I'll have a go at explaining a little bit about the workings of BCA. I spent five or six years as an officer/representative at BCA and it took at least that long to even start to understand what it was and how it worked.
The BCA is a national federation of bodies with an interest in the underground. It struggles to understand whether that means it is a governing body to the sport or not. It has struggled to answer questions of whether it represents all cavers and those with an interest in the underground or just those who are members. It has struggled to define a vision for itself despite efforts trying. It has a long complex constitution supported by a more detailed manual of operations. It has some totally worthwhile aims and guiding principals but how much effort it spends on achieving them is moot.
In my experience, at times, every word and nuance of the constitution holds the utmost significance and importance. This is usually when a particular group or individual want to delay or undermine efforts to modernise and change. At other times the constitution is not so gospel.
There is an executive of three, a chair, secretary and treasurer. They are tasked with the administrative business of the association and operate under the direction of the national council. They should work within the framework of the manual of operations. They are permitted to extend the executive but seldom do and consequently they have far too much to do and often a 'backs to the wall' mentality takes hold.
The national council can have around 40+members. Only half of these have a vote but all may have an influence.
There is the three executive officers
Representatives from the five regional councils
Two elected individual reps
Two elected club reps
Representatives from the constituent bodies such as BCRA, CDG, CHECC, BCRC, NAMHO, William Pengelly, Scouts, Cave instructors.
There used to be more officers with a vote until recently but these have been changed to convenors of working groups and the vote removed. However there are still a lot of non voting roles and appointments who are part of the national council. These include,
Working group convenors for C&A, Training, QMC, IT, Youth, CROW, constitution, etc
Various other roles such as reps for UIS, FSE, QMC2, Insurance, membership, training admin, library, newsletter, safeguarding, etc
Overall it is a veritable juggernaut of and organisation carrying a very small load. If you were to start from scratch today to design and build a modern representative or even governing organisation for caving and the underground world it would be very different to the one we have got I reckon.