[shark]

The final straw was when a bloke posted a picture of the current BMC office staff proudly captioned “The BMC: overstaffed, overpaid and over here”  . I just felt like I was on a Facebook group where old blokes moan about the EU or something

Sorry got a bit lost with the recent discussion. Are you talking about BMC Watch? If so I can’t remember anyone posting that.

[galpinos]

a pressure group on Facebook which is, at the least, extremely sceptical of the BMC at the best of times and downright hostile at others

I’m all for it in theory and the current/ recent BMC management situation seems to have elements of a shitshow to me but that group is so dominated by people who seem angry that the BMC even exists and eager to unconstructively slag it that I just couldn’t be bothered with it any more.

The final straw was when a bloke posted a picture of the current BMC office staff proudly captioned “The BMC: overstaffed, overpaid and over here”  . I just felt like I was on a Facebook group where old blokes moan about the EU or something

100% this, which is a shame as the idea behind it is sound. It makes Lancashire Rock Revival look forward thinking.

Cheque and Spidermonkey, you are spot on. I joined as it seemed to be an group of interested parties keen to ensure the BMC was the best it could be but increasingly feels like it’s full of people who claim it wasn’t like this back int’ day amd bemoan the loss of the old boys club.

[galpinos]

Also, can we have a topic split so Tony and Matt can keep going at it without clogging this thread up?

[cheque]

The final straw was when a bloke posted a picture of the current BMC office staff proudly captioned “The BMC: overstaffed, overpaid and over here”  . I just felt like I was on a Facebook group where old blokes moan about the EU or something

Sorry got a bit lost with the recent discussion. Are you talking about BMC Watch? If so I can’t remember anyone posting that.

Yeah, BMC Watch. I rejoined to find and screenshot it-



I remembered it wrong though, it’s a reply to a post you made on the 8th of July about a report by BDO commissioned by the BMC. I was confusing it with another post from the 4th of February that had a thumbnail of BMC staff and was met with similarly OTT (but not quite as ridiculous) negative comments.

Your intentions in starting and posting in the group aren’t the unconstructive ones I was referring to and now I look at it again the blokes I was aren’t really initiating posts themselves, they’re mainly chiming in, Statler & Waldorf-style on the posts of others.

[shark]

Thanks for clarification Mike,

Not sure about Ian Lonsdale but the vast majority of posters are either currently or have been BMC volunteers who are knowledgable about the organisation some of whom have been badly treated or became exasperated. Based on my own experiences and inside knowledge I am sympathetic. Politics innit.

[Tony]

the vast majority of posters are either currently or have been BMC volunteers who are knowledgable about the organisation some of whom have been badly treated or became exasperated.

Politics innit.

Not really. Sounds much more like a pressure group with an axe to grind.

Wanting things done their way without taking on any of the responsibility for making the changes.

Nice work if you can get it…

[shark]

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/ccpg-review-board-statement

The initially suppressed CCPG Review has now been publicly published along with its recommendations (documents linked at bottom of article).

The extent of the issues are pithily summed up in the concluding paragraph of the report.

The article outlines the subsequent steps that are being taken to address the issues raised in the report.

[Tony]

Finally, something of substance.

The pithy conclusion could be summarised as: GBC is badly run, the CCPG have failed to do anything at all, and the BMC Board has failed to hold the CCPG to account.

 

[Duma]

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/media/files/CCPGReview2022FinalReport_v1_b.pdf

Direct link to the report

[Duma]

And the final paragraph Simon refers to above:

Report Conclusion

The ‘Purpose’ of CCPG, as drawn from its current Terms of Reference, are:

Purpose
The purpose of the CCPG should include, but not be limited to:
• Advise and report to the Board
• Support and challenge GB Climbing
• Develop its strategy and long term aims
• Advise GB Climbing on the management of resources at their disposal
• Exercise the delegated authority of the Board in accordance with these terms of
reference
• Assess the performance of the CCPG and GB Climbing against set criteria to
ensure that competition climbing is being governed in the best possible manner

We have not seen any evidence that would lead this Review to conclude that any of
the above criteria have been met.This is clearly a breach of the operating mandate
which CCPG and GB Climbing were duty bound to deliver, and a failure to comply with
the Terms of Reference which were set out and agreed by the BoD and for which they
are accountable.

[wasbeen]

I spent/wasted a silly amount of time and had massive arguments with my wife and neglected my other daughter in order to support the "dream" of GB climbing with my other daughter from 7 years to 14.

On one side it gives me some comfort to see my hunch that things were not quite right in the wood shed validated. But generally I feel really sad for the number of kids/big-kids that haven't been adequately supported in their obsession.

