Cycling UK Forum

ive re-read the arguments in ctc mag and skimmed through this forum and i find the whole thing more complex than i can either understand or have time for.one thing i have latched onto is it seems very large amounts of money have been spent and no one knows what its been used for. this concerns me greatly .ive cycled for 40 years but only been a ctc member for the last twelve other than being a cyclist and wanting to support a organization that campaigns for cycling i have no interest at all in club activities i cycle alone. i don't need the ctc to ride my bike
i find simon leggs no argument, for a club for club members, introverted and elitist the very things that stopped me from joining for so many years. i dont know i would want to be part of such a club. £36 a year membership is a lot of money to me and many others, more than many casual cyclists would want or can afford to pay. they are not less for not being members. the ctc should campaign for all cyclists not just those who can afford to pay
i guess from this i should be voting yes !? but for me the question is not yes or no its" what about all this money that no one has an answer for?"
can someone in simple language that we all can understand explain [with figures] how this money has been spent? if this is not answered i do not think i will be re- newing my membership and i doubt i will be alone!

"wanting to support a organization that campaigns for cycling i have no interest at all in club activities i cycle alone. i don't need the ctc to ride my bike."

From that I would have thought that the outcome of the vote and whether or not there is a change would have little effect on your reasons for being a member.

While you obviously want the subscriptions you pay to be used efficiently as possible towards the campaigning, you have to judge if that is so, regardless of which way the club turns.
When i first joined i was in a similar position to you, my nearest CTC section is 45 hilly miles away so I was missing out on that benefit. Yet we still get the personal benefits of the magazine and third party (ie when WE are in the wrong) insurance.

If when you balance it all up, it isnt worth the money, then thats your choice, your life.
We cant be in every club available we have to pick and choose what's best for us.

you are right i have wondered many years whether to continue my membership and decided that the ctc is the only organization that campaigns for cycleing and seems to have the ear of the government to some extent and i would like to support it.
other than the insurance i dont see any other member benefits as benefits. i cycle alone because i want to! i seem to remember reading a few years ago that a majority of members like me never take part in any d.a. activity yet have joined for reasons known only to themselves.
you are also right in it makes little difference to me which way the vote goes and looking at how the same few names come up in this forum i guess almost 60,000 other members feel likewise!
the point i was perhaps trying to make is i would have normally had no interest in this debate if it was not for the allegations of money being spent with no accountability.
i wonder how many casual members like me opened the magazine saw the double page charity article thought" boring " and turned the page!
i read the article next time and was totally shocked by what simon legg had written!
so there are probably a lot of members like me who do not have much invested in the club but are silently there swelling the numbers supporting the clubs campaigning weight and i guess like me they will want to know
WHERE IS MY £36 GOING?
and if a satisfactory answer does not arrive will not re- join! this would be a disaster for the ctc and a tragedy for cycling. so while the few provaricate on yes or no many will just turn there back and walk away

You are probably right that less than 1% of the membership are on the forum and less than 10% in member groups.
So we have heard what the 1% have to say and I am hearing what the 10% have to say and that appears to be more no's than yes's.
However i havent a clue what the 90% are thinking. I imagine that most people would just pass the AGM report by and not bother reading it, it is only the two page spread which got some attention.
The vote (and CTCs) future will probably be decided by a very small proportion of the membership. While the silent majority dont really mind which way it goes.

I dont know if there is any substance to the worries about the accounting and again it is only a few people raising it, a change of auditors should help put that one to bed. Or not.

meic wrote:I dont know if there is any substance to the worries about the accounting and again it is only a few people raising it, a change of auditors should help put that one to bed. Or not.

But if the auditors are not changed until after the merger it will be too late if problems are found. Once the CTC is merged with the Trust there is no going back. We'll be up the creek without a paddle.

If there is any doubt at all the prudent course of action is to at least defer the merger.

i find simon leggs no argument, for a club for club members, introverted and elitist

I think that you may have missed one of the key points.

The argument is not that we shouldn't continue to campaign for cycling, but rather it's based on how we do it.

The YES vote want to enter into partnerships with govt and other such organisations, to carry out expensive schemes on a more national scale. This can have the advantage of being noticeable to those in power, and of, in theory, getting wide coverage.

The NO vote claim that these schemes are not as effective as the locally scaled campaigning that is done by members of DAs and the RTR network (often the same people). This side of the argument suggests that the Charity would not support these grass-roots campaigners properly (the Trust isn't doing so now so things will probably get worse with the unified Charity), despite the fact that they are responsible for the bulk of positive results that benefit ALL cyclists.

the question is, where do you want your money going - to fund top down, govt related campaigning, OR bottom up, locally focused campaigning? At the moment Simon's pie charts suggest the bulk of your membership goes to the Trust for its projects - match funding is an expensive business; and that little goes to the RTR network (£50 per year per member or expenses) or DAs (18p per member per year).

The obvious answer to me is that both options should be considered, even if one is more expensive than the other. But that at the moment the expenditure is at odds with the vfm.

