Cycling UK Forum

A rack on my beautiful Commencal?! I don't think so.

I've just started MTB'ing and the first time out I had my D-Lock in a Camelbak along with tools and spare tubes, etc.

I don't mind too much on the MTB because I'd rather use the Camelbak for drinks anyway because a frame-mounted bottle is just going to get covered in mud and [inappropriate word removed]. Also I don't ride for as long on the MTB. Finally MTB's are more desirable to thieves so in more need of a hefty lock.

That would be great. I don't really have any experience with formal committees and that so some moral support would be nice.

Neither of my local councillors can make it although one of them isn't really that local anyway.

An inaugural meeting will be held on Sunday February 28th at 10am in the Ridgeway room at Longthorpe Village Hall.

The purpose of the meeting is to elect a committee for CTC Peterborough.

The meeting will last no longer than one hour and (depending on the weather) there will be a short group ride afterwards.

For full details please check our website: http://www.ctcpeterborough.org.uk/agm

Simon L6 wrote:I really do think that before channelling National Office stuff on to this forum a bit of research might be a good idea. Why not speak to CTC Peterborough to see how much support National Office gives to new groups? Why not read the Minority Report?

Oh - and District Associations are still with us.

I can tell you about CTC Peterborough to save you the trouble of asking. Some background first, which in my opinion says a lot about the attitude toward Member Groups.

A few years ago the secretary of Peterborough and South Lincs DA moved out of the area and "handed control" to another member. This guy hadn't really wanted to run the DA and in time group activity dwindled, AGM's weren't held and no reports were sent back to National Office. N/O's reaction was to downgrade the status of the DA to an Informal Group and allocate all 150 or so members to CTC Cambridge. No one was notified of this.

When I first thought of trying to re-start the group my time was limited and I didn't want to commit to re-starting a group for a small amount of potential members. I contacted the then Member Groups officer, explained the situation and asked how many members there were in the Peterborough area. That's all I wanted to know, the total number of members with Peterborough post codes. I was refused the information on as it infringed the Data Protection Act. No further offer of help was forthcoming and I gave up on the idea.

Now, I am in the process of starting up the group again, reborn as CTC Peterborough. To be fair to Adrian Lawson, the current Member Groups officer at N/O, he's been pretty helpful. He advised me of the process and emailed all Peterborough members with a note to contact me in support of the new group. I say all Peterborough members but they only had email addresses for around 50%. Adrian has also sent details of our inaugural meeting to be included in the next issue of Cycle - a requirement of starting a group.

That is the level of support received so far. I have not asked for anything else and currently have no need for anything else. Once we've formed a committee and established one or two group rides, I'd like to contact those local members without email addresses and also begin trying to recruit new faces. Both of those activities will cost a lot more than the 18p per member that I'll be able to claim so I'll be going cap in hand to N/O for some funds.

BikeBiz the cycling trade magazine/website has just published a press release about the proposed move to charitable status. In an article titled CTC planning to become membership charity, the following quotes appear:

Chair of CTC Council David Robinson said: “Under changes in the Charities Act 2006, many of our founding and historic activities can now be deemed as charitable.

"We are calling on our members to give a resounding vote in favour at our AGM, so we can go forward as a cyclists’ charity and achieve even more. We’ll also qualify for Gift Aid so members will be able to donate even more money to our campaigning and development work, without having to pay any extra.”

CTC Chief Executive Kevin Mayne added: “CTC remains the largest cycling organisation in the UK. We’ve just wrapped up our financial year and, despite the credit crunch, we are looking stronger than ever. More people than ever have decided to join CTC and support the work we do. The more members we have, the more we can do to improve cycling across the UK.”

Reading this you'd be forgiven for thnking that CTC is just about campaigning and "development work".

Full article here: http://www.bikebiz.com/news/31611/CTC-planning-to-become-membership-charity

glueman wrote:I was thinking of this quote of John Catt's "I will do my best to represent all the member in the area, 75% of whom have nothing to do with the riding groups."
Members groups were a good start in democratising cycling but what's needed is more of them. More diversity, more specialism, more support for people wanting to start one. That's the opposite of patrician control from head office, it's about empowering the lowest common denominator.

