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Sheffield & District Chess Association Established 1883 |
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Notices |
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28/10/2025 ECF Annual General Meeting 2025
This was held on 25 October 2025 commencing at 1.30 p.m. as a “hybrid” face-to-face and Zoom meeting with the face-to-face element taking place at South & City College, Digbeth Campus, High Street, Deritend, Birmingham, B5 5SU.
The writer would have attended via Zoom as the Doncaster Congress delegate but was on the way back from holiday at the time. This “hybrid” meeting reportedly illustrated the writer’s own previous experience, that Zoom participants suffer from poor sound quality and consequent partial exclusion from the meeting of Zoom participants, with face-to-face participants unable to hear background talk between those physically present. What follows is based mainly on the voting records on the ECF Council website.Papers for the meeting can be found at https://www.englishchess.org.uk/council-papers/ and the numbers of paragraphs below refer to the numbers of items on the agenda.6. After the usual introductory items 1 to 5, up to and including minutes of the previous meeting and matters arising, the next agenda item was receipt and approval (or otherwise) of various reports. Normally, this is rather boring, but the Report of the Finance Committee (charged with scrutinising ECF finance matters was somewhat exceptionally rejected with 77 votes for and 127 votes against approving the report – whatever that actually means. It’s as interesting noting who did not vote either way as it is to note who voted against, and it’s fairly easy to infer the person who swayed the “against” lobby.7. The next item was to allow the appointment of Mike Truran as an extra Non-Executive Director for the difficult transition period the ECF was perceived to be going through, this appointment to end at the AGM or 2027. Mike Truran was voted in by 129 votes in favour, but a “prize-winning” total (compared with votes against in the table below) of 75 votes against.8. Then came a “fiddle” whereby receipt of a nomination for the 1-year Non-Executive Director post below was to be “deemed” to have been received in time for it to be allowed. This was passed by a show of hands rather than a “card vote”.9. The next item was Elections of officers.Normally, only some of the posts are up for election in a given year, with the others arising for election the next year. However, there have been various midseason resignations and some interim replacements and filling of posts newly created by a “restructuring” programme. As a result, nearly all major posts were up for election, though most had only one applicant, and the sole candidates all got voted in easily enough. All posts are for a 3-year tenure except for one which was a 1-year interim filler.
There’s usually at least the odd vote or so against any candidate, but the number of votes against the sole candidates for Chief Executive and Finance Director make it clear there may be a rough road ahead.Perhaps most worrying is that there were no candidates for the post of Operations & Administration Director which remains vacant.Less worrying is that there were no candidates for the post of Chair of the Finance Committee which too remains vacant. The committee can presumably come to a suitable modus operandi.This all means that the following NCCU people are ECF Officers of one sort or another (unless any has resigned recently):
10. Watson Associates were reappointed as auditors for another year. (Appointment of an auditor recurs each year.)
11. The proposed Constitutional changes were approved. Anything emanating from Robert Stern’s Governance Committee can always be relied upon to make sense!
12. A motion from Coventry & District League to change the rules regarding Game Fee was not considered and the chair acknowledged was an error to include it on the agenda. It appears the required number of “requisitioners” had not been assembled to submit the motion.
13. ECF Awards - to note. Attention had been drawn to https://www.englishchess.org.uk/ecf-awards-2025/. Here you will see that Jon Hipshon of Yorkshire Junior Chess Association received an award for Contribution to Junior Chess the citation for which may be found on pages 6 and 7 of https://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ECF-Awards-2025.pdf.
14. Time and Place of Next MeetingsIt was resolved that in 2026 the Finance Meeting shall be held by Zoom on 10 June 2026 and the Annual General Meeting shall be held in Leeds, with access also by Zoom, on 14 November 2026.
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