Today, 1 December 2015, the Review Report is due for completion and delivery to the WSRA Trustees and all the signs are that this will happen. We understand the Review Chairman is due to meet some of the Trustees today.
Members will know that the Trustees, on behalf of the membership, initiated the Review following the membership’s approval of a resolution, successfully called for by a large number of members, which required a review of the WSRA to be held. And members will expect the Trustees, on behalf of the membership, to ensure the Review processes and content of the Review Report have been correctly followed. This might take a day or two, or perhaps longer if there comes a need for clarification.
We at WSRA+ trust that the Review processes and outputs will meet both the requirement of the resolution and the terms of reference clearly laid out by the Review Chairman.
And so, here we are at “completion day” and the members now await publication of the Report. Quite how and when it will be published is not clear. We could be waiting for a postal delivery to each member with perhaps an online version at the same time or, hopefully, beforehand.
Whatever happens next, we hope all members will join us in a huge vote of thanks to the Review Panel – Brian Fraser, Simon Stretton, Ryan Pope, Chris Austin, Andy Forster, Martyn Snell, Neil Barrington, led by Robin Coombes. – for their hard work in reviewing the future path for our Association.
UPDATE 1 December 2015 – The Review Panel have issued this statement:
The Association Trustees have received a copy of the Review Report by the promised date of 1 December 2016. The Chairman of the Review met with a number of the Trustees today in Bristol. The Trustees had comments on several issues of factual accuracy; this is an entirely normal part of the process. The Review Chairman agreed as due process these must be considered by the Review Panel and any error of fact corrected, a final version of the report will be submitted as soon as practically possible to the Trustees and not later than Friday (4th December 2015). The Trustees gave their commitment that the Report would then be immediately published in full as required by the Resolution. It is understood that the Trustees will then seek comments from the membership on the Review Report and its recommendations.
WSRA+ 
Hear, hear.
To mis-quote Winston S Churchill (?), this may not be the end, but let us hope that it will prove to be the beginning of the end of all the recent troubles.
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The Coombes report will become one of the defining days in the history of the WSR. Lets hope that it will be remembered for bringing the whole WSR familiy togeather and to resiging the unpleasentness of the last 3 years to history. Unfortunatly I dont think this will happen but I live in hope.
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I sincerely hope it will but based on past events I have my doubts. The motion was very carefully worded by Robin White, and as I understand it this means the Trustees have no option but to distribute in full to every single member, and to do this within a reasonable timescale say a month.
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Bad form it seems to reply to my own post but I see that Frank Courtney is already implying that the report may not be distributed as the motion requires on cost grounds. Surprise surprise!
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It does seem that everybody will have to wait a little longer. What I do know is that the review panel is already on the case. I am sure that they will not hold the process up.
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I have now had it confirmed by two independent barristers, one a QC, that the terms of the motion require the Association to send the report to ALL members without undue delay. Already Frank Courtney is suggesting otherwise. I wonder why?
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I would suggest that there is no hidden agenda here, Peter, simply an attempt to avoid spending unecessary money. If a workable system can be set up to allow members from opting out of receiving a paper copy, then that makes sense to me. I , for one, dont need a paper copy if I have a link to a site where it can be downloaded, and I suspect there are many more members like me.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, the Reform Group do have an email address for a considerable number of members. Maybe distribution of the report could be the first co-operative venture between the Reform Group and the Trustees?
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The problem is that to do this the WSRA would have to mailshot all the members to establish if they wanted a printed copy or not. That would cost money as well. Then there would be all the administration costs of doing so that I doubt the staff could deal with within the required timescale. An efficient organization would have planned for the matter in the last six months and put a notice in the journal so that they could have been ready to deal with it now. If the WSRA are concerned about costs why did they spend many thousands of pounds on the abortive freehold bid and expensive corporate lawyers trying to justify their actions on other matters?
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It really would be quite simple.
A special-purpose e-mail address for folk to send a message to with their WSRA membership number and to say. ‘Don’t send me a paper copy as I have received. / accessed one already’.
And wide publicity of the facility wherever the Review is available.
Robin
And then a little bit of admin (by a group of ‘free’ volunteers) to take them off the print list , allowing printing and postage costs to be saved.
Robin
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I honestly do think Frank is trying to be cost effective. If people can see it on line then there is no point in sending a paper copy. However the point has been made by the reformers to Frank that while it may be OK to opt out of a paper copy nobody should have to opt in to getting the report by making a request for it. From an administrative point of view it might just be easier to mail it to every member.
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FC is not the only Trustee. I don’t trust the rest of them to do the job correctly.
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We’ll just have to wait and see. To be fair they don’t have the “final” issued copy of the report yet. Let’s worry about this next week when we might know more.
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Agreed. It seems a bit odd that Frank C is concerned about about the possible cost of mailing out the report when the Trustees spent money like water on mailouts prior to the summer agm/egm,they sent 2 (or was it 3?) items individually which could all have been included with the mag sent just a few days before. Not forgetting the massive legal bill incurred totally unneccesarily at Bristol court.
