Summary of board meeting minutes 18th January 2018

In addition to board members attending this meeting, Richard Lynes in his role of chair of the Governance Committee attended to audit board meeting processes and procedures.

Report from CEO
Mark Maguire said that his main focus had been on the 100 club and that the PR launch was planned for later in the month, some commitments had been made by businesses and others were expected following the launch.

A date was still awaited for the James Alabi.

Following the Safety Advisory Group meeting there are no obstacles in respect of the Stagecoach proposal and a detailed proposal is now awaited which will be submitted to the board in the first instance.

Finance update

Laurence Kirby highlighted his concerns regarding the financial position – full details to be explained at the CFU meeting on 25th January.

Working groups

Following a meeting of the board, with some former directors, key stakeholders and volunteers, it had been agreed that a number of working groups be established, these were:
• Football
• Membership/community/fan engagement
• Commercial/Fundraising
• Strategy

Terms of reference will be set for each group and they will meet regularly and feedback to the CFU board, their notes will be published on the CFU website.

CFU meeting

The agenda for the CFU meeting was agreed and subsequently published on the CFU website.

Operations board

The minutes of the Operations board held on 18th December, 2017 were noted, also that an update on Health and Safety had been produced.

Volunteer strategy

Andrew Morris had produced a draft volunteer strategy which will be discussed at a future meeting.

When the board met on14th December, they received a presentation on the General Data Protection Regulations from Susan Oldfield who is a member of the governance team; these new regulations will be introduced in 2018 and plans have to be put in place to ensure that the football club is compliant.

The regulations will cover how data is:

· Collected
· Stored
· Processed
· Secured and handled
· Clear responsibilities will have to be assigned to both CFU board members and staff.

The first step in staring to implement these new regulations will be to undertake an audit – Mark Jones is the director with the lead on this issue.

Mark Maguire attended the board to provide an update on progress in the establishment of the 100 club that has previously been referred to at CFU meetings, the aim is still to launch this initiative in January 2018. MM reported that discussions are ongoing regarding the possible Stagecoach development and there is a new initiative to tray and increase attendances at home games with the use of advance ticket sales.

In addition to a small selection of merchandise being on sale in the Evening Leader Office, the Tourist Information office on the Town Hall square have a limited range of merchandise.

LK provided an update on the financial position which showed the continuing trend of match day attendance being lower than planned and the associate spends also being down – programmes and 50/50.

Following the recent announcement at the informal CFU meeting in November, there was further discussion relating to reporting arrangements by Directors at CFU board meetings, JH had produced a template for income generation reports and also for membership and engagement reports. It was agreed that these should be used by all directors.

A policy regarding safeguarding of vulnerable adults was approved and it was agreed that there should be a page devoted to safeguarding on the club website and this will include copies of relevant policies relating to safeguarding.

The minutes form the operations board held on 27th November and 4th December were received – the issues covered at these meetings had already been discussed as part of MM’s report.

A calendar of meetings for the year was agreed Board meetings
18th January
22nd February
22nd March
19th April
17th May
14th June
12th July
9th August
6th September
4th October
1st November
6th December

Calum McIntyre attended the most recent board meeting on 16th November, 2017 – he briefed the board on the Academy Strategy and highlighted the professional approach of our volunteer coaches and the work that had been undertaken in respect of Continuing Professional Development in preparation for the new season.

Calum also provided details of the working of the recently established Youth Team Scholarship scheme. This scheme enables the club to offer a similar programme to that of other clubs at the same level and above and will help with recruitment.

Ron Smith, who has previously been co-opted to the Operations Board was co-opted again for a further year.

Finance – noted that in terms of gate money the club is slightly ahead of budget with the Wrexham game having taken place recently, although some areas are below budget including programme sales. Changes were agreed to the bank mandates with the change in director appointments.

The main issue for discussion related to new ways of working for the board with all business being grouped into 3 areas – see full details on the CFU website.

Future CFU meetings – it is proposed that there will be 6 formal meetings a year (including the AGM) the dates for these will be published in advance at the start of the year. In the months in between it is proposed that these meetings will become more along the lines of a fans forum and be open to wider than CFU membership; they will be held in various locations in and around Chester rather than at the football club.