stream and live within its means

A final point. I’m irked that I’ve been accused of scaremongering but really? “death of the BMC”!? - that takes the biscuit. 

Keeping it simple, would current membership revenue (at current membership levels) cover all costs related to everything other than competition climbing? 

If yes, then you have a surplus, this surplus is either your reserve or spare funds for competitions and what can be offered as matched funding. Hey presto, you balance your books! 

Yes, it's simplified, but when employing people and committing to spending it's wise to work off certainties first, unless you plan to put staff on zero hour contracts. 

You did seem to be scaremongering: you said three staff were going in ACES, now the process is announced one 0.4FTE fixed term contract is finishing a bit early and 0.3 of an FTE is being shared out; you said GB Climbing is costing us half a million, the reality seems to be somewhere around half that;  you exaggerated the growth of GB Climbing staff as one to nine, the reality was over 2.5 FTE to whatever it is now. Even if it was one to nine in FTEs the extra BMC funded increase in staff cost, given the 15% contribution would be maybe around 2FTE ......cf about 1.5 FTE in actual core staff increases in ACES (ignoring the MoM contract, which was also an increase) and after the restructure ACES is still an actual 1.2 FTE increase.

You failed to spot warnings around membership growth plans presented by David in the Peak area and all the parental anger on Facebook.

Your "cutting the apron strings" for GB Climbing is an opinion you always had. It's also always been an unrealistic one: who provides the 15% contribution if not the BMC? Even if a sponsor is found they can't cover base cost, as if they had to pull out the unit would collapse. I'd suggest GB Climbing would probably need to shrink by half or more as an independent unit with no BMC membership funding and would need BMC backing if the 15% can't be found.

Like our President I always felt the multiple cross-over benefits easily justified the BMC contribution to GB Climbing, assuming we would be fully informed on growth plans on Council. I was also reassured, during the GB Climbing set-up, by promises of a nominal 'ring-fence' and would like that promise being repeated, so that members know the team have to work within their budget (outside exceptional circumstances).

Council Reps supported the decision on the Ratho spend (with a couple of notable exceptions), but that was before the overall BMC financial difficulties were known.

I share your concerns that transparency isn't where it should be as yet, so we do know the relative BMC teams costs, and not just on staffing. My view is, from my knowledge of members, that this is a serious risk to the BMC if it doesn't happen. The BMC is too small to waste time on minutiae but some broadly fair proportion of overheads should be possible and certainly a fair split of expenses. I'm also focused on: pressing to continue to improve communication between Board and Council so we fully follow our governance and have no more Council 'surprises' or 'omissions'; plus, highlighting we really need to improve stakeholder communication and financial control in GB Climbing and ensure they start properly supporting grass roots under their remit.

Nothing wrong with indoors, comps, gb team etc.. but it should have grown slowly and steadily, run before walk etc.. instead it's gone balls out, big budget, lots of staff and is now compromising long standing core areas of the bmc, which the bmc has done so well on behalf of the majority of its membership for decades. If climb gb wasn't impacting other bmc areas, none of these threads would even exist. 

I remain annoyed with poor communication internally and with members, until recently.

However, the revenue hit was also commercial and some costs hits have been unexpected in a cost of living crisis; in contrast insurance income was maybe doing better than expected. None of us predicted the idiocy of Liz Truss and the turbo boost of the cost of living crisis (many friends of mine have cancelled memberships in 2023 of organisations they want to support). Even as someone who urged a conservative view on member growth in Council I thought a combination of reserves and project work adjustment should have easily avoid a planned worst-case course correction (at least until early 2023 when we knew the 2022 deficit was higher than predicted alongside economic data that just got worse and worse). There has been a big increase in company insolvency and quite a few membership organisations are in more trouble than the BMC. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Your 'balls out big budget' is mostly grant income, where members costs are 15% and the risks did have multiple levels of contingency.

When planning future works, employing people or committing to spending the bmc shouldn't be relying on membership growth or reserves as part of their budget. If you are using them as part of your annual spending budget they aren't reserves anymore. The cost of living crisis was growing 18months ago, Ukraine induced price hikes were 15months ago, Truss was 11months ago, the bmc was making poor decisions less than 7 or 8months ago, there is no excuse and no one else to blame. 

Anyone sensible knows that. It was why I was pressing on being conservative on planned growth numbers. I suspected some covid bounce back was flattering membership growth. Reserves are still within range but too close to minimum for my liking

Cost of living is hitting the middle classes much more in 2023... people who are more likley to be BMC members. Ask around your friends who is cancelling memberships of worthy organisations. Paul said the most serious member growth divergence from plans was recent, until then project work adjustment was enough.

In my view the BMC made reasonable if ambitious decisions, having no crystal ball. Other organisations are in terrible trouble... Guides selling all their big adventure centres, YHA selling 20 of its 150 hostels (announced this June).

