17/02/2010 - Regional Committee Meeting

Minutes of the BTF Regional Committee Meeting held on January 14th at Novotel Kingston Park, Newcastle

Committee Members Present:
Steve Robertson, Alan Copland, Barry Taylor, Ian Maddison, Bob Hogg

Apologies:
Donna James, Dave Bell, Georgie Rutherford, Lisa Tweddle, Jem Lawson

Chairs Report:

Most of the points covered in the chair’s report are linked to a recent conversation with Mark Barfield and Morgan Williams from TE, where the region’s strengths and weaknesses were discussed, as well as where we want the region to head in the future.

Nationally, there may be questions about how TE funding for the regions should be allocated. There are suggestions that funding might be varied relative to membership numbers. However, we will raise the point that funding costs vary for some items e.g. coaching courses but are fixed for some things, like academies.

The North East has a distinctive identity compared to many of the other TE regions in that it has a predominantly local, amateur structure, with few commercial organisations involved in the sport in the area- the majority of activity is club based, or independent members.

One risk to the region’s identity and current way of operating is any future commercialisation of region, if companies and commercial organisations begin to operate more extensively. One example might be the regional race calendar where we have generally been able to avoid clashes with dates etc- currently we generally agree events’ dates together but how would we react if major companies come in who aren’t prepared to be involved in these discussions? One current strength is that many NE events are club-run and generally cheaper than commercial ones, and there is likely to be resistance to increased entry fees for “professional” races, so there is a good chance a club-culture could survive anyway.
The chair asked what the committee thought that the region currently does and the following list of items was mentioned:


· Coordinating and publishing a race calendar
· Brings clubs together, gets people (specifically volunteers) involved
· Maintains the Northernpulse website, which in turn makes contacting and putting people in touch with the relevant expertise in the region much easier
· Maintains the regional equipment pool, which is popular with race organisers
· Organises and publishes the grands prix series
· Selects regional championship races and makes sure they’re allocated fairly
· Coordinates the junior academy
· Receives and assesses referees reports from regional races, and can assist with locating referees if required
· Supports development of the coaching workforce by subsidising coaching courses for people identified by their clubs


The chair also asked for suggestions for things that the region could do, or might want to do in the future. These are items that Morgan Williams, Georgie Rutherford and the TE development team may be able to help deliver, if we chose to follow them up. The following ideas were mentioned:


· We could organise adult participation and minority group training days- perhaps using the great north swim and other events to tie in with.
· The region could finance “open” events like open water swimming as items for general benefit when clubs didn’t have appropriately qualified coaches. Open water swimming could be run with the ASA and others. One example might be using the lake at QE2 park as a formalised venue with set days when it’s ok to use- a bit like commercial open water venues, but regionally or volunteer run instead. Open water training days could be held at various venues too, such as the Derwent reservoir. For many venues we would need to contact the owners, like Northumbrian water, and address their concerns e.g. public seeing our events and assuming swimming is generally permitted.

· More generally, the region could coordinate events that support clubs by doing things they can’t do individually (like swimming or purchasing transition racking for events).

· Coaching support and funding for qualifications could be targeted at clubs in need. Bob Hogg (as one of the region’s coach tutors) was happy that we can still put coaching courses on in the region when needed, and that we have good venues available e.g. the Wentworth leisure centre. There is a risk of running down the regional funds, but Georgie (in conversation with SR previously) feels that we could manage the situation, or that courses are actually a minimal drain on funds because of how they’re run. We could explore working with regional coaching partnerships and other sources of funding to minimise any problems. We could also pick specific coaches to support with funds, e.g. those who regularly help at the academy.

· There may be a need to formalise a requirement to help the region if a coach is given regional funds towards coaching qualifications, e.g. by helping for a number of hours at the academy. This could be made into a written requirement although it couldn’t be enforced, only via “gentlemens’ agreements.”
Regional constitution- we need to check it before the next meeting and draft amendments to include the new roles (Academy head coach and performance coordinator) and any new activities we propose to do. As part of this we need to find out how the performance coordinator fits in with the academy structure and funding. This is something we need to check with Simon Mills (National Performance Director). We also need to decide the formal status of the head coach with respect to committee meetings- We need to check with the existing constitution since “paying” someone for what they do (via the honorarium) is a relatively radical step, that will need clarifying.

Treasurers' Report:

The regional accounts haven’t been finalised yet as we’re waiting for input from the r.p.m. (Georgie) to clarify how some items should be classified. However there are “comfortable” amounts of money in the bank, although with no specific details as yet. The junior academy in its current format is likely to be the biggest drain on funds.

