Membership rates

[gaz]

Why would you pay £48.00 for CUK membership
When you can get Clarion membership for £15.00 ...

To help fund Cycling UK campaigns? To support the Charity? To attend Cycling UK local member group rides? To be a Cycling UK local member group volunteer?

Can I get any of those from being a Clarion member?

As for the insurance, the Clarion website says the public liability cover is £5m compared with £10m from Cycling UK. I can't compare further details as the links to the (out of date) policy summaries are broken.

Please note that gaz is not FCA regulated and cannot assess individual needs for insurance. You will not receive advice or recommendations from gaz about them. Hand wash only. Do not iron. Your home may be at risk if you leave the gas on whilst out on a club ride regardless of which club is providing you with this service. Posted on a forum that contains track nuts and cannot be guaranteed track nut free.

[RickH]

Why would you pay £48.00 for CUK membership
When you can get Clarion membership for £15.00 and yes it includes insurances
and yes it is for 12 months.
I know it's not a touring club but neither is CUK.

Their legal support is less good. If you get compensation you lose 15% of what you are awarded to the legal firm (albeit reduced from the normal 25%).

Their 3rd party insurance is less £5 million rather than the £10 million for Cycling UK

Some people may not like their socialist political origins.

They are a 2000 strong organisation. Big for a cycling club, but quite small for a national organisation.

You pays your money & you takes your choice.

[Astrobike]

The cover is not as good but as you as say you get what you pay for which as I see it is more than ample. why would want to support a charity
I did not vote for and your money goes to lining the pockets of the executive s.
The Clarion is no longer affiliated to any political party it is purely a cycling club at least that is the
Case for most of the country bar a couple of areas in London I do believe

[AndyK]

The cover is not as good but as you as say you get what you pay for which as I see it is more than ample. why would want to support a charity
I did not vote for and your money goes to lining the pockets of the executive s.
The Clarion is no longer affiliated to any political party it is purely a cycling club at least that is the
Case for most of the country bar a couple of areas in London I do believe

Oookay, let's see if I can make this clear as I keep seeing this line trotted out. I am a trustee (and a member of the audit committee specifically) and I and my fellow trustees are there to make sure that membership fees do not go to "line the pockets of the executives". Do they get a reasonable salary? I think so, but we expect them to work damn hard for it (and they do) and to produce results in the long term. Cycling UK is a charity dedicated to getting more people cycling and making the UK a more cycling-friendly place, and that's what the money goes towards in all sorts of ways, including increased support for the membership and the local groups and the local campaigners.

If you don't believe that's important, then yes, of course you should take your money to some other cause you consider more worthy. That's your choice and I respect that. Be honest with yourself about it though - don't make up wild stories about executives pocketing wads of cash just to rationalise your decision.

[AndyK]

Apologies to Andy K and other forum users for getting completely the wrong end of several sticks here. (Only) in my head, Andy Ks statement that there was a £59k reduction in senior pay at Cycling UK, the increase in number of roles shown in the £60k to £70k pay band from 1 to 4 and the presence and then absence of a role in the £110k to £120k pay band in successive annual reports were linked. They clearly aren't.

As above, the apparent reduction is because of a one-off increase the year before due to a redundancy payment. Then, of course, some of the 5 roles reported on as senior pay may not also be in the over £60k bracket that has to be itemised separately. If 3 roles were just below that reporting threshold one year and just above the year after, you could easily go from 1 to 4 roles needing to be itemised in a table with only a small change in total pay bill.

I'd like to delete the offending post but that would only further confuse things. So instead, it remains as an embarrassing monument to my ability to get it completely wrong.

So the only remaining question is why there is a line in a table in last year's annual report relating to 2018 that is then missing in the corresponding table in this year's annual report. My money is now very firmly on clerical error rather than conspiracy!

Sorry again folks. Let's un-drift back to the more interesting topic of the proposed membership changes.

Sorry, just coming back after having to deal with other things for a while. No need for apologies. if there's one thing I've learnt in my time as one of the non-accountants on the audit committee, it's that there are always different ways of presenting the figures in the annual accounts, and yes it can sometimes produce figures that look odd in the totals. Redundancies can cause swings in senior remuneration totals, so can hiring a short-term interim manager on contract (is that a staff cost or a consultancy cost?) or leaving a senior post vacant for a short period, pretty much all of which have happened in recent years. That figure I mentioned is, as I understand it, a calculation meant to provide a common benchmark between different companies, and like all benchmarks it's far from perfect.