BTW, regarding figures - IIRC the DAs & MGs make up around 20% of the club? It would be interesting though to see a percentage for the amount of the club's campaigning work that they do - some what more than 50% I'd wager, and the amount of the club's income that is spent on them - somewhat less than 10% I'd wager again.

Si wrote:and that little goes to the RTR network (£50 per year per member or expenses) or DAs (18 per member per year).
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IIRC the DAs & MGs make up around 20% of the club? It would be interesting though to see a percentage for the amount of the club's campaigning work that they do - some what more than 50% I'd wager, and the amount of the club's income that is spent on them - somewhat less than 10% I'd wager again.

Not wishing to be pedantic but it looks like you're suggesting DAs get £18 per annum per member, more like 18p!

On the second point it would also be interesting to see what % of DA/MG/rally participants have been members for 5 - 10+ years. Without in any way wishing to be elitist there is a difference (if only for the long term future of the club) between CTC members who join for a year or two and move on, and those who keep paying their subs long term.

Simon Legg made an interesting point a couple of weeks ago about cost. Non-social riders who were willing to forego a printed magazine, a formal club network and the more dubious and expensive involvement at government level could put a CTC-lite together for half the price of current subscription costs and still include 3rd party insurance.
The exec need to stop seeing the issue as a U-turn or a defeat or a lack of strong leadership but a chance to re-appraise what its core values are.

Whoops - corrected now thanks.

The exec need to stop seeing the issue as a U-turn or a defeat or a lack of strong leadership but a chance to re-appraise what its core values are.

Yes, this is another worrying aspect - which ever way the vote goes it will lead to someone being upset. Let's hope that people can not take defeat as a personal attack, that they can decide that what is done is done, and can get on with making the best of things under the circumstances.

Let's also hope that those who win the vote do not decide to crow about it - that, IMHO, would be highly distasteful and would be a good reason to leave the CTC.

When the dust settles we've all got to work together again!

glueman wrote:Simon Legg made an interesting point a couple of weeks ago about cost. Non-social riders who were willing to forego a printed magazine, a formal club network and the more dubious and expensive involvement at government level could put a CTC-lite together for half the price of current subscription costs and still include 3rd party insurance.
The exec need to stop seeing the issue as a U-turn or a defeat or a lack of strong leadership but a chance to re-appraise what its core values are.

Sounds attractive to me. As the Trust is just another charity competing both with charities and profit making companies for what will be declining grants in the coming years I think the current strategy of expansion is exposing the CTC to un-needed financial risks. I would prefer a smaller CTC focussed mainly on membership services and campaigning. The benefits to wider society should be incidental to the CTC's campaigning not the core focus. After a merger there is going to be a conflict of interest between the two and I fear the member services will lose out.

As a CTC member for 25 years I have paid an increasing subscription as the years have rolled by in the false belief that this was because of rising costs of the administration and running of the Club. I am appalled that my subscription has been hiked to support the CTC Trust whilst the club magazine quality and content has declined. I believe this should be one of the core functions of the club. I also wonder how much the CTC trust has spent on cycle campaigning and development in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland as a percentage of the annual Trust budget on (i) an annual basis (ii) over a decade? It is not that long ago the local DA was asking for donations from members because of the decreasing capital grant from head office. I didn't realise that subscription money was being syphoned off to the CTC Trust to the detriment of club members and club services.

If the CTC committee wins the day and the club becomes a charity I will leave as the CTC as it no longer offers me anything. It does very little for cyclists in my area and a major road scheme which threatens a multitude of side roads used for access and cycling are threatened with abandonment orders. I raised the issue and was met with little response. If I need insurance I can get it via BC.

What needs to happen IMO if the the proposals are rejected is a detailed report by committee to members on exactly what our money has been spent on, why club services have been eroded. The spurious argument that members don't need to know everything or won't understand won't wash. I would further suggest a change to the CTC constitution to ensure that any financial changes affecting the ethos and membership of the club cannot be implemented without approval of 75% of the total membership and not 75% attending the AGM and that any proposals like the present one which affects the ethos and character of the Cyclists Touring Club cannot be proposed again for a minimum period of 10 years.

iron legs wrote:... approval of 75% of the total membership and not 75% attending the AGM ...

As I understand it, the total membership will be able to vote at the AGM (each with an equal say), either in person or beforehand by proxy - i.e. filling in and sending back a voting form that will come with a forthcoming issue of Cycle magazine. The only difference will be that with voting by proxy, you won't have heard the arguments put forward on the day of the AGM.

Like ironlegs I'm concerned that money I paid in the naive belief that the club needed it to maintain direct services to the membership has in fact been given away. The figures suggest that without this huge out flow our subscriptions could be halved.

To then suggest that the whole club be given away, rather like the AA move of some years ago, leaves me cold. The net result if the AA's changes was a reduction in focus on their core business and a rising subscription. This is not a good model and I for one will vote NO!

I think iron legs' sentiments are an expression of a fundamental issue.

A lot has changed in the world in the last couple of decades and a pretty common feature is that things have become more businesslike and the organisations that have not moved quickly enough have tended to go under. It's understandable, therefore, that the CTC has moved in that direction and survived. An example of this is how we got what I as a layman would call itemised accounts. In other words, what everything costs to provide is identified and then, in general, each activity either becomes self-financing or, at least, the extent of any subsidy from other parts of the organisation is clear and taken as the result of a formal decision rather than drift.