We need to check the proposed academy budget with respect to the head coach’s honorarium payment, and whether it has been broken down into a series of monthly payments within the head coach’s proposed budget.

Questions were raised about the status of the regional bikes, that are sometimes used for the academy, but are mainly used by Georgie and the coaches who deliver schools activities, the kids of steel events etc. We need to clarify who pays for them, stores them and gets relevant maintenance done.

Academy, Welfare and Children's Report:

There have been no reported welfare issues
A proposed budget for the regional academy was submitted by Colin Gardener and Alan Copland. It was generally accepted and approved, although a query was made about the honorarium payment and how it had been factored into the budget (see treasurers’ report) and also about the costs of using the Tri-it gym for some academy activities, given that the head coach (Colin Gardener) owns it. It was generally felt that this was an acceptable situation and that the use of the gym had many advantages, but that it would be appropriate to monitor it (this would be the case with any similar situation of potential conflict of interest, and is in absolutely no way a reflection on Colin).

The regional junior talent id day will now be on January the 30th due to heavy recent snow. This date clashes with junior cross country and swimming events elsewhere, but there are plans in place to cope e.g. through testing athletes at their clubs or through knowledge of the existing academy athletes. At present it seems unlikely that all of the available academy slots will be filled, given the “top” standards set by TE, so there may be scope to include other athletes too.

Colin is in the process of getting together a list of junior races locally and nationally, which will be sent to Lisa to put on Northernpulse.
Alan asked about the potential for the performance coordinator to get cpd training via the academy too, due to the way the performance coordinator and head coach’s roles were starting to overlap to some extent? This is something that would need to be investigated via Simon Mills.

Alan has been actively speaking to neighbouring regions to find about their races, activities, clubs, members etc. and has made several new contacts

Regional Programmes' Managers Report:

Georgie was unable to make the meeting but made the following points via email:
The recent level 1 and 2 coaching courses have gone well, so particular thanks go to Phil Jameson and Bob Hogg for running them, sometimes in trying circumstances.

There are several coaching CPD courses in the pipeline. British Tri are holding the Open Water swim workshop for L2 and L3 coaches so if people are interested they can contact Rebecca Rowley at the BTF. Alan C has already signed up with a few club members along with others from the NE so it appears popular so far. Bob H and Georgie are also planning local CPD “massage” and “recovery” sessions in partnership with the Performance Clinic in Sunderland.

The launch of the Stockton Try a Tri programme has gone well and starts this Saturday with 40 novice people signed up for 4 monthly sessions. The Try a Tri programme also launched in Northumberland, with Gary W, Neil Bowers, Barry J and Barry T leading the coaching. Where possible this will be promoted in the local press and on websites
Georgie has been invited to join Ali Brownlee (presenter) on his BBC Radio Tees evening sports show for a monthly slot to promote triathlon in the North East, which is brilliant.

She has been on twice so far and he gives her nearly 30mins to chat with him about triathlon and how to get involved, to promote events, coaching and clubs to an audience of 40,000. They are also going to have THE triathlete Ali Brownlee on the show one night as well to share tips with the host Ali as he is going to train up to do an event this summer.

Technical Co-Ordinators Report:

Bob mentioned the “try a tri” events that Georgie had been organising in some areas and mentioned the potential to run them in other areas e.g. in the Newcastle inner city, Sunderland etc. This was something people felt would definitely be worth investigating for next year, and that we could ask Georgie about.

There are now various coaching CPD courses scheduled to take place, including a national “open water swim coaching” one in February and two local ones on “sports massage” and “therapeutic taping” that Bob and Georgie have been working on for later in the year.

Referees reports and a list of the registered referees in the region went to Bob during the race season. He raised concerns about the new referee qualification system, since it places great importance on shadowing experienced referees (e.g. 4 shadows for a level 1, including national ranking events), but there is still an expectation that the candidate referee will do it at own expense- this may well put off potential candidates and is hard if the candidate is still competing regularly themselves.

NorthernPulse Update:

Lisa was unable to make the meeting but made the following points via email:
She had received several emails asking about a regional awards evening for 2009 and whether one was taking place.

Donna James had already offered to help organise an event for the 2009 season, but a previous request on Northernpulse for volunteers to help her had produced no response from the membership. The committee discussed the options and decided that it was probably too late for a 2009 season event, especially given the lack of volunteers to organise one.

Instead, the decision was taken to focus on ensuring that the 2010 event was as good as possible. A date of Friday the 12th or Saturday the 13th of November 2010 was provisionally selected and committee members agreed to look at potential venues- especially where clubs had successfully used them previously for their own events. Costs for the event were briefly discussed and the treasurer pointed out that in previous years it had been buying trophies that had been the main cost, since ticket sales generally covered venue hire and food costs.

