The response to our new management structure has been mostly positive. There have been a few questions which have been answered below. Further questions and answers will appear later this week. If you have a question, simply fill in the form below.

Q1. The club appears to be doing well, why change? If it isn’t broke don’t fix it.

• At the moment we don’t have a Secretary, Assistant Secretary, Development Officer or Welfare Officer. The club cannot function without someone completing the secretarial tasks. The secretary role is considered too demanding for one person so this plan is an attempt to spread the load among other officers. The General Committee is too large, with potentially near 20 members all having their say on each issue, as a result, meetings are too long and it is often difficult to reach decisions.

Q2. Why so complicated?

• All we have attempted to do is compartmentalise the different functions of the club into four key sectors. This should simplify the administrative process and reduce duplication of effort by spreading the load. All of the roles listed are essential, we’re not generating extra work for the sake of it.

Q3. If you can’t fill the committee places now how do you suppose you’ll fill the extra roles?

• One person will probably still need to cover more than one role, especially at first. At the moment it’s not unusual for one member to cover two, perhaps even three of these roles. We have around 150 outdoor members, the committee feels we should have enough members for each role to have a separate member. Many of these roles, in isolation, are not terribly demanding.

Q4. In my previous club a committee of six or seven ran everything, why do we need nearly 30?

• Your previous club had less than 60 outdoor members, we have well over twice that number, and over the past 10 years, the amount of routine administration required has increased exponentially, with Health and Safety and GDPR, in particular, adding a significant burden.