Update 16: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Part I – The insurance connection

“Ever get the feelin’ you’ve been cheated?”

So enquired John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of the audience at the end of the Sex Pistols’ last ever concert — January 1978, Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco.

How deliciously pertinent would be such a question for NSRC members to now ponder, as “cheated” is precisely how they should be feeling in light of recent events. Those events being:

1. The former Briars-led directors’ action — prior to their cynical, cowardly en-masse resignation on 9 December 2022 (Update 12: Good riddance to bad rubbish Part 1 – The directors resign en masse) — in making redundant, not before time, the club’s two full time managers, Nick Hargreaves and Kevin Emery.
2. The subsequent successful operation of the club utilising only volunteer members as is predominantly the case in similar, member owned organisations up and down the country.

Why should the membership feel cheated?
Within days of their accession to power at the October 2020 Extraordinary General Meeting the former Briars-led “Gang of Four” directors — comprising Gawain Briars, Steve Payne, Adam Hildred (who’d resign after only two weeks to be replaced by Richard O’Connor) and Gerry Hargreaves — appear to have, as strongly suggested by the following evidence, commenced a two-years’ long misinformation campaign with the intention of:

• Misleading the membership into believing that insurance requirements precluded the club operating without the two full time managers.
• Misleading the membership into believing that, regardless, implementing a volunteer system would be prohibitively onerous.

The significantly damaging consequence of this misinformation campaign was the avoidable draining from the club’s coffers — over an unnecessarily prolonged period until the money ran out — of more than £1000 per week to pay the salaries of the two managers.

Why would the former directors instigate and, for two years, perpetuate such a misinformation campaign?
The answer can be found in the Executive Summary of Gawain Briars’ 17 page Explanatory Statement setting out his reasoning for convening the above mentioned October 2020 EGM to remove the incumbent Nick Duckworth-led board of directors.

The focus of that Executive Summary was an attack on the Duckworth-led board’s proposals to reduce the company’s largest overhead, staff costs, through staff re-structuring i.e. changes to the managers’ terms and conditions.

Those proposals — entirely necessary given the decline in membership from 373 to 226 due to Covid, representing a reduction in income of £50,000 per annum — were misportrayed to the membership in that Executive Summary as being extreme, unnecessary, and manifestly unjust.

Having so aggressively attacked the Duckworth-led committee’s staff re-structuring proposals — effectively basing their election campaign on maintaining the status of the two managers — the newly appointed Briars-led ‘Gang of Four’ directors had painted themselves into a corner.

It being obvious that the club couldn’t afford the luxury of continuing to employ two full time managers how could they now, or in the near future, do what was actually needed — reduce staff costs through re-structuring — without having to admit that the Duckworth-led committee had been right.

The Briars-led directors’ answer, as is set out above, was to falsely misportray the managers as being indispensable to the operating of the club.

A further factor — in explanation of why the Gang of Four would go to such lengths to maintain the status of the two managers — being that one of the ‘Gang of Four’ former directors, Gerry Hargreaves, is the former general manager’s father.

At the first committee meeting subsequent to the EGM the Briars-led directors’ misinformation campaign commenced:

Volunteers were also discussed as members had expressed an interest.

NH [Nick Hargreaves, manager] would be responsible for setting on the casual staff and the volunteers would need to be considered but insurance issues were raised.

Action- SP [Steve Payne] to contact ROC [Richard O’Connor] to confirm the situation in regards to volunteers taking on tasks within the club.”

NSRC Committee meeting:
(16 October 2020)

Given that volunteers had, historically, been a regular feature supplementing paid management in running the club why, apparently all of a sudden, was insurance an issue when it hadn’t previously been?

Indeed this writer, on first joining the club in 2007, volunteered for ‘bar duty’ on one night of every month, and often at Saturday night private functions, simply to get to know members. How was the use of volunteers now considered as being an insurance issue? Answered above.

A few months later, following the AGM of January 2021 at which six new directors had been elected to the board, several of them queried why volunteers could not be used to increase the reduced opening hours.

SPy [Sue Pynegar] raised the issue of volunteers filling in.

GT [George Thunecke] raised the issue regarding running the Club without staff at certain times which is used at some other clubs

KS [Katrin Schwarz] suggested the use of volunteers as she believed that members would be unwilling to continue paying current levels of subs on the current opening hours.

ROC [Richard O’Connor, Treasurer] replied that we would have to review the insurance public liability situation.“

NSRC Committee meeting:
(20 January 2021)

Hold on a minute; hadn’t Richard O’Connor been tasked, three months earlier, to “confirm the [insurance] situation in regards to volunteers”? Yes he had.

Regardless, being the director with sole responsibility for managing the club’s insurance matters, shouldn’t he have already been well acquainted with the insurance policy requirements? Of course he should have.

We now arrive at a rather puzzling juncture of this narrative whereby, a week later, Richard O’Connor wrote to all directors stating:

Just an important update from our insurers which was a request from me for information/clarification.

We are not covered in terms of liability unless we have a keyholder (this can be staff or a director of the club) in charge and on the premises, whilst it is open.

Richard O’Connor email to all directors
8 February 2021

The reason for Richard O’Connor’s above categorical statement being puzzling to us is two-fold:

Firstly, the statement is wholly contradicted by the insurance policy wording which clearly defines the term keyholder thus:

‘Keyholder’ shall mean You or any person or keyholding company authorised by the You who
1) is available at all times to accept notification of faults or alarm signals relating to the Intruder Alarm Installation and attend and allow access to the Premises
2) has been fully trained in the operation of the Intruder Alarm Installation including but not limited to the setting/unsetting of the installation.

Richard O’Connor’s statement appears deliberately phrased to falsely portray that only the staff or a director can be a keyholder when the reality is that anyone can be a keyholder.

Richard O’Connor’s statement that the keyholder must be on the premises whilst it is open clearly contradicts the policy wording which requires that the keyholder simply be “available at all times” to “attend” the premises.

Secondly, the statement wholly contradicts the advice given separately, by the insurers, to one of the new directors, Kris Turk, when he called them around the same time. The insurer’s advice to him was:

‘We would need someone on site at all times the club was open. However any committee member, or club member could be there “working” from the club

It is this advice, not that quoted by Richard O’Connor, which is consistent with the policy wording regarding attendance requirements when the club is open. That sole requirement is for there to be a ‘responsible person’ — who can be anyone so authorised by the company — in attendance whilst the club is open:

‘Responsible Person’ shall mean a person authorised by You to be responsible for the security of the Premises.

Given the above and that the club is now, over two years later, necessarily operating utilising only volunteers — we reasonably presume under the same insurance policy — serious questions are raised over the veracity of the content of Richard O’Connor’s statement and over who provided that content if, indeed, it was another.