P.s. I have drunk too much and will certainly regret this post in the morning.

[shark]

I’ve given up hope of receiving the promised breakdown of GB Climbing finances. Carl Spencer who was until recently a Director and the Board’s representative on CCPG says he repeatedly asked the same question and never received a straight answer so far chance of being getting one despite it being publicly promised by Paul Davies CEO.

Carl went on to say much more on BMC Watch that casts further light on what has been going on at GB Climbing that makes painful reading

In the absence of a proper answer I did my own rough calculations and if you take the admin costs not directly funded by either SE or UKS of approx £1.3M and apportion them to GBC by ratio of income at approx 25% then GBC should be absorbing approx £325K in overheads.

Alternatively, you could apportion the overheads by ratio of headcount and that would be approx 45% of £1.3M = £585K

Somewhere in between would seem to be fair and given that we have a new funding model then maybe also a sliding scale over five years might seem appropriate. After all, the overheads have not increased that much since the BMC only had to support itself.

Conversely, we have agreed to fund GB Climbing to the extent of 15% match funding minimum but I have not seen any mention of where overheads might be included in that.

Given that some other Olympic sports are not supported by membership models and are significantly funded by both SE and UKS and… have much greater funding and admin costs than the BMC/GBC I cannot believe that their overheads are not included in their respective calculations.

QED - it is a fair question to ask whether we are overpaying for GB Climbing and what are we actually receiving for the money?

Given that NONE of the funds included those calculations make it to the athlete and we are now sending LESS athletes to overseas competitions (117 this year compared to 163 last year) what are we actually getting for the money?

Moreover, given that athletes, parents and coaches are deeply unhappy with the strategy being adopted by GB Climbing it would seem (at least to me) that GB Climbing exists for only one purpose and that is feed a gravy train for self appointed staff that have NO experience in climbing and no interest in the athletes or the sport but simply want to collect their award from HRH when we might one day win a medal

And in answer to my question: “ I find it astonishing that as a Board Member that you weren’t able to access figures to understand the cost base of GB Climbing.
Was that unique or was the Board more generally kept in the dark about spending, commitments and operations?

  that’s actually quite a difficult question to answer for a variety of reasons:
1. It was a moving target and one that moved very fast.
2. The ToR’s for CCPG allowed for 4 meetings x 2 hours minimum and there was deep resistance to having more meetings despite my repeated requests that the work could not be covered within 8 hours per year.
3. Some of the CCPG members contribute very little but I will not expand on that. In essence CCPG is too small but the future proposals now suggest that it should be smaller.
4. The remainder are overworked even if that work is simply questioning what the heck is going on.
5. As soon as the SE contract was awarded GB Climbing started recruiting and spending before consulting with CCPG or partners.
6. In fact GB Climbing started spending money in areas that *might* be a partners area of responsibility before the partners had received their respective sub-contracts from SE.
7. Three of the four partners were pretty upset (understatement) this time last year with one stating that the only way it would be resolved would be a certain person being gifted a P45.
8. A number of the board (myself included) were totally overworked trying to recover the relationship with partners.
9. Many of the concerns were relayed to the CCPG review team but they were told that it was outside of the scope of the review based on time i.e. 2 years from its inception.
10. There was then deep resistance to the CCPG review even taking place to the extent that “BMC” office staff tipped us off that certain members of GB Climbing we’re digging up dirt on anyone connected to the review in order to derail, undermine or simply cast doubt on its findings.
I could go on….

Off the record I’ve heard there is further bad news on the way with BMC Finances.

[Offwidth]

As I've sadi before those calculations on GB Climbing overheads are embarrassing. The numbers given by the CEO to the Peak area meeting on GB Climbing overheads seem much more consistent with what I'd expect (after core overheads are removed from the split allocated to teams) but as the CEO promised a further breakdown he should arrange that.

[shark]

The numbers given by the CEO to the Peak area meeting on GB Climbing overheads seem much more consistent with what I'd expect (after core overheads are removed from the split allocated to teams).

What are you talking about? He didn’t give any numbers about GBC overheads at the meeting - he said he claimed he didn’t have the numbers to hand.

The only info he subsequently provided was an £81k share of the overheads and given that there were £1.3m of costs that means that GB soaked up less than 7% of that which beggars belief.


Also what do you mean by core overheads being removed the split allocated to teams? What allocated split? What do you mean by teams?

Show us your workings.

[Offwidth]

What you copied was:

"In the absence of a proper answer I did my own rough calculations and if you take the admin costs not directly funded by either SE or UKS of approx £1.3M and apportion them to GBC by ratio of income at approx 25% then GBC should be absorbing approx £325K in overheads.

