Bluebirds Trust AGM

[Jonty]

What happened is not something the Trust board would have thought they would have had to tackle and I think they have dealt with it as best as they could have done. Moving forward, lessons learnt and measures put in place to have full visibility of accounts. What else could be done? This episode should not detract from what a Supporters Trust sets out to achieve and that is to attempt to strengthen the influence of supporters over the running of the club they support. With that in mind, we have a fans liaison rep sitting on the board and i think a good relationship between the club and Trust (use of shop at ground, shared matchday raffle) PC does not need to do any of this. I would hope that if PC ever looks for additional investment then the Trust can be part of that, however small in the scale of things.

[barrowfan]

(and, I have to say, the revelation that Trust members get advance dibs on cup tickets along with Season Ticket holders)

Probably explains why the stand was sold out in the early hours of the morning!

[Bluebirds Trust]

All members who have supplied an email address should now be in receipt of the 2015-16 AGM minutes and accounts. Any member who has not received these should first check their spam folder and any old accounts you may have used when you joined the Trust. If you need to inform us of a change of email address, or the expected email has not arrived, please email us on info@bluebirdstrust.co.uk and these will be updated and re-sent.

Members without an email address will receive printed copies of both documents in the post over the next few days. There are 50 or so such members at the present time, so it is not a small amount of printing and posting.

[Richard Ingham]

The following are entirely my own personal thoughts and may not reflect the views of others on the Bluebirds Trust board.

As secretary, the delay in sending out the minutes and accounts was entirely due to time pressure in the run up to and over Christmas. Having spent countless hours since the summer in trying to sort out the problem with the accounts and especially in the days leading up to the AGM, I needed a complete break from doing Trust stuff for a couple of weeks otherwise not only would I have burnt myself out, my marriage would have been at very real risk.

At the point I felt able to return, the ticket details for Rochdale were becoming known and there were a number of new membership queries to deal with and process daily, which had to be the priority so people could get tickets.

While some people will disagree with the approach taken, I remind you that all of the board and myself as Independent Secretary are VOLUNTEERS and as such the Trust cannot always be our main focus.

We are always in need of further help and people to join us as volunteers to help run the Trust and improve it.

We are NOT a clique, a closed shop or any other term people have used to describe us. We would welcome in anyone who comes forward with an offer of assistance, sadly very few people have done so up to now.

As Secretary, I especially would welcome some help in dealing with the admin side of things. Ideally I would like to give up the role and hand it on to someone with more time, experience and someone who would ideally be based in Barrow or the Furness area. I know that in other Trusts, the role of Secretary is often undertaken by semi-retired or retired people, sometimes shared between two, so it may be that that is the way forward?

There are many other areas we know we need to expand and improve on and the feedback we are getting from the surveys are proving that the areas we feel need improving such as communications is what you feel too.

A major re-think of the priorities (and how we tackle them) moving forward as Hoss, Steve and others have suggested up thread is essential, and will be taken in the New Year as the survey results emerge in full and show us the ways in which you as a membership and the wider fan base want the Trust to evolve.

This cannot happen successfully though unless new people step forward and offer their help. We are close to the limits of what we can achieve with the current number of people involved so new blood is vital in taking the Trust forward.

I believe that every single member of the Trust can play their part, regardless of location, skill set, time constraints etc. There are loads of ways you can help, some almost immediately.

For example we need help on a matchday, selling programmes and raffle tickets as we always need more help with this with our existing team working shifts and therefore are not always available.

We could really use someone to read the Supporters Direct and Football Supporters Federation newsletters and websites etc and feedback anything that might be useful for us to know about. Although I give these a quick once over in my inbox, I rarely have time to digest these fully and could well be missing out on stories we could be getting involved with or schemes that we could adapt for the Bluebirds Trust.

Our monthly email newsletter has been a way of getting our message across this season but is usually thrown together and sent out in a rush. Some help in managing/producing/improving this would be more than welcome.

We have a couple of guys who drop off membership cards etc around the town, but more help there would be needed. If we had a group covering small areas we could reduce the amount of money we spend on postage and make better use of the money we receive.

Most of us use social media and you will be more than aware, we as the Trust are not effective as we could be on this at getting our messages across.

There will be countless other things you have ideas about. Please let us know what they are, but even better, help us to deliver those ideas.

Any volunteers?

[Steelworks End]

.As secretary, the delay in sending out the minutes and accounts was entirely due to time pressure in the run up to and over Christmas. Having spent countless hours since the summer in trying to sort out the problem with the accounts and especially in the days leading up to the AGM, I needed a complete break from doing Trust stuff for a couple of weeks otherwise not only would I have burnt myself out, my marriage would have been at very real risk.

