Who owns the 'club'
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Mod edit: post had previously stated in error that the Club does not have shareholders, correct post as follows:
By way of clarification, there is no specific list of Shareholders. As you may have seen in the Articles, a Shareholder is the holder of one or more shares in the capital of the Company, which consists of £100 divided into 100 shares of £1 each. The Caravan Club of Great Britain & Ireland (1935) Limited was the shareholder, but the Executive Committee holds these shares in trust for the benefit of members. Voting members comprise both Full members and Shareholders.
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Thank you Rochelll - some clarity at last. Even though they are refered to a number of times in the "Articles" they do not exist, and therefore the share capital neither.
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It is perhaps worth looking into the structure a little more closely. It was stated that:
"The Executive Committee (all of whom are long-standing members) are your elected representatives, i.e. the company directors, and are not paid,"
The statement is Not quite correct when it states that they are your elected representatives. Some are co-opted. If you look at the link below the 2 most recent members of the Executive Committee have that stated in their potted biographies.
https://www.caravanclub.co.uk/about-us/committees/So you want to become an elected member of the executive how do you go about this? This is where it gets a little more interesting. Because the rules state the following requirements for eligibility. (From Articles of Association).
"27. Appointment of Directors
27.1 Any person who is a Club Member and a member of the Club Council, who is willing to act as a Director and is permitted by law to do so, may be appointed to be a Director:
27.1.1 by Ordinary Resolution, or
27.1.2 by a simple majority of all the Directors entitled to attend and vote at any meeting of the Directors.
27.2 No appointment of a Director, whether by the Company in general meeting or by the other Directors, may be made which would cause the number of Directors to exceed any number fixed as the maximum number of Directors.
27.3 Subject to Articles 28 and 29 a Director shall hold office until his retirement in accordance with Article 30."
I read this as you have to be a member of the Club Council before you are eligible to be a member of the executive council.
So how do you become a member of club council. The club council has since 2014 consisted of the following:
"A further revision in 2014, intended to maintain and continue the high quality of Executive Committee members, saw the balance of Club Council amended to the:
a. Executive Committee (up to 15);
b. one representative appointed from each Division and Region (total of 10);
and
c. up to 30 Nominated Members.Further more the following is stipulated:
23. Nominated Members. Club Council comprises 30 Nominated Members, who are nominated by the Executive Committee and appointed by Club members at the AGM. As stipulated in the Bye-Laws, only Nominated Members of Club Council may be appointed to the Executive Committee. Nominated members, as with the Representatives detailed in the next paragraph, serve on Club Council until the AGM that follows their appointment at which point they retire, but are eligible for re- appointment.
24. To facilitate the identification and recruitment of suitable members to be considered for nomination, the Executive Committee established a Nominations Committee in 2014. In terms of suitability for nomination, the Committee looks for active Club members, who possess the breadth of skills and experience required by an organisation that turns over in excess of £100m per annum across a range of different products and services and who are able to put forward views that are representative of the breadth of Club membership in a well-considered and coherent manner. There is no guarantee, however, that a Nominated member will go on to serve on the Executive Committee or one of its subordinate Committees."
This implies that the members of the club council who are from the divisions and regions aren't eligible to become members of the Executive council. Further reducing the pool of eligibilitySo it would seem that the only people who can be elected are those that have already been elected or those that have been tapped on the shoulder and asked to join because they are the right sort of chap. It is a rather self perpetuating which is which is why the Executive Committee appears to consist currently of 13 members, all of whom appear to be white, only one of whom is female and another identifies himself as gay. Strikes me that this is a bit like the Chinese elections you can vote for who you want as long as it is the communist party.
Sorry for the long and boring post but I would guess, unlike 90% of members. I do want to be a member and not simply a customer. I worries me that the organisation could go the way of other mural organisations like Building Societies when they thought they weren't modern enough. Not a single one survived demutualisation.
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I worries me that the organisation could go the way of other mural organisations like Building Societies when they thought they weren't modern enough. Not a single one survived demutualisation.
I think you're wrong there Boff, the Nationwide did not demutualise if I remember correctly, and is still a Building Society.
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When I'm invited to vote as a C&CC member I can do so online and I choose which candidate to vote for
The last election documents from this club suggested that I could authorise the chairman to vote on my behalf but I could not see how to indicate how I would like him to vote. So turning up in person to vote would be the only way to vote against a candidate but as there is usually only one candidate and the chairman votes on behalf of countless absent members change seems unlikely
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One of the primary duties of the Directors / Executive Committee, the name can be used interchangeably as it the same people, is to appoint the Director General of the club and to delegate the day to day running of the club to that person, currently Mr Nick Lomas.
The Director General is a professional. This is quite correct because the caravan club (anything else is just a trading name) is a large organisation, I would suggest at least as large as any UK manufacturer and a complex organisation. As such the Director General deserves and should be well rewarded for carrying out his job.
I believe that products, such as the insurance, travel, sites Should be offered, at a price that is sustainable rather than maximising revenue,as services to the membership I fear that there is a risk that the professional arm of the club could see the membership as little more than a database, mailing list of largely affluent customers to whom they can sell the services
It therefore must be the a role of the Executive Committee and I would say the main role to ensure that they don't allow the aims of the Club to be subverted. By that I mean it does not allow the proffesional tail to wag the dog.
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Voting members comprise both Full members and Shareholders.
I shall look forward to expressing my view at the ballot box on the actions that have been visited upon us - a dysfunctional website/IT and 'rebranding' to name the two latest examples.
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I was referring to those building societies that chose to to demutualise waving promises of cheques to their members as incentives to vote the "correct" way. By coincidence I have had a Nationwide current account since the mid 80's so I am very aware it is still a mutual building society.
The parallel I was trying to draw with the Building Societies. Is that they were seen as old fashioned boring organisations. That needed whizz-kids to cause a step change ( where have I heard that vacuous cliche recently I wonder?)in their performance. The result was in a few years and sometimes it seemed like months they managed to squander both reserves and reputations that were built up over generations.
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Had an excellent letter back from the Club and to clarify in very simple terms:-
The executive committee are the shareholders and they hold them in trust for the members. If the club were ever to go along the same lines as the RAC, or go bump, then surplus funds with be distributed to full members over 5 years standing.
Full members are those who pay the £49 per annum, that is literally the ones who pay the fee. So for example, a husband and wife on a joint membership, only one would be a full member, that is the one who pays the fee.
All full members are entitled to attend and vote at the AGM.
So in fact, we (£49 fee payers over 5 years of membership) do own the club.
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More confused than ever, on the one hand we are being told we are only club members with basically no control at all and now being told we are full members because we pay our £49 fee🤔 Think I will go and lie down in a dark room again.
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Hi everyone,
Hopefully the answers given have cleared up any queries. If you need any more information you can look at the ‘Articles of Association’ and ‘The Club and how it works’ on the website.
At the request of the OP I will now close this thread.
Thanks
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Basically the members own the club and it is run by an elected committee. The problem is how do you get a committee representative of the membership. The present system relies on mostly members being proposed by the DA's and then others being brought in by the committee. It is not truly representative although, I have no doubt they are all dedicated to the club, and do their best for it, but they are not truly a cross section of members.
I suspect even the committee would agree a wider based representation would help, but just how you get a good balance of members who are not involved in other areas of the club, is not one I can see an easy answer to.
You do get a chance to vote for the committee each year but in general they are just names to most of us and the choice is very limited so we have no actual influence.
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