Agreed, people are analysing their spending, they want it to have value, digression - I cancelled the kids disney streaming in March and they haven't noticed yet despite claims they watched stuff! Anyway, if the bmc promotes it's access work, buys crags when future access might be challenged (Kilnsey*), offers bespoke insurance for mountaineers then I'm sure those who can will remain members. For 99.9% of us GB climbing is a non essential nicety and seeing it comprising other bmc activities is only going to reduce membership numbers further.

What happens next year, will climb gb costs be lower, or if membership declines will access and other activities be stretched even further? Plans and projections need to be 3-5 years based on facts. 

*Kilnsey, up thread it was stated that after diligence it was considered too expensive(which is debatable), strange how such diligence hasn't been applied across the bmc spending plan.

I'd estimate approaching ten percent of members have a direct interest (the competitors, families, friends and devoted fans). Past AGM votes indicate the majority can take it or leave it as long as its not too expensive.

I think plans and projections were reasonable under your terms (just caught out a bit by unusual circumstances) and should always be in the future, or the Finance & Audit committee will raise serious concerns and Council will call out the Board under the MoU.

I'm not aware what happened with the BMC around Kilnsey has been publicly detailed. It was undoubtedly overpriced.

This is not really a reply to you Steve. Just another post after the last one.

Today I was at Awesome Walls Sheffield. The para-climbing team were training there before the World Championships in Bern. I could not see a single person from the BMC, and when I asked a team member they said that there was no one from GB Climbing in attendance. We appear to have spent close to £1m on comp climbing and there was no official there at this event? Especially after the fuss up thread! Also there was no one there trying to sell the benefits of the BMC in any shape or form, apart from the odd climber telling others that this was organised by the BMC and that the BMC main target was access and conservation.

What a massive missed opportunity for the BMC comps staff to show the members that they are involved and not just office bound, and another massive missed opportunity for anyone in the BMC to be there communicating with the indoor climbers how much good the BMC does and to make an effort to recruit new members to help fill the target numbers proposed by the board!

This is the lack of input that is not helping the BMC. As I said in the meeting, terrible (almost non-existent) communication.

As an afterthought, every 1st Wednesday in the month? Awesome Walls Sheffield advertises an evening of inclusivity (LGBTQ +) when all are welcome. Maybe the BMC should spend some of it's inclusivity budget on promotion at these evenings. At least sort out a small mobile display, with a video unit, leaflets, a simple but complete descriptive leaflet of it achievements, etc. I would give up one Wednesday a month to man the stand. I am sure there are others better able than me who would also help. This display could be moved around the various climbing walls, especially when there is an event like this weekends para-climbing training session or the youth comps etc!

I will leave it at that for now.

Hope everyone enjoys their weekend in the outdoors or the indoors!

I'd support all of that. Too many missed opportunities. Staff simply can't cover them all but there could easily be a volunteer rota run by volunteers keeping staff informed. I've done this with Lynn many times.

Another BMC foot-shooting issue is over caution on GDPR. Local areas can't mobilise members like they once could: to volunteer locally, to promot the BMC, or even attend meetings. A rigid control of local area comms centrally is just daft: local area comms could easily be compliant with opt outs and annual confirmation.

Maybe one day, say when we have a membership crisis, change on such things will be forced

According to the Annual Report, the total financial shortfall was £271k. The net cost of GBC is shown as £180k (the difference between costs and UKS/SE funding) and a further £90k can be attributed to Ratho, a total of £270k. In other words, if competition climbing is ignored then the core services are almost entirely covered by income, including membership fees, trading and SE funding (separate from the funding it gives to GBC). If as you say the actual cost of GBC was £260k then this suggests that without the support for competition climbing there should have been a surplus for the year. That might have gone a long way to covering the funded staff costs you mention.

I have consistently argued that competitions are an aspect of climbing and that in principle they should come under the BMC.  It follows that I must accept that competitions too are part of the services it provides to members.  However it is looking as if the costs are disproportionate and are presenting a risk to the BMC's financial sustainability. If that is the case, then it raises the question whether competitions should be run by a fully independent body.

What is particularly concerning is the apparent lack of financial discipline in GBC and the questions raised over how it is spending its money. Apparently it's not going to the athletes. If the BMC has to pick up any shortfall GBC may incur, where is the incentive for GBC to exercise proper controls?

Price or cost is relative. The bmc / its members could own Kilnsey forever more for less money than they are subsiding climb gb in one year. Is that not reasonable value for money, they can lease the grazing and it's likely the sssi will attract some agri support once the government pulls its finger out to sort the schemes properly. Future access will now be relying on the goodwill of the new owner. 

Didn't see that.  But I did say up thread that the BMC bid, but were outbid.

