A short while ago there was a thread on here that highlighted that perhaps the Group and Individual reps on BCA council were not as easy to contact as they could or should be.

I approached each of the current reps and they now have short bios on the website with how best to contact them.

Because the BCA auto-post bot still has a few bugs I'm manually posting the news articles that highlight them on here.

(As a side note, it's definitely worth keeping an eye out on the BCA website as I'm hoping that articles will be posted more regularly on points of interest, and it would be great to have the membership engage with them. If you follow the BCA twitter or facebook accounts, the auto-post bot is working over there)

https://british-caving.org.uk/meet-the-group-representatives/
https://british-caving.org.uk/meet-the-individual-member-representatives/

Hopefully at least some of you will find this helpful, and if you have any suggestions for how BCA can increase it's transparency and ability to engage with the membership, please feel free to message me (or any other rep or council member) and hopefully we can move forwards.

Just a little bump on this as I posted it at silly o clock last night and don?t want people to miss it

Hi Josh

This is useful contact info and a good progressive move towards transparency, so well done.  It does throw up a few questions and I hope you're happy to receive a few comments from me. 

I've never really been sure what the difference is been the two reps.  Mostly in my experience on council, reps just expressed their personal views.  Often, reps were a group rep one year and an individual rep the next, some just recycling themselves to stay on council and vote.  Has anything been done to address this? 

It does look rather odd that someone who is a member of several clubs and/or organisations is representing 'individuals' rather than 'groups'.  Some clear BCA definitions and guidance on these roles would probably help, not least for those who volunteer to take up these roles. 

Finally I was a little bemused by your own entry which seems to confuse both the group and individual rep roles

I was voted onto council in 2020 into the group rep role but also as the youth and development officer. Having been a member of clubs in somerset, yorkshire and non-caving regions, I?ve got experience of the way views on access, techniques and more can vary region to region. During my time as an individual rep I hope to develop the youth offerings from the BCA, supporting the existing routes, and developing further ones into caving.

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Haha this is why you don't type things up at the early hours of the morning. I'll get my section updated, I am a group rep!

As I understand it, technically the group reps should be there representing the views of groups, that is clubs (and access control bodies), and the individual reps should be representing the views of individual cavers. I agree entirely with you, and through lack of historical transparency it's difficult to judge whether previous group/individual reps actually are actually voting in line with those they should be representing. I'm hoping that with increased transparency in voting that very soon minutes will all show exactly who has voted for what, and when voting for group/individual reps it might be useful to look back at someones voting record (similar to how theyworkforyou.com shows the MPs voting records). I think at the most recent AGM the option to vote to not fill a role on council was a good option if you don't think the candidates would represent you appropriately.

They should also act as an access point to council for individuals/groups if their issues don't better fit into one of the officers roles (probably very few issues that don't to be honest).

I guess the weird thing with my theory about how that should work is that individual cavers can vote for who the group reps are and vice versa, so maybe I know nothing.

I agree that this could and probably should be a lot clearer. There is a vacant page within the manual of operations that realistically is what should govern the role of an individual rep should do. Interestingly there isn't an equivalent page (blank or otherwise) for group reps.

I hold dual roles so that I can represent young cavers with a vote: Y+D officer isn't a voting role on council, there's an argument to be made that it should be, there is also the argument to be made that council is already too large and unwieldy and fewer voting roles might not be a bad thing. (This paragraph will almost certainly derail the thread)

At the most recent council meeting Andrew Mcleod was co-opted by council as the convener of the constitution/manual of operations reform working group, so I may just nudge this one in his direction, and someone within the team can put together a proposal to amend this ready for the upcoming AGM.

No problem at all with the comments; clear, calm and open conversation is the best way of getting the BCA to progress, and I encourage people to challenge me (and other council members) on things where they can (in a reasonable and calm manner please!).