To all BCA members

At the 9th June BCA AGM a motion was submitted which proposed changes to our constitution. This motion was passed at the meeting, and so BCA procedure requires this to now be put to a ballot of all members.

In this ballot, all Group Members (including clubs and constituent bodies) will have one vote in the ?House of Groups? and all Individual Members (including CIMs and DIMs) will have one vote in the ?House of Individuals?. Both ?Houses? must achieve 70% support for the motion to pass.

The full proposal, including the exact details of the proposed constitutional amendments can be found here (appendix 9, page 28 onwards):

https://british-caving.org.uk/wiki3/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=about:documents:general_meetings:2019_agm_agenda.pdf

The discussion/vote on this from the AGM itself can be found here (26.2, page 19 onwards):

https://british-caving.org.uk/wiki3/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=about:documents:general_meetings:2019_agm_draft_minutes.pdf

The ballot will commence mid-October (exact date TBC). This timing has been chosen partly based on availability of key BCA volunteers, but also to coincide with when student clubs and expeditions are mostly back in the UK, to try to maximise participation. The closing date will be midnight on the 30th November 2019. We expect to be able to announce the result no later than the 11th January BCA Council meeting (and maybe much earlier if postal returns are relatively few).

If the BCA has your email address you will receive your ballot by email which will contain a unique ?voting token? to use with our simple and intuitive online system. This may go to your junk/spam folder so please remember to check there. If you are not sure if the BCA has your email address, you can check by requesting a login for BCA Online:

https://members.british-caving.org.uk/users/request_login_details.

If the BCA does not have your email address you will receive your ballot by post. You can still use the ?token? provided to vote via the online system, however, postal returns will also be accepted.

It is your responsibility to ensure the BCA has your up-to-date contact details. If you believe your details to have changed since last membership renewal, or if you wish to provide the BCA with your email address (to save us the not inconsiderable cost and effort of postage) then please email membership@british-caving.org.uk

More news will follow in due course.

British Caving Association

Hello everyone

Many of you will have received an email over the past few days with the text from my post above announcing the upcoming ballot of BCA members, which we had hoped would be able to launch at the end of October.

This email was partly intended to be an announcement of the ballot (and was meant to go out earlier this month but couldn't due to email issues) but it was also a useful test for us to confirm that the new email system is working and the bounce rate is suitably low.

Due to these email technical issues there is now a slight delay and we are now hoping to launch the ballot by 13th November, with a closing date of 11:59pm on 13th December (i.e. a one month voting period). This should still enable the results to be announced early in the new year. We are sorry for this delay but be assured that several people are putting in a lot of work to get this up and running.

For now we recommend reviewing the proposal and considering how you are going to vote

Watch out for an email arriving in the next few weeks containing your unique ballot ID and a link to the online voting system. Check your spam folder periodically. For our ~2000 members who have not provided BCA with an email address, you will receive your ballot ID by post to the address you gave upon your last membership renewal.

Matt Ewles
Secretary, British Caving Association