At the point I felt able to return, the ticket details for Rochdale were becoming known and there were a number of new membership queries to deal with and process daily, which had to be the priority so people could get tickets.

While some people will disagree with the approach taken, I remind you that all of the board and myself as Independent Secretary are VOLUNTEERS and as such the Trust cannot always be our main focus.

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Richard. It is easy to forget the difficulties in helping to run an organisation such as the Trust, which must be undertaken on top of - but as a necessity come second to - people's home lives. And the issue over the accounts must have added an extra complication. Keep up the good work.

[DIXIE]

I would like to know what Paul Casson`s plans are for the future stability of the club, it states no long term plan to sell shares in the club and if they were the trust could not afford them!
I thought his intentions were to give the community a share in the club`s future or is this another broken promise?

When the trust was formed Paul Casson made a big play on this, i`m not ungrateful for where Paul Casson has now taken us but i fear if he loses interest or god forbid becomes unwell in the future where does that leave us?

You surely cannot expect PC to sell shares in the club, to a trust group who have no money.
As for PC losing interest, are you serious?
I am pretty sure PC has his business interests covered if affected by illness or worse.

[McMark]

.As secretary, the delay in sending out the minutes and accounts was entirely due to time pressure in the run up to and over Christmas. Having spent countless hours since the summer in trying to sort out the problem with the accounts and especially in the days leading up to the AGM, I needed a complete break from doing Trust stuff for a couple of weeks otherwise not only would I have burnt myself out, my marriage would have been at very real risk.

At the point I felt able to return, the ticket details for Rochdale were becoming known and there were a number of new membership queries to deal with and process daily, which had to be the priority so people could get tickets.

While some people will disagree with the approach taken, I remind you that all of the board and myself as Independent Secretary are VOLUNTEERS and as such the Trust cannot always be our main focus.

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Richard. It is easy to forget the difficulties in helping to run an organisation such as the Trust, which must be undertaken on top of - but as a necessity come second to - people's home lives. And the issue over the accounts must have added an extra complication. Keep up the good work.

Agree must seem like a thankless task at times!!

Only seen a small part of the duties Richard and others carries out by observing at a few meetings and doing my little bit on match days, the team is very small and I'm sure any help would be truly appreciated.

[Si_Nichols]

the priorities (and how we tackle them) moving forward as Hoss, Steve and others have suggested up thread is essential, and will be taken in the New Year as the survey results emerge in full and show us the ways in which you as a membership and the wider fan base want the Trust to evolve.

This cannot happen successfully though unless new people step forward and offer their help. We are close to the limits of what we can achieve with the current number of people involved so new blood is vital in taking the Trust forward.

I believe that every single member of the Trust can play their part, regardless of location, skill set, time constraints etc. There are loads of ways you can help, some almost immediately.

Very good post that Rich.

I am no longer a member of the trust as I decided that as an out of town supporter then potentially the NSC should offer me more so after the first year I decided to lapse my membership but continue in the NSC. However the NSC I believe faces similar issues at present with an overall lack of direction and I do not believe really offers anywhere near what it could. Certain recent events and how they were dealt with have meant that I have resigned my membership from the NSC also and I know I am not alone in doing so.

My suggestion will probably not be welcomed by some but I think both organisations would benefit and be far stronger if they joined forces. Actually where the trust is strong, the NSC is generally weak and vice versa so I believe that they could help each other out a great deal. As an example of this I think the accounts side of the NSC has generally been very good, there are some great money raising seasonal competitions and Darren produces an excellent regular newsletter which has won an award recently. On the flip side the NSC is weak and slow on overall decision making, does not offer much useful for its members, fails to organise events and get-togethers and does almost nothing on social media (probably all areas where the trust is strong and of course there are others)

Of course it would also mean more current committee members to share workload straight away and maybe now is a good time to review the objectives and future of both the Trust and NSC. Only my opinion all of this of course but I wonder what others might think?

[audigex]

How was the decision made without the trust members being consulted first?

Someone needs to resign

Nonsense. The board are there to run the trust: that's the idea. They don't have to run everything by the members.

The person who was originally involved is no longer involved with the board.

[K-Man]

Disaree John.

When Casson came in to take over, the Barrow board got its members to vote. People should have been able to voice their opinions/concerns and then act accordingly.

[The Real Slim Azza]

There wouldn't be any of this uproar if the trust board had been up front from the beginning.