For example, it seems that the York Rally had to become self-financing, which led, among other things to an admission charge. The dropping of the carnet - the cause of some controversy on here - was an example of a service which the management felt could not be provided in a cost-effective way. So far, so good.

OTOH, the businesslike approach cuts both ways and, inevitably, the members, who by now are more clearly identified as paying customers, do their own analysis of what they are getting for their subscriptions, as in "What's in it for me?" Taking the main tangible benefits of membership, third party insurance can only be provided at commercial rates through an insurance company so it must be paid for. (It is, of course, available elsewhere such as LCC and BC.) The accident advice and legal aid is self-funding - with most of the £££ coming from the other party's insurance. The CTC through its agreement with RJW actually makes a profit from providing legal assistance. Not so long ago it was being declared that the CTC mag would become self-financing - the increase in advertising was ascribed to this. The tour company is a separate body and for other stuff like bike insurance, the CTC acts as an agent for the providers and presumably gets a cut for introducing the business. The CTC Shop just seems to be the CTC being paid for endorsing a big cycling retailer. In the meantime, some other money-making schemes such as the CTC credit card, private health insurance seem to have come and gone.

It might have been expected that this excellent efficiency drive would drive down membership costs.

There are other aspects to this, one being that there has been a feeling that the traditional CTC membership - on-road leisure cyclists - has been aging. Off-road cycling has become more popular and the CTC has expanded into that form of cycling.

More recently, the benefits of charity legislation have been explored and already partially implemented. Now it's proposed to go the whole hog. This has involved another move, which is concentrating on the intangible benefits of campaigning and promoting cycling. Over many years, UK charity legislation, intended to help the poor and destitute in the days before a welfare state, has been exploited by the rich to finance public schools, private medicine, stately homes etc, mainly as a tax-avoidance wheeze. It's important to be aware that the changes in charity legislation which have made the promotion of leisure cycling into a charitable purpose have also tightened up the loopholes and charitable giving has to be altruistic. You cannot make a charitable donation to buy personal benefits for yourself. You also have to be squeaky clean, in that if you have, even for pretty obvious reasons, a membership which seems to be biased towards aging white males, then you risk missing out on all the promised largesse from the lottery etc.

Although the sponsors of the conversion to charitable status have suggested that some of the doubters are accusing them of financial malpractice, I do not feel that is the case. It does seem to me, however, that the laudable trend towards accounting clarity and what I've called itemised accounts has gone into a rapid reverse. The twin concepts of charitable status being a "A Good Thing" and a spiffing tax wheeze have apparently been used to try to distance the CTC membership AKA the paying customers from what is happening with the expansion into the promotion of cycling. I suggest it's being assumed on their behalf that they want to subscribe to activities from which they cannot legally gain personal benefit, but it cannot be presented to them like that for pretty obvious reasons. One thing, is for sure; if the CTC does adopt complete charitable status it will be out of their hands. The only option for anybody who is then unhappy will be to leave.

Nobody has explained why the "membership benefits" part of the CTC cannot remain separate from the charity and continue on a commercial basis. (It would, of course, have to pay rent for the use of a building largely financed from the sale of premises it once owned - Cotterell House.) If charitable status is truly such a financial no-brainer, it ought to be able to prosper without a penny from the membership.

The more one reads about the pros and cons of this proposed merger, the more bewildering it becomes - for an ordinary member like me. I don't mind paying some money each year towards strengthening the national 'cycling lobby' (whatever that may be), as well as receiving a few member benefits. I actually joined the CTC because I enjoy these forums and no other reason, although I do also enjoy the mag and can see the benefits of the insurance stuff, and since reading this debate I can also see how campaigning is important.

Now, if the CTC becoming a unified charity were to make it like a cycling version of the National Trust, I would probably vote for the merger because it would be "good for cycling in the UK". The question is, would this actually happen? The National Trust is a vital national institution. Can the CTC become one, given that there are so many other bodies that represent cycling in the UK? I have doubts about this. So my instincts say remain as a club, mostly for the members, with the charity bit added on (as now) but with more financial controls in place.

One thing I won't be doing, whichever way the vote goes, is leaving the CTC. I don't see any point in that.

thirdcrank wrote:
OTOH, the businesslike approach cuts both ways and, inevitably, the members, who by now are more clearly identified as paying customers, do their own analysis of what they are getting for their subscriptions, as in "What's in it for me?"

Absolutely. If I'm honest the last ten years (at least) of my 30 year membership have been for sentimental reasons. I joined when the CTC were the only non-competitive cycling club there was. Back then 'club' cycling was synonymous with racing, or at least training for racing. The CTC was for leisure cyclists, even if leisure meant 120 mile day rides at 17mph.

Nowadays there are all kinds of rides and riders and the club no longer has a sentimental appeal, it has chosen to exist in the market place and the market will decide if it's delivering. If it does become a charity I believe something nearer the old-school Cyclists' Touring Club will emerge because there's still a market for it.