You could apply that logic to speed climbing!

You could indeed. I guess that’s why we benefit from a broad scope representative body.

I have serious concerns about how GB Climbing is spending their £1.2 million budget especially as none of it goes to support any athletes in attending competitions (other than possibly one or two on Olympic pathway but not sure). 
BUT I’ll speak in their defence on this one. Whenever I’ve seen the para team at AW (which is quite a few times) they’ve always had generous support from GBC coaches and BMC staff. And GBC were running a session for the whole senior team at the climbing works today pre world champs. And will be doing the same for the youth team on Wednesday. And at least two GBC coaches will be at the European Cup competition in Zilina today. So it may just have been that today they didn’t have the personnel to spread any further. 

I don’t state this to criticise you, just to be clear on some details as there’s obviously been some misunderstanding or miscommunication with yourselves regarding the GB Parateam event at AW Sheffield today. 

“From the BMC” there were…

3 x GB Climbing Coaches.
1 x volunteer coach who’s part of the GB Climbing “futures” programme (supporting & developing coaches).
1 x member of the BMC National Route-setting Team. 
1 x setter (ex-GB Climber and medal-winner)

1 x member of GB Climbing staff who gave up part of their weekend to bring team kit over. 

—-

I’m hugely grateful to Awesome Walls for hosting the event, and am also aware of the impact to the customers who were unable to access part of the wall today - the positivity, interest and support of the climbers that was shown by customers was brilliant and very much appreciated.

The athletes were focused on doing their thing (which they did very well!), whilst the coaches and setters were fully engaged with running the day and observing the climbers - no-one present had capacity to sell the benefits of the BMC other than by getting on with the job in hand.I suppose other BMC / GB Climbing staff in leadership roles could have been there, but team training events have very specific purposes which would be hindered if they were used as vehicles for marketing, internal political statements or active relationship management. I get the point, but it would not have been suitable at AW today.  

With regards to your points regarding LGBT support - I agree, and would happily staff the stand with you if the occasion arose. 

There are quite a few senior volunteers who are major supporters of the para team and I'm sure we could have got someone to the wall to cheer you on and talk about the good the BMC does, next to some banners, and maybe even recruit the odd member, without unduly disturbing your work. Such volunteering is an open door.... which is I think the supportive point John was making (Lynn and I know him wel).

absolutely - I just wanting to highlight to people reading this thread that it was a staffed event, and that the team member who’d said no GBC staff were present was mistaken / some info had been lost along the way - it wasn’t in any way meant as a criticism of John, or to suggest his comments were not supportive of us.

The team member said 'No BMC staff member was present'. Meaning staff outside of GBC. My point was that this was another missed opportunity to spread the word about the good works of the BMC. It all comes back to the quest for new members and how it needs to be more of a priority amongst the indoor climbing fraternity and outdoors people in general. Many people have no idea that the BMC even exists, and with our current communication levels it will remain that way. There were no banners, no information sheets, nothing. As far as I could see, as a climber/spectator, even the tee-shirts didn't mention the BMC! (I may be wrong on the last point, it may have been on the front and mostly one could only see the backs of people!)

I guess Jay was responding to this:

Aha - that’s my misunderstanding then - I’ve never really considered that I’m not BMC staff, but you are correct - the GB Climbing kit is not obviously linked to the BMC (the logo is there, but small and on the front). 
 

I think the objection is lilely to be because it amounts to communication to only a subset of shareholders.

In a conventional public company, it would be more than a bit odd to give information to some of the shareholders and not others. I'm speculating, of course, but the BDO team may have been more used to for-profit organisations.

Incidentally, I don't see the commercial partnerships role or Simon Lee's name on the staff list? What happened?

Hi John,

This was precisely my point back in 2015 when the Commmercial Partnerships Manager role was being debated. Firstly, the job title. It should have been "BMC Sales Manager!" The whole point of that position was to be "on the road "door-knocking" (AKA PROSPECTING!!!) and visiting outdoor agencies and other providers selling the benefits of grass-roots, BMC membership. 

Visiting the HQ's of GO Ape, Zipworld, Holme Pierrepoint Canoe Centre etc. etc. as many of their customers/ adventurers also walk and climb...plus, EVERYONE who buys a ticket usually provides their email address...so, the databases are enormous! And, of course, not to mention the 100's of fantastic indoor climbing walls across the nation! (which refers to your point about no-one present at Awesome Walls in Sheffield that day.... SELLING the BMC!!!)

In addition, visiting campsites and the major resorts in all the UK National Parks...tapping into that weekend tourist and "camper" market. And, let's not forget the Air B&B platform for the purposes of advertising! Then we have the retail chains such as Sports Direct.com, Decathlon, Blacks et al.

