Cycling UK Forum

Thanks JT, that is the system. The 300 or so complaints logged by CTC will all come that way, I get involved in very few.
(and thank goodness much less than I used to). I came from that sort of QA framework in business too.

But members being able to express their concerns to me is the canary in the coalmine.

That's partly why I want spokespeople like Simon to tell me if they think there is a trend, because he can give me a name, date and problem and I can dip in and out to see whether the complaint was even logged correctly.

Kevin

Simon its easy to say you'll give up on processes, but behind the scenes they are working for you.

You know full well that back in 2004/5 our complaints level was over 2000 per year, mostly caused by membership. we've been quite public about that, and about what we had to do at the time in terms of membership contractor. You've also been around at AGMs where you have seen the number come down to around 300. The vast majority of that change is people taking the problems and ruthlessly driving out the errors that repeat, the ones that drive members up the wall. Its a team effort involving staff, contractors, Councillors, member group registrars, club secretaries - anyone who can spot someting that needs fixing so we can track it down. And its grindingly boring, its tracking back over many complaints to spot trends and errors.

I know we have been criticised in the past for ignoring the forum, I'm trying to put that right to some extent, hence why I am posting here. But it is not a medium for dealing with detailed complaints processing. You know we need your complaints inside the system, not here on the forum.

Thanks for your positive comments about the membership team, I know they will appreciate it.

regards

Kevin

Here's a thought.

CTC has a complaints system. If you don't like the answer you get from a staff member or contractor you escalate it to someone - that would be me. kevin.mayne@ctc.org.uk

I'll go look at it, you're entitled to that as a member. Just give me some specific details so I can look up the record. I know the IT system can do this, but I have no recollection that the membership chaps have ever raised it as an issue, and nobody has ever told me. So for the moment nothing will be done. But it can be. Really no need to wait five years Simon.

Or you can winge on the forum, and nothing will happen.

Just a thought.

Best wishes

Kevin.

Just to clarify for Regulator and Gaz - last year at a similar time of year 770 people responded to a similar survey, including a higher proportion of member groups than to any previous survey in the 13 years since I have been involved with the club.

The Council will of course consider the number of respondents as a material factor but we do have higher percentages of MG volunteers and committee members who give us their email details than we do the wider membership so I am fairly confidenet that we will get a robust response.

And this work has been under consideration for months with those who said they wanted to help shape the policy involved since much earlier in the year.

Regards

Kevin

There will be an emailer in the next couple of days to all registered MG officials and volunteers.

These threads are just part of the process.

Regards

Kevin

CTC Council is now beginning consultation about the motion to the AGM about who can ride with CTC Groups.

There are also some other consultations about member group policies.

Some threads to carry on the debate here have been created in the Member Groups section of the board.

Thanks

Member Group Consultations 2011
CTC Council has invited representatives of Member Groups to form a task group to look at current and future policies that relate to the running of our groups. To inform the work of those groups we are asking your opinion about some current topics.

We have set up this discussion area about these issues on the CTC Forum because we expect there to be questions and comments that cannot be collected via a survey or to allow members to chat about the issues raised.

The Member Groups’ Forum can be found here.
viewforum.php?f=17

To make specific enquiries please email Julie Rand on groups@ctc.org.uk

All surveys close on 31st July 2011.

Survey 3 is for Ride Leaders.
CTC Council would like to know your opinion about who you would like to welcome on your rides. Opinions differ as to whether CTC rides should be open to non members or members of affiliated groups. Some people believe our rides should be open to everyone. Some believe our rides are a benefit that comes with membership. What do you think?

It should take about 5 minutes to complete this consultation.

Before completing the survey please read the background here
http://www.ctc.org.uk/resources/Resources/CTC_Member_Groups_ride_leader_participation_survey.doc

To access the survey click here. http://survey.ctc.org.uk/index.php?sid=92851&lang=en

Member Group Consultations 2011
CTC Council has invited representatives of Member Groups to form a task group to look at current and future policies that relate to the running of our groups. To inform the work of those groups we are asking your opinion about some current topics.

We have set up a discussion area about these issues on the CTC Forum because we expect there to be questions and comments that cannot be collected via a survey or to allow members to chat about the issues raised.

To make specific enquiries please email Julie Rand on groups@ctc.org.uk

All surveys close on 31st July 2011.

Survey 2 is mainly for Member Group Committees.
The subject is to urgently consider issues with the current membership structure for Member Groups and the way Member Groups are funded by the CTC Council. Proposals aim to deal with known problems within existing arrangements and bring forward recommendations that can be implemented at Member Group AGMs in autumn 2011 if groups wish to change any of their existing arrangements. Member Groups that wish to maintain current arrangements will not see any changes.

Before completing the survey please read the background document at http://www.ctc.org.uk/resources/Resources/Member_groups_structure_consultation_document.doc
To access the survey click here
http://survey.ctc.org.uk/index.php?sid=39342&lang=en

Member Group Consultations 2011
CTC Council has invited representatives of Member Groups to form a task group to look at current and future policies that relate to the running of our groups. To inform the work of those groups we are asking your opinion about some current topics. The survey page and background information will go live next week at http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=5435

We have also set up this discussion area about these issues on the Forum because we expect there to be questions and comments that cannot be collected via a survey or to allow members to chat about the issues raised.

To make specific enquiries please email Julie Rand on groups@ctc.org.uk

All surveys close on 31st July 2011.

Survey 1 is for all CTC Member Group officers, organisers and ride leaders.

