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ESMBA AGM
18 ESMBA AGM
Many questions on Treasurer’s Report
Many questions on Treasurer’s Report
Daventry IBC was the venue for this year’s ESMBA Annual General
Meeting where questions concerning the finances of the Associa-
tion came under close scrutiny. A new Treasurer, Cheshire’s Bar-
bara Mills, has been in place since last year’s AGM and nobody
will have envied her job of putting a new system in place. It was in-
teresting to note that former Chairman Chris Hopkins of Northants,
who had come into conflict over the last few months with the Com-
mittee that he had chaired for years, was not in attendance.
Neither was his Northants colleague Brian Nelson who had
become deeply embroiled in the controversy and had e-mailed counties calling for an EGM. The
SMPT, who have had their own difficulties with the ESMBA, were represented with Craig Burgess
and Simon Pridham who founded the organisation. The SMPT has mushroomed since its inception
providing popular short mat bowls events across Europe but the ESMBA’s attempts to licence
their events, and avoid clashes with the ESMBA diary, has not helped the relationship between
the two bodies.
But first of all the minutes, and matters arising, from 2014 had to be agreed. This gave Roger
Green of North Yorks the opportunity to point out that in the new rulebook a paragraph, Foot Fault-
ing 9 (c), had been left in that should have been deleted. This was accepted by the meeting and
next time a reprint is needed this should be removed. In his Chairman’s Report Barry Hedges of
Essex said that one year on from when he was elected the progress initially anticipated had not
been made.
He said that this was not through the lack of motivation on the part of the Management Com-
mittee but because of delays caused by others intent on being disruptive and causing trouble, for
what is fundamentally personal differences with those who are trying to take the Association for-
ward. Following the Chairman’s Report Hedges spoke of the legal issue involving Chris Hopkins
and the ESMBA. He said that the mediation had been resolved but that the joint statement from
Chris Hopkins and the ESMBA that was expected to follow had not been issued. He said that Chris
Hopkins had disagreed with some of the wording and no mutual agreement on the wording had
been made. Barry Hedges also said that the business is now behind us.
In her report the Treasurer Barbara Mills said that her role had been a difficult one after taking
over from John Jackson as she had tried to bring the ESMBA accounts into the 21st Century using
a computerised system. Excess expenditure over income was £19,302 as compared to excess
income over expenditure last year of £2,837. In her report she said that the loss had mainly come
about due to several one off items of expenditure. Following the report the Treasurer was asked
an array of questions regarding items in the accounts.
Norfolk raised the question of why the ESMBA website had cost £1,537 in 2015 and com-
pared this to the £145 that the Norfolk website had cost. Chris Willies of West Mids also expressed
his surprise at the cost of the ESMBA website as the West Mids site also cost a lot less. One rea-
son for the high cost appears to be that the ESMBA have entered into a Package of Service agree-
ment to sort out any problems they have with the site, Chris Willies pointed out that he gets this
kind of service free for the West Mids site. Keith Hawkins said that the costs also included setting
up the new dedicated e-mail addresses for each county that the ESMBA now send out minutes
etc to.
Another question raised was the cost of the National Club Championships which showed an
income of just £250 and expenditure of £2,158. Barry Hedges confirmed that this competition does
lose money. It was queried why so few clubs entered this competition and what could be done to
raise the entry numbers but it remains a fact that nearly £2,000 of money is lost on an event that
attracts only a tiny proportion of short mat bowls clubs. Another item raised by a delegate was the
expenditure by the ESMBA of £5,872 on hosting the new European Championships.