If I get the time (which I probably won't in the next few days) I will try and look into the mysterious discrepancy you mention.

[mjr]

The cover is not as good but as you as say you get what you pay for which as I see it is more than ample.

Is £2m cover good enough? https://laka.co/gb/club is currently offering that for six months for £1, along with some discount offers.

They even use C-UK as an example of an expensive cover provider!

[PH]

The cover is not as good but as you as say you get what you pay for which as I see it is more than ample.

Is £2m cover good enough? https://laka.co/gb/club is currently offering that for six months for £1, along with some discount offers.

Do you know how much it is after the six months?
I know their cycle insurance for me would be 7 times the price of the TSB.
I don't really get the idea of joining cycling organisation just for the insurance, such things are rare but you might find yourself with a none cycling liability, you'd be better off finding general cover that included everything. I'm a member of three cycling organisations that provide insurance, there's plenty of other reasons to join, or not, either way the sums of money are trivial.

[Astrobike]

I joined the clarion because I got fed up of riding on my own , I now have a choice of up to 5 rides
at the weekend and 2 to 3 midweek rides the insurance came with the membership something I was
not aware of when I joined as I joined for the rides.

[idd]

I've read a lot of the comments about changes to Cycling UK and think the most pertinent to the argument is AndyK's "Cycling UK is a charity dedicated to getting more people cycling and making the UK a more cycling-friendly place".
This seems to be at the root of a lot of the discussion / complaints about the changes in Cycling UK including membership rates, focus, organisational changes, etc. Probably most of those complaining haven't realised (or haven't accepted) the truth of AndyK's comment.
I certainly joined the organisation to gain the benefits of;

Insurance
being able to join local rides
Cycle magazine

and not to contribute to a national charity doing "good works" such as getting more people cycling. I have no issues with the organisation being a charity but the focus seems to have changed dramatically from supporting local groups organising rides (of different lengths) - which can be done as a charity - to becoming a lobbying and fund gathering organisation.
Despite the continual press releases about supposed successes I think the lobbying work is average with a lot of projects "me-too" and insufficiently differentiated from similar lobbying groups (e.g. Sustrans).
I like the Cycle magazine although feel it is going down the route of being a series of press releases along the lines of "look how well we're doing".
The supposed well liked discounts seem to me to be of little value as most if not all are easily available without being a member.
I plan to continue to be a member as I want to be involved with the local group rides. The organisation of these is done totally locally by volunteers. Very little of my membership fee actually goes to the part of the organisation that I value most highly. If this local part of the organisation split from the national Cycling UK then I'd cancel my national membership and join the local riding group like a shot. I suspect a lot of long standing ex-CTC members are in the same position and Cycling UK run the risk of losing a lot of these (and the volunteer time that they contribute) if an alternative organisation was to appear.

[PH]

I plan to continue to be a member as I want to be involved with the local group rides. The organisation of these is done totally locally by volunteers. Very little of my membership fee actually goes to the part of the organisation that I value most highly. If this local part of the organisation split from the national Cycling UK then I'd cancel my national membership and join the local riding group like a shot.

Was there ever a time when it was different? I'm asking rather than looking for an argument. I'm a relatively new member compared to some on here, only about 25 years. In that time, the local group has grown and the support from the central organisation has improved. Gone is the rigid DA structure, where you had to ask permission to organise anything on their patch, it's easier to set up a group, or affiliate, now than it was a couple of decades ago. The allocation grant used to be based on the membership numbers in the DA's area, regardless of how many they appealed to or how much they needed the money, some big DA's did well out of it while others struggled. The current flat rate is particularly useful for newer groups.

I suspect a lot of long standing ex-CTC members are in the same position and Cycling UK run the risk of losing a lot of these (and the volunteer time that they contribute) if an alternative organisation was to appear.