Alternatively, you could apportion the overheads by ratio of headcount and that would be approx 45% of £1.3M = £585K"

This analysis was said to me to be nonsense because it ignores core costs (buildings etc) that would be there irrespective of the new GBC staff.

So although I'm no expert, £81k didn’t "beggar belief" for the people I spoke to who know about such things. Fair attributed additional overheads would be additional overhead costs for the new extra staff not funded by the grants and not including any core costs. Until we know more details, any further breakdown is pretty pointless speculation.

[shark]

So why does the core costs have to be absorbed the rest of the BMC? It’s standard business practice to apportion costs of this type by headcount. If GBC staff left the building for example there would be an opportunity to downsize on the buildings costs. In grant applications  there would be provision for an overhead allocation.

As for “People who I spoke to who know about such things” 🤣

This is not a valid basis to shoot down anybody let alone the assumptions of a Director who was the Board rep on the CCPG.

Let’s have your figures if you know better or accept that your statement is “pointless speculation” as you put it.

An allocation of 7% of admin costs towards GBClimbing does not pass the smell test. Now there are 14 full time employees even more so.

The balance of how resources are deployed has to be fair and seen to be fair in a membership organisation representing multiple activities.

[Offwidth]

It's not standard practice where grants or other income cover part of those costs differentially acrosss teams.

It's a free country so you can always insult my attempts to reality check statements by speaking to others who know more about such things, but I'll stand by what I heard about overhead allocations. Just as I did in in our discussion in what happened in ACES (where despite your catastrophising there are still 20% more FTEs now than in 2019).

I can't speak for why Carl wrote in that exact way (especially as an ex Director) but when he used it as an illustration on Council to say we must include a fair allocation of overheads in assessment of comparative expenditure he had pretty much full agreement on that point.

7% as a fraction of a minority cost (excluding core) with other complications like grant allocations really isn't unrealistic.

[shark]

According to Jonathan White £115k has it seems been used for some time by the BMC for grant applications for covering GBC’s contribution to overheads. Somewhat more than the £81k cited by Paul Davies. It is good to know that we are getting that as other NGB’s will but in terms of presenting figures to the members it should also be subtracted from the grant GB Climbing is said to receive (or at least 85% of it with maybe the 15% added back in) in terms of how much the BMC is paying for GBC. Still feel I’m just scratching the surface though.

[shark]

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/statement-from-the-board-of-directors-regarding-bmc-ceo-paul-davies

Paul Davies, BMC CEO, has sadly resigned and decided to pursue new avenues for a variety of personal reasons, including the unsustainable rigours of his commute and time away from his family.

We are grateful to Paul for his hard work during his three years as Chief Executive Officer for the BMC.  We are sure that you will join us in wishing him all the best for the future.
 
Roger Murray, BMC Chair and BMC Board of Directors

[petejh]

I presume he left before he was ousted, and/or he wanted to escape further scrutiny before yet more dirt hits the wall, as it appears it’s about to.

‘Because the commute was too arduous/too much time away from family’ - a throwaway line that screams to me ‘being CEO of the BMC was just another executive position and its membership structure/core values meant little’.

No mention of the current GB Climbing issues or any acknowledgment of the CEO’s part in them? PD undoubtedly must have had a significant hand in the current GBC situation - part of the reason for him being recruited was that he’s an ‘elite sporting body professional manager’.

Looks like a lack of transparency or personal accountability ‘till the end unless there’s another statement somewhere.

[Wellsy]

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/statement-from-the-board-of-directors-regarding-bmc-ceo-paul-davies

Paul Davies, BMC CEO, has sadly resigned and decided to pursue new avenues for a variety of personal reasons, including the unsustainable rigours of his commute and time away from his family.

We are grateful to Paul for his hard work during his three years as Chief Executive Officer for the BMC.  We are sure that you will join us in wishing him all the best for the future.
 
Roger Murray, BMC Chair and BMC Board of Directors

Pfffft how fucking stupid do they think people are

[shark]

UKC article: Open Letter: GB Climbing Athletes & Parents cite 'Loss of Confidence' in Leadership

Content of letter:

To: Roger Murray, Chair of BMC Board of Directors Andy Syme, BMC President

Laura Needham, BMC Director

cc: Natalie Berry, UKC Paul Ratcliffe, CCPG

20th September 2023

Open letter: Loss of confidence in GB Climbing's Leadership

We are athletes, parents and coaches representing the breadth of those participating in and supporting Competition Climbing in the UK, including 73% of the 2023 GB Climbing Team (lead and boulder).

We are writing to inform you that the signatories of this letter have lost confidence in the leadership of GB Climbing. Under the current leadership, we do not feel that GB Climbing is fulfilling the British Mountaineering Council's remit and responsibilities as a National Governing Body as set out by Sport England and UK Sport.

