Cycling UK Forum

Hi everyone,

Some time ago I identified the problem that since the last restructuring of committees that, short of full Council, there was no where for member group issues to go. Fairly informally some have been discussed at the event sub group - after all many of the same people are involved at national and local level.

Following a discussion at the last events sub group meeting I raised the matter on Saturday and I think we now have a resolution. Amongst other things we will now have a forum to discuss things like start up grants. Start up grants have been available for as long as I can remember and I helped allocate many of them as chair of the former DA and Events, then Cycling Development, Committees.

Several CTC Councillors will testify to the fact that I have often complained about the tiny rebate to local groups. That goes way before the 2004/2005 restructuring which concerned me. Solving that is one reason why I support re-integrating the CTC, giving direct control of all of CTC's activities back to members and their elected representatives and registering CTC as a charity. In all of the flack it's often forgotten that the move to solve the problems caused by the current hybrid structure did not come from national office - it came from "backbench" CTC Councillors. It does look as if the payment to local groups situation will soon be improved - I hope so.

Believe it or not I don't spend all my time thinking about the charity debate. Apart from a full-time job and the rest of life I am secretary of a local group which organises well over 120 rides a year. The "fun" bit of cycling is very important to me.

One of the problems with the resolution that Simon quotes, as I'm sure he knows, is that it was too presciptive in some respects but also missed out several other issues that local groups had raised at that time.

Many see some of you on the Stevenage Circular or Emitremmus? You'll be very welcome.

Best wishes,



JIM