Yesterday’s Pétanque England Annual General Meeting held in the charming Kewstoke Village Hall just a short drive away from the new home of the Inter-Regional tournament at Sand Bay Holiday Village heard that potential changes to PE’s company Articles were under consideration.
Although the precise details are still the subject of discussion by the Board of Directors and advisers, the change being contemplated could mean that voting and other rights would instead be vested exclusively in PE’s individual affiliated clubs (currently 166 active).
This would represent a radical move away from the models adopted by PE and the English Pétanque Association which preceded it where full individual members have the right to vote on key matters like the appointment of PE’s President and members of PE’s Board (the 6 member-appointed Board Directors in PE’s case). They also have the right to nominate Board Directors and vote on any resolutions which they also have the right to submit for consideration.
Questions from the floor from the 11 members present raised issues about this possible ‘club model’ given that PE clubs can range in size from single figures to over 100, and whether a one vote per club approach would be fair. A further point was how club officials might gauge the views of their members and how this could work where there might be differences of opinion within a club membership.
One of the motivations for considering the change appeared to be the proxy voting rights which result under English company law. These rights mean that individual members have the right to transfer their voting rights to the Chair of the AGM or any other member of PE (who must be present at the AGM).
This raises the possibility – which happened at the 2024 AGM – where an activist group of members can approach fellow members to gather votes to pursue an issue or resolution. It means that a matter before the AGM can be decided by one or two multiple proxy holders at the meeting regardless of the discussion that might take place amongst members present.
Even under a club-led system, the proxy system would apply, meaning that clubs could nominate and vote without being present.
As any proposed change involves amendments to PE’s Articles of Association, a majority of 75% of PE’s individual members would be required at a future PE AGM.
Other key items discussed
- Work is underway led by new PE Board Member Mark Bell to design and launch a new PE website;
- New Board-appointed member Peter Aldersey has renegotiated the terms of PE’s insurance cover with specialist provider Marsh Sports to extend its cover. For a modest increase in costs, the cover will extend to all players in affiliated leagues or clubs regardless of whether they are PE members or not. The new insurance applies from 1.4.25 and clubs who take out their own insurance cover (often costing hundreds of pounds) will no longer need to incur that cost;
- PE has 3,062 members including 335 Club Members who pay £10, £6 of which is given to regions to promote the sport. This is the first time in many years – certainly since the COVID epidemic – that PE has gone beyond 3,000 members. The Junior membership is 95;
- The Board acknowledged that the inclusion on the AGM proxy form for a member vote on the recently Board-appointed members Peter Aldersey, Mark Bell and Pippa Boardman was an error as these appointments are made exclusively by the Board with no vote by PE’s members;
- It was resolved to maintain PE Adult membership at £25 and Juniors membership at £5, although the Board indicated that it was minded to support a suggestion from members present that this should be raised by £5 at the next AGM (at current membership levels this would generate an approximate £14,000 in extra income);
- Tom Wilson (Vice-President) and Claire Geddes (who is taking the Youth development role on the Board) were both appointed to the Board as member-elected representatives having received the support of the 150 or so proxy votes that were cast;
- The accounts covering the period April 1st 2023 to 31st March 2024 were approved. These showed a surplus of £7,359 in comparison with the previous financial year of £21,166. PE’s Treasurer Cary Bush said that his current expectation was that for the current financial year ending 31st March 2025, the company would be in a break-even position. The key source of PE’s overall income was membership fees (£59,574.19, up just £272 on the previous year) providing around two-thirds of monies received. Competition entry fees made up the bulk of the balance of overall income with a significant contribution of just over £11,000 from the deal PE has with Isle of Wight Tours on the running of the Inter-Regional tournament. The cash held by PE in its bank accounts amounted to just over £102,000 (down from just over £122,000 the previous year);
- PE’s sport development fund remained at just over £22,000. The Board was considering offering this money to clubs to purchase promotional banners;
- The operation of PE’s Sport80 system was raised where entrants in PE’s competitions were not made available. It was pointed out that seeing the entries online helped PE competitor members identify potential playing partners and added to the promotion of the competition. Other sports bodies using Sport80 such as British Archery publicly revealed their competition entries, and the Board was asked to consider reinstating this in PE’s portal;
- Representatives from PE’s East Midlands Region urged the Board to set out clear guidelines for the setting up of new regions of PE. The Board indicated that they would look at this further as setting out guidelines were important;
- The PE Board signalled its intention to hold the AGM in future years on a fixed date in November. Apart from giving certainty on the annual date in the calendar it would also mean that the company’s accounts would be less dated, around 8 months old rather than the 12 months that applied at this AGM.
In view of the change in the player insurance it appears that unless a player intends to take part in PE events/competitions there is no requirement to hold a licence as the only benefit of insurance is now covering all club members providing the club is registered to PE
That would be one way of looking at it. If the NGB did not exist then the new insurance cover wouldn’t either! There are many examples in sport where players do not derive a direct personal benefit from paying to be a member of an NGB. My son pays £90 per year to the FA as a grassroots amateur football player. He has no choice about it. Clubs are required to be part of the FA setup if they want to play in organised leagues. If you enjoy playing pétanque and want to support the sport then joining PE means that you are amongst other things supporting our young players and also our representatives playing for their country. That’s a collective response not an individual one.
Is it true the majority of proxy votes were from one board member, collected from their own club?
The source of the proxies were not revealed so can’t comment on that. Under a proxy-based system there is always the possibility that any member of PE could approach a fellow member to ask that member to complete a proxy form. That might be just to ensure that the meeting is quorate (5% of members required) or because they are seeking support for a particular proposition. It was the latter in 2024 where some members were seeking to pass a resolution. There is nothing improper about asking fellow PE members to submit proxies, but there is an issue I suppose about ‘activist gathering of votes’. If the members giving their proxy vote are fully engaged and support a proposition then that is fine, however one of the downsides is that an issue under consideration at an AGM may have a number of factors associated with it that benefits from an open discussion where members can hear the full picture before casting their votes. Regardless of what you think on this matter the right to vote by proxy is enshrined in company law and must be made available to shareholders or in PE’s case its competitor and Junior members. As mentioned in the report of the AGM, PE is considering whether the company members should be confined to affiliated clubs. If that change happened, clubs would still have proxy voting rights and I’m not aware of any way this statutory legal requirement cannot be offered.
Yes, very interesting comments about the new improved insurance cover! For many years we as a club struggled with the public liability insurance cover and how best to protect each member as well as the club officials and the club itself from claims of personal injury. some members told us that they already have this type of insurance with other policies that they hold so duplicating it was not necessary. However we were unsure how to check that everyone was covered by their own insurances. When PE introduced the club player level it rather answered a question for us and we saw a simple solution – insist that all of our members joined PE as a competitor or club player. To help in this we reduced our club membership fee so that the combined PE and club membership was no more expensive than our original annual fee. This has worked very well – until now. I’m quite sure that some of our members will now ask about the necessity of joining PE as they are covered by the club affiliation. It is a difficult question because I started playing pétanque in the mid eighties and have played at least twice a week since then as well as with our twinned club in France and in various competitions and have never had to resort to insurance to settle a personal injury claim either at our own club or no behalf of our club or anywhere else for that matter, we might infer then that risk level is minute. Interesting times.