An alternative organisation did appear at the time of the charity conversion, it died a death within months, no one was interested. I'm not even sure what this idea of a national touring club is, or what it was, or what it might offer, as you say those things are done locally.
I've been hearing since I joined the CTC how something has been lost, but when I ask what that is, there's never much of an answer, a vague notion that it's no longer a club. Then when I ask what the club did that isn't being done now the answers become even vaguer. What is it you got from the CTC of old that you're not getting from the current Cycling UK?
There's also this idea that those riding with the Member Groups are somehow the real members, my understanding (Happy to be corrected) is they've never been a majority, at present I think it's about 15% of the membership, which sounds about right from my knowledge of the local group.

[millimole]

PH - nearly all of what you say is true, and I'm not going to try to pick an argument.
I'd also add that there is a feeling that CUK to be a campaigning organisation is somehow new - CTC was a campaign leader before lobby groups were fashionable.

What I feel the differences between the 'club' and the 'charity' amount to might be summed up as the distance between the 'organisation' and the 'bum on the saddle'.
The CTC leadership felt as though it were one of us, cyclists who understood cycling - I don't feel that now
Equally CTC *felt* as though it was working for those inside the club tent - now it *feels* as though the charity working for everyone else, and paying lip service to those on the inside.
I've tried to highlight the 'feeling' words, because in reality when CTC was attempting to lobby for better conditions for its members, it was in reality doing this for all cyclists, exactly as it does now - the difference now is that feeling that the rest of the riding constituency is more important than the members.

Another loss, perhaps, is the influence that CTC had - when it was clearly at the top table of traffic discussions, now that place is shared with BC and Sustrans. Both excellent bodies in their way, but do all three of them have the same agenda, and are three voices louder than one in this instance?

[Paulatic]

The CTC leadership felt as though it were one of us, cyclists who understood cycling - I don't feel that now
Equally CTC *felt* as though it was working for those inside the club tent - now it *feels* as though the charity working for everyone else, and paying lip service to those on the inside.
I've tried to highlight the 'feeling' words, because in reality when CTC was attempting to lobby for better conditions for its members, it was in reality doing this for all cyclists, exactly as it does now - the difference now is that feeling that the rest of the riding constituency is more important than the members.

I think that sums it up pretty well.
Under CUK I’ve witnessed my local ( very rural based) MG crumble to dust whilst others have blossomed.

Then when I ask what the club did that isn't being done now

The answer from me is predominately the 'Birthday Rides' It was a great occasion to bring club members from far and wide together. Head office were heavily involved and used to bring the shop along with them. HO progressively distanced themselves and numbers attending progressively fell. Now a handful attend on an expensive holiday.

[thirdcrank]

... An alternative organisation did appear at the time of the charity conversion, it died a death within months, no one was interested. ... .

That's true, of course, but I think it's also the case that if anybody had set up an alternative organisation on the lines of CyclingUK as it is now, that would have been even shorter lived.

I fancy the majority of the membership are "only in it for the insurance" and perhaps also some vague myth about CTC Legal Aid. In many organisations, a majority of members take a rather passive part.

The current economic situation may make some people even more aware of where their £sd are going (and people who still think in the old money are those most affected by the new rates.) Few of their decisions will be accompanied by a protest on here: they will either stay or sling their 'ook.

[JohnW]

We don't have a 'club' any more.
We don't have this 'Great Family of Ours' anymore.
I do not feel that I'm a 'member' - I feel that I am somewhere between a 'supporter' and supposed 'beneficiary'.
We don't have the ethics that some of us have been brought up with for most of our cycling lives.
We have a 'trustee' governed organisation which doesn't seem to either consider or listen to us.
The two elements of CUK that filters through to me are seeking my money and claiming to campaign.

The campaigning needs to be successful - we'll see if it ever does become successful if it can ever persuade the law-makers, politicians, judiciary et al to persuade motorists, highway authorities, general (non-cycling) public, town planners, highway/road planners, local authorities et al that cyclists are valid human beings with a moral right to live and receive respect and that active travel (specifically in this context cycling) is not systematically destroying this planet.

I now have to pay a higher subscription to CUK - I'll not be slingin'-my-'ook - partly to continue to subscribe in the hope that CUK will successfully campaign and take it's part in a better world.

I won't hold my breath though, because I've not seen any real effect of this 'campaigning' so far...........despite the rhetoric.

[johncarnie]

Well, my copy of Cycle came, Page 14 "A vote for Change" announced the AGM voted and approved the change, but surprise, surprise no mention that only 2.91% of the membership actually voted for the "Change".