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The implementation plan should not depend on the content of the report. Every member must receive it and that means in its entirety and unaltered in any way. I have email addresses that I have not touched in years and for those I use, there are spam filters which block messages sent in bulk. E-mail is ineffective for distributing a mandatory report in bulk.
Call me Mr Cynical but it would be easy to fabricate a list of emails from people claiming that they do not need a paper copy if you already have their details. The process must be totally above board and be seen to be totally above board. Alas, history has shown a rather casual attitude to complying with legislative requirements. The 1,000 word statement for EGM2 was doctored.
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Exactly! Not cynical but realistic. The underlying problem that almost everyone knows is the fact that all trust in the Trustees has long since evaporated. We all remember “Shredgate”and the way in which the WSRA* destroyed the property of the reform group.Something similar must not be allowed to happen with the report.
[* The WSRA+ team hope Peter agrees to the replacement of his original words with the more generic “WSRA” rather than identify the person. We are confident the message remains just as valid.]
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Brians point about spam filtering is a good one. If the trustees are going to use e-mail to alert members to the report and tell them where to find it on the internet then they need a protocol that avoids the e-mails going to spam.
Perhaps it would be simpler just to allow members who have read it online to e-mail the WSRA and say “no paper copy needed”. I have to say the more I think about this, it might just be easier to print and mail it to all members. It all comes down to the difference in cost between printing and mailing 4500 copies and some lesser number. My experience tells me that the fixed setup cost is often the larger component of cost on small print runs.
Let’s face it we don’t need a glossy publication like the journal for this.
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Trying to pick out odd addresses from the 4,500(?) members list when people have said they don’t need a copy would be a horrendous task.(Are the addresses to be printed on the envelopes or will they use sticky address labels? – even worse!)
One other thing is that there is no way of telling how many or how few will opt out of a paper copy, or how many non-members will want a hard copy, so the full amount will have to be printed anyway, just in case everybody wants one. I can’t see everybody waiting another month while members are given notice of the opportunity to opt out and then given time respond, then the office staff would have to sort them, then…
Simplest and quickest, One copy, each member. Automatic printing, folding (and even envelope stuffing if the printer can do) Envelopes addressed from a data file of current members and in the post. Electronic copies posted wherever and office or distributor contact details publicised for any non member to request a hard copy. Sorted
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The membership database is an access file a simple query will be able to sort into who has and who has not supplied email addresses and the computer told to print labels for those who don’t. There are willing volunteers who will stuff envelopes and stick labels I cannot see a problem
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I would support Rodders’ comments. The Reform Group were supplied a copy of the membership database as part of the effort to call the EGM that passed the resolution to have the Review on the first place. It is especially easy to search by membership number and not much harder by name. If we assume 20 seconds per record to delete those who have declared that they have received the report already, this would only be 6 to 8 hours’ work to make a 1,000 deletions, or two people for half a day each.
Rodders is also right to say there are plenty if volunteers who would be happy to help, for the good of their Association.
Robin
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It’s the time taken for members to be notified tyhat this option is available and then for them to respond that would delay this – and do you know everybody’s e-mail address is up to date? Why complicate and delay matters? Just post a copy to everybody.
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It has it been more than 4 months now since the Motion for the Review was passed at the 2015 AGM. So the Board has had 4 months in which to plan and prepare for the eventual publication and distribution of the Report. All the necessary information /could/ have been included in the recent Journal. Or have they only just ‘woken up’ to this issue?
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“He had a year to do it in
So brushed the thought away,
A chap with half his energy
Might do it in a day.”
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The full piece is even better
He had a year to do it in
So brushed the thought away,
A chap with half his energy
Might do it in a day.
A year! ‘Twas too ridiculous,
As everyone should find;
However, he would get it done
And have it off his mind.
But not today. A few months hence would suit him better still;
Meanwhile, a far less irksome job
Might occupy his skill.
He would not let the matter pass
Entirely from him, No;
And doubtless he might take it up
In, say a month or so.
He had six months to do it in!
For six long months had flown;
Well, why should that alarm a chap
With talents like his own?
The job, whence once embarked upon,
Would soon be rattled through;
However, he would think of it,
In, say, a week or two.
He had three months to do it in!
“Oh brother!” was his cry;
The thing hangs on me like a weight,
Each day that passes by.
Let’s see: three months? Ah, that’s enough,
But, just to clear the doubt,
Make arrangements for a start
Before the month is out.
He had a week to do it in!
And care was in his glance.
“It’s hard,” he cried, “that flight of time,
Won’t give a chap a chance!”
He still delayed, the swift week passed,
As weeks will ever run,
And though a year was given him,
The task was still undone.
John Lea in Boys Own Paper (Volume 37 Issue 3, January 1915
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I don’t want to be controversial but the original resolution does not place a requirement on the trustees to provide non-members of the Association with printed copies of the review. I don’t think it reality atters as it will be easily available in the public domain once published.
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