It is a repeat of last years’ Member Group survey with the same questions so we can tell how well we are supporting you. It should take about 10 minutes to complete on line. To access the survey click here http://survey.ctc.org.uk/index.php?sid=17656&lang=en

I think this should be in the Member Groups section of the board so if it moves suddenly go look for it there, its not a matter of public policy or campaigning.

Within the member groups section this is the sort of discussion we really welcome, because it is about using the collective experience of members to build policies that encourage people to ride bikes. A group is currently looking at our policies and if anyone wants to make suggestions about updates to the way we support particiption by young people please send me your thoughts.

However when things become difficult we have complaints procedures which I oversee on behalf of the Council, helping all parties through the process where possible. I will always tell you to start your complaint at the local level. In this case if you write to me I will then ask the Committee of the group involved to consider the complaint.

If you are unable to reach local resolution then the procedures allow you to escalate your complaint outside the group which again I will help you with.

However what I cannot do is discuss the progress of a complaint on the forum.

To contact me use kevin.mayne@ctc.org.uk

Kevin Mayne, Chief Executive.

Re Errors in documents:

It's got my name on it, I hold my hand up, the buck stops here. I apologise to those who have been confused just as I have apologised to the Council's Agenda Committee on whose behalf the documents were prepared.

Frustrated, annoyed, apologetic - yes all of those, not least because we spent a lot of time on this material and we know the errors were corrected at least once, but amendments got cut and pasted back into older versions. I am advised that the error in the date on the agenda paper itself is over-ruled by the calling notice issued in December which is required by our standing orders and that we are required to decide whether any other errors are likely to be material in affecting people's ability to express their views and reaching a clear result. We may not know that until we see the scale of turnout and margin in May.

Procedures - making sure every document is seperately checked, having staff trained to proofread, yes all of those, and clearly they were not enough, we will have to look at it once again.

Missing documents, queries, comments, suggested additions to FAQs - all please to members.matter@ctc.org.uk which will be checked by myself or Carol McKinley, our new Operations Director, or you can call the main switchboard and they will find us.

Kevin Mayne

To explain Greg's point Karen, the CTC accounts in the magazine are the CTC "Group" accounts, with all the elements such as Holidays and Tours, the Charitable Trust etc consolidated. At the consolidated level transactions between group companies cancel each other out so are not visible.

The Trust accounts are in a different format and as they cover a lot of work done in CTC's name a decision was made some years ago to include an extract in the CTC report.

I tend to agree with Greg that there may be limited value in going through all the arguements again about what the donation pays for, those with an interest in the detail have been through all the detail before and you can if you wish go back to all the financial FAQs, or I'll take some extracts from the papers tabled at Greg's last committee meeting of last year before he resigned where again the Council discussed around £1million of work that was commissioned by the Council from the Charitable Trust by agreement with the Trustees, for a donation of around £700,000. Its the same model we have had since the Trust was founded.

Specifics on this years numbers can be given via [url]members.matter@ctc.org.uk[/url] and as promised we will add FAQ material if items come up regularly

regards

Kevin Mayne

You will find an extensive set of materials on CTC campaigning as a charity here

http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=5366

Any further sugegstions of material you would like added are welcome

Kevin

An update on the process and some general commentary on posts since I last posted.

We are looking out for three main issues:

Source data that was incorrect - something in the membership record. This poll is a very useful test of the data because it presents a one off chance to correspond with everyone in a single format.
Something wrong with the processing - like a magazine not received.
Something wrong with the papers - such as the printer's fault.

With the first two items we are also comparing this to the usual monthly figures triggered by renewals and magine mailings so we can see if anything unusual has happened. As published elsewhere and reported at AGMs we are currently running at around 300 complaints per year from the day to day membership and magazine mailing activity of the Club. (Circa 300,000 mailings per year)

In voting terms we need to be able to count every recorded instance in the process and at the end a decision can be made as to whether any issues might be considered material in the final count. Clearly turnout and magin will be an issue, numbers we just don't know yet. We are engaging external advisors to attend the count and oversee the procedures and representatives from the petitioners will be attending the count. They will be able to see and judge for themselves.

What we have so far:

Just over 64,000 members eligible to vote.
Approximately 20,000 are deemed by our regulations to have waived their right to an individual ballot paper in the magazine, either because they have decided not to receive a magazine or because they are at a shared address as a family or household member. Those opting out of the mag get a personal ballot paper mailed to them.

A problem with family members with 4 or more members was identified very early because of the printer error. 2104 families were sent a replacement form. Their forms can be identified before counting starts and only one valid form will be included in the count.

Additionally 61 members have contacted the returning officer to ask for a replacement form of which 27 were asking for replacement of a lost or spoiled form. The inbound votes will also be checked for these names to avoid duplicates.

Of the remaining 34 contacts there are a mixture of reasons for asking for a replacement but they do include underlying data errors, mainly around extra household or family members or missing household and family members. This is particularly useful to see how widespread this is because in some cases the individuals seem to have been successfully renewed despite the household link not apparently working correctly. However this number is not outside the trend for a normal mag mailing which suggests no underlying systemic problem.

In some cases there may be a duplication, for example John W, because we wouldn't know about the error in his family data until after the printer had mailed his replacement form.

The ouststanding item now appears to be whether the replcements arrive in a timely manner - I know we are still getting pre-Christmas post at home so again we will have to compare the numbers to the turnout and margin.

If anyone has not contacted Returning Officer Peter Jackson by now can we ask you to do so very urgently as time is short to replace and return any voting forms.

Yes the number includes people saying "not had ballot paper" or "not had magazine"

Kevin