I was due to attend this as delegate from the Doncaster Congress, but thought that would also serve to feed back to the NCCU. I’d be slaving over a hot set of accounts, preparing for audit, and had e-mailed the auditor. Then, when later I dipped into my e-mail to see if the auditor had replied yet (he hadn’t, but has today), and I saw an e-mail from a member of my old school chess team in connection with a project I am working on in that connection. This meant I set too and did some more work on that project, which was massively more interesting that the ECF meeting or the NCCU accounts!

Result: I quite forgot the ECF meeting, and didn’t attend.

I’ve since looked at the Forum for English Chess, whereon much pre-meeting discussion had been rumbling on, and saw, courtesy of John Reyes of Manchester, that there were 35 attending (more than last time), and also saw somebody commending a post-meeting report on the Shropshire CCA website. So, If you want to know what happened then look at https://www.shropshirechess.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Report-on-2026-ECF-Finance-Council.pdf. I don’t understand the comments on future increases in Gold and Bronze membership fees, but the rest of the report confirms my gut feeling that I didn’t miss too much!

The ECF AGM will be in Leeds on Saturday the 4th of November, and potentially any ECF members so-wishing can attend, it seems. For details see https://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/AGM-arrangements-v2.pdf.