Board Meeting
Date: 25th April 2017
Time: 13:00 to 15:00
Venue:West Yorkshire Sport Office, Nepshaw Lane South, LS27 7JQ
Present:MembersPaul Reid,Linda Tully, Andrew Watson, Merran McRae, David Gent,Brian Richards
OfficersNigel Harrison, Gemma Armitage, Vicky Joel, Helen Marney,
GuestJulie Hannan (Sport England)
Apologies: Anthony Rogers
Minutes
Agenda Item / LEAD1 / Welcome and apologies
Paul welcomed everyone to the meeting and noted Anthony’s apology. / PR
2 / Declarations of Interest
Linda brought the groups attention to a new role she has secured, Chair of Club Doncaster Foundation. Paul noted this. / PR
3 / Minutes of previous meetings and matters arising
Paul went through the minutes of the previous meeting.
Item 4 – Nigel updated the group on the progress of this work. The project seems to be progressing well with a project group being set up including West Yorkshire Local Authority representatives, the representatives for the Sport Centres were excited about the project. Paul requested that an update be brought to the meeting as a standing agenda item.Merran commented that this process would be helped by various West Yorkshire authorities being members of the open data institute
Item 8 – The amendments were made to the Disability Sport Yorkshire agreement and this was signed.
Item 9 – The update to the Articles of Association was processed. Paul proposed that Linda should take on the role of Senior independent Director, the Board agreed.
Item 11 – The terms for the Tesco grant to extend the Mums’ Team funding were circulated to the Anthony and were accepted on his approval.
The minutes of 24/01/2017 were approved.
Board Membership
Paul commented that there were still some gaps in skills of the Board, mainly Charitable funding and PR/Communications. He requested that if anyone knows of anyone that would be interested they should come forward however it is likely that we will go to external recruitment.
Nigel updated the group that although Hannah Cockroft was up for becoming a Board Member this has fallen through due to her competition commitments. However she does continue to support Yorkshire Sport Foundation as an ambassador. / PR
4 / Organisation Change Update Report
Nigel added to the circulated report that the organisation change that has been taking place is now coming to a close and has been a very positive process. Individuals and the organisation as a whole has taken a flexible and positive attitude throughout. The two teams have now been formed, geographical and specialist however will take time to settle into their roles.
Nigel commented that during a discussion with Wendy Campbell (Director of Community Sport, Sport England) she said we were on the right track however Nigel attended a meeting to discuss possible ways forward for the relationship between Sport England and County Sport Partnerships to become stronger. Much of the detail is still being discussed and debated however it is felt that Sport England are looking to get closer to the local picture and will use County Sport Partnerships as a way of doing this, possibly by allocating County Sport Partnership employees to have a direct relationship with Sport England officers.
Nigel’s initial thoughts are that this model fits with our geographical team however the job roles and scales of the posts are still to be confirmed which may mean further reorganisation. More details will hopefully be released after the Sport England Board Meeting in June. It is however envisaged that there will be 4 or 5 County Sport Partnerships chosen to be pilots, the group may be consulted at a later date if Yorkshire Sport Foundation is approached to be one of the pilots.
After a query from Merran it was clarified that is not yet known whether the employees in question would be existing Yorkshire Sport Foundation staff or not.
Julie confirmed that a number of things are to come into place before this is confirmed however we should be looking to get a more confirmed view in June.
After a query from Linda, Nigel clarified that it is unlikely there will be more funding in the system for this set up.
David commented that this was a positive move back to more local delivery and absolutely justifies our position.
Paul commented that the new structure was positive and he has gained confidence from Nigel being among the group attending these initial discussions.He is pleased that there might be additional structure in the sector and this might add some permanency to County Sport Partnerships.
Governance
Nigel confirmed the information in the report, this was backed up by Andrew who commented that there were some really good people in the Sub-Groups however they would only keep attending if it was meaningful.
The group agreed with the principle of letting the dust settle and seeing what function a future group could have. Paul commented that there should be the potential for ad-hoc meetings as and when programmes required however these meetings must be called before the programme gets to an amber or red rating, it must be pro-active not retrospective.
Going forward the Board or Nigel may call additional meetings if they feel it is necessary to request further scrutiny on any individual programme, in the same way a material change of situation may require additional meetings to be called. / NH
5 / Update on Progress of District Activity Partnerships (presentation)
Nigel and Vicky both commented on the presentation. Discussions took place around the level of activity for the individual districts and how this was measured. It was asked who or where the District Activity Partnerships are accountable to. It was clarified that they were accountable only to themselves. Paul questioned how a district where the District Activity Partnership was seen as ineffective had the highest level of activity. Due to the way the levels of activity are measured there is no direct link to the measurement and our assessment of the effectiveness of the District Activity Partnership.
It was discussed that best practice is being shared by the more effective District Activity Partnerships and that discussions have recently taken place to get the Chairs together to share their practices. / VJ
6 / Update on Development Team Projects (presentation)
Helen outlined the main points of the presentation and was thanked for the information. / HM
7 / Health and Safety Policy (report)
Paul introduced the policy and confirmed that he was much happier with the policy. Nigel confirmed he was comfortable with the ambers that were evident on the action plan after a question concerning the workplace checklist.
The Board approved the Health and Safety Policy. / NH
8 / Company Performance (report)
Paul asked the group if anyone had any thoughts or queries after reading the report. Nothing was discussed. / NH
9 / Finance
9.1 Finance Update (report to Finance Sub-Committee attached)
In Anthony’s absence Paul read out an email from him summarising the Finance Sub-Committee meeting which took place earlier in the month.
He wanted it to be detailed in the Board minutes that the diversification target was reached, which is a tremendous achievement. This target will be reviewed by the Finance Sub-Committee to confirm all the targets are still reflective of the current challenges.
Anthony also wanted to make note of the achievement of the administration target by remaining under the 8% target.
No-one had any further comments.
9.2 Finance Approvals (report)
Comic Relief – As the terms have not been finalised the Board were willing to approve in-principle however the bid must come back to the Board for final approval. This can be done by email if required
Creating Connections – The Board approved this funding. / AR / GA
10 / HR and Organisation Development (report)
The Board ratified the salary increase of 1.5% to all staff.
The staff survey was discussed, the Board understood some of the results due to the organisational change that had recently taken place and would like an update. Nigel clarified that this was the CSPN survey, our own survey has been held back until October to allow for comparison. / NH
11 / Any other urgent business
Confidential
Paul requested the officers leave so he could discuss a matter with Board members only.
This information is confidential and has been removed from the published minutes. / PR
12 / Dates of Meetings 2017 / 2018
-3rd July 2017
-23rd October 2017
-22nd January 2017
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