I think it's wrong to assume that those members that don't participate in groups have only joined CTC for its campaigning.

Many groups do not encourage participation either via non-contact of members or by organising unappealling rides. In this respect I'd like to see N/O being a little more hands-on in directing certain groups to buck up their ideas. In my opinion, a CTC that valued the grass roots membership would already be doing this (amongst other things) to support Member Groups.

Case in point. When the secretary of Peterborough and South Lincs DA moved away from the area, the group stopped holding AGMs and sending their returns to N/O whose response was to effectively dissolve the group and allocate the 150 or so members to CTC Cambridge. I'm one of those 150 members and I was never contacted by N/O to see if anyone would like to keep the group alive. Nor have I ever been contacted by anyone from CTC Cambridge, even if it were just to say, "sorry we don't organise any rides in your area, perhaps you'd like to start one?". Going back to the original point, those 150 members don't participate in Cambridge rides but that doesn't mean they joined just for the campaigning.

In case, anyone from CTC Cambridge reads this, I'm not having a pop at you - I put the blame N/O for this type of failure.

fausto copy wrote:One of the first things that I used to look at in Cycle mag was the Small Ads (private sales), which were removed altogether a few issues ago.
In the mag it states that members now have the opportunity of advertising on the forum in a members section.
Surely, though, the For Sale section on here is open to anyone.
So, where is the benefit to members?

Yes but surely if you're selling something it's better to have more potential buyers than restricting it in some way?

However, as I typed that I realised that the majority of CTC members don't use these forums so you were right.

Lord Adonis should come to Peterborough (It's only 50 minutes from London on the train) and see how few people cycle in a city that's compact and flat.

Sure, there are miles and miles of dedicated cycle routes but too many of them are poorly surfaced, dark, littered with glass, meandering, and poorly signed.

Simon L6 wrote:...But one thing really does baffle me. Dates on membership cards. A membership card is a thing - it's kind of flat, but it's physical. A person puts it in to an envelope. The membership card has a date on it, in decent sized letters. Why, why does the person putting the membership card in the envelope not look at the wretched card and see if the date makes sense?

As soon as you choose to outsource you lose that amount of care/responsibility. Arvato are only interested in meeting their SLA.

Arvato should be logging and categorising all calls they receive to enable them to report to CTC on how many are membership queries - CTC should insist on that. Likewise, National Office should be doing the same - even if they just refer the callers to Arvato. Also, for their complaint to be recorded as such, a caller shouldn't have to know to state to Arvato that their call is a complaint - any call that is not a new enquiry or change of details is probably a complaint of some sort.

A proper and well-publicised complaints procedure (a form on the CTC website perhaps?), would also help. How many people will trawl through this forum trying to find out the only official method that counts their complaint?

To be honest, the whole thing (including the Arvato element) comes across as a bit amateurish - like it's being run from someone's shed.

robgul wrote:AND while we're at it .... why oh, why didn't CTC get its act together to produce a generic club jersey that could be produced in economical small quantities with local club names ?? It's not rocket science ... but IS good promotion.

That is an excellent idea.

Building websites is what I do for a living, therefore I know that CTC could offer this service easily and at almost no cost - regardless of how their own website is built.

I'm starting a new Member Group in Peterborough (the previous incarnation lapsed into disrepair and got downgraded to an Informal Group) and I thought it would be good for people who've been through the process already to share their experiences.

I'm not talking about the actual CTC procedure, rather the "soft" stuff like the publicity and marketing of your group to members and non-members, the type of rides you do, using a website or newsletters, etc.

What worked for you?

Thanks for the info Karen.

I've now emailed and spoken to Adrian and he couldn't have been more helpful.

**UPDATE**

It's been over a week now since I emailed Adrian and have not yet received a reply. I wish I could get away with that in my job.