Lisa had also received several queries about the regional grand prix series and how it had been organised and run this year this item was held over until later in the meeting, since the GP was already an agenda item.

Event Co-Ordinators Role and Conference:

After being nominated for the role in his absence, Barry Taylor was able to meet other committee members and discuss the event coordinators’ role. Everyone agreed that Barry could develop the role based on his strengths, and that there was lots of potential, for example by coordinating and sharing best practice among the regions’ race organisers.

Barry had identified the national event organisers’ conference at the TCR show as being a good opportunity to learn more about the national race scene and, given that few local race organisers were likely to make the event, the committee agreed to pay Barry’s expenses to attend, provided he was then able to share the information with other race organisers.

Championship Races

The following races were selected as regional championship races for 2010. Preference is given to established races run by local clubs, and to races that have not been the championship race previously where several races may qualify to be the championship.
Sprint Distance: The QE2/Wansbeck triathlon
Standard distance: The Ryton tri standard distance triathlon (although this is a new name, it is the established Prince Bishops’ race)

Long distance: The Cleveland Steelman triathlon
Duathlon: The City of Durham (Meadowfield) duathlon
Aquathlon: The Killingworth aquathlon (April edition)

Regional Grand Prix Series

It was decided that the regional grand prix should continue in its current format, subject to volunteers being prepared to coordinate it. Some minor changes were proposed to address issues that had been raised this year:

Everyone who competes in a qualifying race will have GP points awarded, but prizes will be restricted to Triathlon England Members, who will be asked to prove their membership before collecting their prizes. This appeared to be the best compromise between making life easy for the volunteers coordinating the GP and rewarding athletes who, as TE members, are supporting the region’s activities.

Points will be awarded based on proportions of the winners’ time- this is more complicated for the volunteers who coordinate the GP but minimises the effect of entering small versus large events on the overall GP.

For the triathlon GP, scores from an athlete’s best 5 events will count. All triathlon events listed on the Regional race calendar on Northernpulse will count towards the GP.
For the aquathlon and duathlon GPs, all relevant races in the region, lised on the regional events calendar on Northernpulse, will count (including off-road events in the case of the duathlon GP)

Regional Decision Making

The chair asked the committee if they were happy with the current decision making process within the region whereby the chair consults with the committee wherever possible via email, but has the ability to make decisions where no replies are received or where very quick decisions are required. Consent of those who choose not to reply is assumed. The committee were happy with this arrangement and suggested that it provided a reasonable way for a volunteer run organisation to proceed.

Regional Decision Making

The chair asked the committee if they were happy with the current decision making process within the region whereby the chair consults with the committee wherever possible via email, but has the ability to make decisions where no replies are received or where very quick decisions are required. Consent of those who choose not to reply is assumed. The committee were happy with this arrangement and suggested that it provided a reasonable way for a volunteer run organisation to proceed.

Regional Equipment Pool

The regional equipment pool requires a formal inventory to be taken and probably needs a formal statement drafting about what we have and who can access it. As an example, Tri Northumberland have a booking out and in process and a specific lockup facility with a named contact person.

In a regional context, this raises questions about how to coordinate access- perhaps by asking for volunteers? The possibility of moving the equipment store was discussed since its current location in Seaburn is mainly available through goodwill and cannot be guaranteed. A container sized lockup would probably be required and the committee agreed to ask on Northernpulse for volunteers to coordinate the equipment pool.

Volunteer Recruitment and Retention

Although we have a good group of proactive volunteers forming the regional committee, and clubs are generally effective at finding volunteers to run them, recruitment is generally difficult. This is especially true for race marshals etc. and it would be good if a wider group of people could become involved in regional governance roles since new ideas would undoubtedly benefit the region.

We can publicise requests for volunteers and race marshals via northernpulse, so event organisers and clubs can submit requests to Lisa for posting on the site.

Date for Next Meetings

The following dates were proposed, subject to confirmation nearer the time:

Thursday 15th April
Thursday 15th July
AGM: Thursday 14th October

AOB

Barry Taylor asked whether it would be possible to get the regional committee involved in promoting the event, since the organisers were hoping to invite several key TE decision makers to the 2010 event with a view to submitting a bid for a major event at the venue. The Committee thought that this was a good idea, that they could support.

Several committee members asked for clarification about how expenses claims should work. This will be cleared up, along with how the claims process should work. In general, people haven’t put in claims in the past but this is likely to change in the future, especially with the way the new regional academy and its associated budget will work.