There are a few queries regarding the BCA insurance that I we have problems with.
The first is that the membership forms are a tad confusing, it appears insurance runs on a calendar year basis, as in January-December although it implies elsewhere that it is financial year, which is it? This is also a problem as the club runs on a an academic year basis October-September and therefore people will be insured as members of the BCA in our club while not necessarily being club members. Assuming the insurance runs on a calendar year basis to insure our members for the full academic year will cost us £10, not £8 as we will pay £2 for September-December and then a further £8 in January. Is there any chance the university insurance can be adjusted to account for this?
With members of the club that are members of other clubs, for instance I have BCA membership and insurance through Hades Caving Club, do I pay any membership fees through the university club at all? The FAQs and insurance forms again contradict, from the FAQs I get the impression I should actually pay a non-caver rate of £5 (or in reality £6.25)?
Also as a university caving club we get many members registering that never attend a trip, training, socials or anything at all. As we don't know who these people are at the begining of the year is it possible to register every club member as non-caving until they sign up for a trip and then upgrade their membership to caver before they go away? I don't think this goes against the 'honesty' bit referred to in the FAQs section as every member that caves with the club will be insured as such and non-cavers will be insured appropriately.
[Additional to original email] I read on these forums that "guests* can cave insured as long as they do not exceeed 10% of total membership" rule may be abolished, presumably as to cave with the uni club you MUST be a member even if you only come once they cannot be passed off as guests*. In other words, the people that come once and never show up again, for the first trip can they be considered guests, and for any subsequent they should be insured properly?
On a seperate note the university has a "Why don't u" campaign, the idea is that people can try out a sport on the cheap before they decide to join any clubs, if we participate in this next year running a day trip for instance can they be considered guests and if they take out membership as a result of this day have their insurance upgraded?
*the technical term used in the insurance FAQs may not be guest, but I forget
What is the time scale between upgrading non-caving to caving insurance? For instance if a 'non-caver' decides (s)he wants to attend the weeekend trip at 3pm on Friday, if we post a cheque and a form at 3:15pm will they be insured (on saturday) even if the form won't arrive at the BCA until saturday?
[end of additional stuff]
Basically the club used to have an annual budget in the region of <£1000, we got this increased to £3000 this year due to equipment problems, we're hoping to get some money from the university to put towards insurance, but with 80 members this will be about £640 (possibly £800) and we're trying to cut costs with the non-caver/caver bit. At an estimate approximately 1/4 of the club is non-caving and about a 1/4 cave regularly. If we can't get the insurance down a bit we won't get insured at all as we are already covered for caving for free under the Students Union policy, albeit this doesn't include 3rd party land owner liability which is our main reason for looking at insurance.