[Puffing Ron]

I stopped posting some time ago. However in light of recent posts on this subject , and further to Richard's post, I thought I should make an exception and offer some thoughts.

I was responsible for the legal advice given to the Trust Board regarding the matter of the unreconciled transactions. I use that description since anything beyond that is a matter of opinion or speculation, which brings nothing to a resolution of this issue. That advice was subject to considerable examination and questions by the Board through numerous emails and discussions. It was also the basis on which the matter was presented at the AGM, described in the relevant Note to the accounts and considered by those members who attended.

I am a corporate solicitor and company secretary of many years' standing. Even so, given the importance of this matter I also sought further advice from my own network. This included the financial director of a large listed company, a commercial director with a multinational engineering company, a litigation partner in a leading City law firm and , for completeness' sake, a recently retired detective sergeant. I also benefited from the wise counsel of the Independent Examiner who was unstinting in offering his expertise and experience. As a matter of courtesy we briefed the Chairman and Chief Executive of Barrow AFC. Our briefing was received with reciprocal courtesy. Whilst we did not solicit this, given the separation of Trust and Club, both gentlemen expressed their understanding of how this matter had arisen and their support for the proposed way forward.

I note that, subsequently, that advice and the action taken in reliance upon it, has been variously described as " awful", " a shambles", " bottling it" and " laughable". All of which is a matter of freedom of expression. A number of posters clearly take that freedom as liberating themselves from the constraints of the relevant tenets of criminal and civil law, the differences between the two, the importance of proof, the law of defamation and the role of the police as something other than a debt collection agency. So be it. For myself, none of that is particularly bothersome - as other readers will appreciate from their own experience, it is considerably more troubling to have one's judgment challenged by people who know what they are talking about.

What is more bothersome are the suggestions that the Trust Board did not take this matter seriously, that " they were not bothered ", that the action taken was driven by personal considerations, that the Board was complicit in some form of " cover up", that there was some better course of action which the Board choose not to take or that the Board did not seek to act in the best interests of the members.

None of that is true. Not in the slightest.

This issue was quite unexpected, utterly unwelcome and greatly challenging. Of course it should not have arisen , but the Board had to deal with matters as they existed, not as they might wish them to be. From the outset the Board, all of whom are volunteers, took this extremely seriously. Hundreds of emails and countless hours were spent by the Trust's officers ( Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer) and fellow directors in identifying the transactions in question , determining the amount in issue and deciding upon a course of action. In doing so , their overriding objective was to protect members' interests and to restore the Trust's financial position to that which would have been the case if none of this had happened.

The results of those efforts have been that :-

the existence of the unreconciled transactions was identified by the Treasurer through the Trust's own auditing processes for the financial year in question ;

the number of those transactions and the resulting sum has been ascertained ;

through businesslike exchanges with the former treasurer ( who has consistently and resolutely denied any wrongdoing on his part - as is his right ) a commitment has been received to reimburse the entirety of the monies in question ;

that commitment has been expressed in a legally binding agreement which, following a substantial initial payment and subsequent monthly payments , is intended to ensure full reimbursement during the course of this financial year, such that this issue is cleared by the next annual accounts ; and

as previously reported on this thread by the Treasurer, accounting and bookkeeping measures have been taken to prevent recurrence.


Of course it would have been best if none of this had been necessary. That said, as matters now stand, almost half of the monies encompassed within the unreconciled transactions have now been repaid to the Trust, with a binding agreement covering payment of the entire remainder. This has been achieved without a single penny being expended on accountants' charges, legal fees or court costs.

This forum is a platform for the free expression of views and should ever remain so. Nonetheless, dare I suggest that, on the basis that the full amount in question is duly reimbursed to the Trust and reported on in the next accounts and AGM, this matter might gently be laid to rest. Amongst other advantages this might allow time of the Trust's directors and members to be more usefully directed to looking forward and addressing some of the points raised in Richard's recent post and already the subject of constructive comment from Si and others. I for one shall play my part by posting no further on this subject or, for that matter, on anything else.

However, this seems unlikely to happen given that someone has thoughtfully provided the Evening Mail with a copy of the AGM minutes. Again, so be it. I leave it to the readers of this forum to form their own view on the motivation behind that step, the benefits it might bring to anyone and anything and the degree of further enlightenment which may result.

[Alley_Cat]

Cheers Puffing Ron.

A very sensible and professional post

[mrsenario]

Excellent post and clarity of the situation

[boyliegladbach]

So all is ok because it's getting paid back.