For clarity, our loss of confidence is in the strategic and operational leadership of GB Climbing and not in the volunteers serving on the Competition Climbing Performance Group (CCPG). We acknowledge the efforts of Paul Ratcliffe, Chair of CCPG, and other volunteers to try to make up for the deficiencies in leadership within GB Climbing. However, it is also clear to us that relying on volunteers to deliver activity that leadership are proving themselves incapable of is ultimately unsustainable.

The failings of the current GB Climbing Leadership have been set out by the recent CCPG Review published on the BMC website. However, throughout this season we have seen no action to improve the experience of Competition Climbing for athletes, parents or private coaches as set out in the Review.

As a group with wide ranging experiences across the breadth of all GB Climbing activity, we would like to raise the following concerns:

Failure to establish, or adhere to, a consistent selection policy for junior and senior athletes leading to adverse consequences which penalise individuals' attempts to be selected to represent GB Climbing.

Failure to attend enough competitions to build strength in depth through international experience, a failure to register athletes for international competitions in a timely manner and a failure to fill quotas available at events that GB Climbing attends.

 Athlete numbers  © UKC News
A demonstrable lack of understanding of their own selection policies in consultation with athletes, parents and private coaches.

Failure to honour elements of the 2023 Athlete Contract, specifically the provision of GB Climbing Kit (Section 4.1(e)) [Athlete Agreement 2023].

Failure to provide regular or clear communication on policy updates to athletes, parents or private coaches, respond to queries or deliver action in accordance with their own deadlines.

Failure to consistently apply policies vital for athlete health protection (e.g. accepting athlete medical fitness sign-off from non-medically qualified individuals) [IFSC Medical Screening rules]

Failure to develop athlete monitoring protocols for RED-S as encouraged by the International Federation for Sport Climbing (IFSC) Athlete Health Screening Policy and Procedures. [IFSC Medical Screening Rules]

Insufficient coaching provision for GB Climbing Para Team and selection of venues which create barriers to attendance and prevent equal opportunities for access for some GB Para athletes.

Multiple failings in accessing/providing individual support which athletes are entitled to.

The continued failure of GB Climbing to adhere to its own rules and deliver on basic responsibilities has not only directly impacted upon athletes' individual sporting performances but has also diminished the legitimacy of the National Governing Body in the eyes of its members, the wider climbing community and international stakeholders such as the IFSC.

The current version of the proposed 2024 selection policy will significantly reduce the number of senior athletes at the national trials at a time when our highest-performing seniors will be participating in the Olympic Qualifier Series. On the men's team, this will leave GB Climbing's allocation at both World Cup and European Cup 2024 events unfilled. With future allocation of places dependent on place finishes in the current season, not fielding a team will see the current allocation reduced in 2025. The result is these policy decisions create a clear block in the talent pathway for athletes to progress in their competitive careers.

To be clear, the signatories to this letter are current GB Team athletes (junior, senior and para teams), former athletes, aspiring team members, junior athletes in the talent pathway, parents of junior athletes and athletes' coaches who are proud to compete for GB Climbing or to support those who do. We largely self-fund to attend domestic and international competitions and as athletes, parents and coaches we commit physically, financially and emotionally to have these opportunities. We support the strategic aim of GB Climbing to become 'a world-class climbing nation by 2032' but we need a more effective strategy and clearer actions by our National Governing Body to fulfil that vision.

Due to the continued failures by GB Climbing to meet its obligations as our National Governing Body, we have lost confidence in the leadership of GB Climbing and feel collectively the need to write to you to request immediate and urgent action. We urge you and the Board, in the strongest possible terms, to take all necessary action to address our concerns.

Signed in confidence,

77 signatures of whom 30 are athletes or parents of athletes on the current GB Team (lead and boulder)

[shark]

Apart from the BMC response to the open letter on UKC there has been no further communication from the BMC Board or any substantive action taken to my knowledge

Key points IMO

- The open letter expressed loss of confidence in the leadership of GB Climbing but the BMC response made no reference to, or defended the leadership
- The last of the “listening sessions” with the competitions community takes place tonight
- There is an NC meeting at the weekend with two Council nominated Director positions vacant. Andy Say has put his name forward
- The finances are reportedly in disarray. The Finance Committee has, I’m told, prepared a lengthy report.
- I understand the projected deficit has grown substantially but to what extent is unclear

[petejh]

If BMC were a publicly listed company I'd be selling or shorting here.

[Oldmanmatt]

If BMC were a publicly listed company I'd be selling or shorting here.

Have you forgotten that we can’t criticise because we’re “financially incompetent “?