I disagree totally with Andy that Go Outdoors was not a "suitable" partnership just because they sell festival, pop-up tents and cheaper end outdoor merchandise!! (I'm sure most outdoor shops sell pop-up tents and fishing shelters!!) The sustainability notion is great but does that mean because an aluminum can doesn't biodegrade in 6 months time we should all stop buying Coca Cola!!!! It's not the BMC's position to start cherry-picking and "vetting" who is acceptable and who is not.... It's the customers of those companies that should have been the focus in order to generate membership revenue and try to avoid the current BMC job loss situation!! 

Brian Smith and I discussed this role on many occasions at NationalCouncil and put our ideas to other board members. The role was never envisaged as a 9-5 job, sat behind the confines of a cosy desk in Manchester sipping coffee and hitting a keyboard. It was very much the opposite and it appears that the role has now been terminated completely. Yes, post-Covid times are difficult but, this is when we need to stop being negative and blaming the pandemic .... a bit like the Tory Party still blaming Tony Blair & Gordon Brown for the state of the UK economy, 25 years on! We need a glass "half-full" approach...not half-empty!

I don't see the job listed any more or Simon Lee's name on the staff list!!??

It was a temporary contract which ran from 2016-2017 or 2018 I think? Simon arranged partnerships with Cotswold Outdoor and Montane, possibly some smaller ones as well, but I can't remember for sure. It was a Sport England funded post intended to help the BMC develop a greater degree of financial independence from Sport England (possibly this was specific to core activities). As far as I am concerned Simon did a good job that he should be proud of given that one of the partnerships is still in place (the other was withdrawn due to the company's marketing team having their budget cut very suddenly easier this year).

I'm pretty sure I met Brian at a midlands area meeting, as this line of argument seems familiar. Whilst I can see the logic in what you say and have nothing against a sales manager concept, we are a membership organisation who do care about sustainable retailers; in particular at that time the small independants many of whom were struggling. Time and time again when commercial and growth plans are discussed in democratic meetings it becomes really obvious that  most members feel prospective partners and members should boadly share our ethos.

Yes it was Brian that pushed for the role on the Board and got it approved. It wasn’t funded by Sport England though they did fund a report which had a number of suggestions including a rebrand…

I had a number of projects I wanted to pursue beyond the commercial partnerships that would have made or saved significant sums but got prevented from doing so which is why I resigned in frustration after 18 months. However, I did generate income several times larger than the cost of employing me during that period.

I wasn’t replaced after I left but now there is a Commercial Manager (Gavin Finch) on the Senior Leadership team who is responsible for Commercial Partnerships as well as Membership Services (inc Travel Insurance), Marketing and Communications. 

Thanks for correcting Simon, I was a bit hazy on some details but thought it worth clarifying that you did something quite similar to what Jim was discussing.

Thanks for your comments and yes I am proud of what I achieved. Whilst ‘selling’ the BMC to Commercial Partners for substantial sums of money was hard it was nothing compared to overcoming the internal obstacles the BMC threw in my way. 

Hi Simon,

"Prevented"? Why? Surely not because the pop-up tents were unkind to otters!!?

Following on.... yes, sadly, this is the case and a point that I have tried to infer here; that the organisation is fearful of change. It's all too easy to say we have to please the "members" all the time. What about being brave instead and trying to do something a bit more radical? Something that generates money for the BMC and protects jobs rather than shedding them and NOT blaming things like the pandemic and middle-class poverty on less-than-expected membership figures!! "Tails' wagging the dogs here" is an expression that springs to mind. 

The spending power is there if people perceive they are getting a good package and value for money by subscribing. For example "Junior Membership" for young climbers and walkers. A child-friendly package with things that appeal to kids... free kids gifts etc. I see nothing that is aimed at the 6-13 year age range that would entice their mum & dad to sign them up. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

There are many internal obstacles Simon. I recall one area rep (who will remain nameless) telling me that after putting (volunteering) in 3 years of hard work, commitment and effort, basically, the BMC give nothing back. I think this is something people learn but only once it's too late. As dedicated climbers and outdoor people, we love to be involved and enjoy the company of being amongst like-minded souls. Therefore, we always give 100%. As a National Council Rep for North Wales, I always carried with me the message from Area Meetings and was robust in getting my points across.... because I cared and was passionate about creating change and "believed" (at the time!) the BMC was the place I wanted to be. Sadly, the "good-will" dried up because I eventually saw that the "Manchester Mafia" would carry on regardless, and nothing we did or said would make one blind bit of difference. I'm desperately trying not to make this personal here so please accept apologies if it appears that way. As climbers, we are used to free-expression and I hope the BMC top-brass reading this try to understand, rather than take it as a personal attack on senior board members... which it isn't!  

I wonder if the poor sod who is now sitting in 'Jobseekers' sees it that way?!