Warwickshire County Fencing Union - Committee Meeting

Friday, 30th January at the John Atkinson Sports Centre, Warwick at 8p.m.

Notes of Meeting

Present:- Joan Whitehouse (JW) (Chair), Mike Whitehouse (MW), Richard Burn (RB), Louisa Miller (LM) , Helen Cormack (HC), Peter Rome (PR), Detti Toth (DT).

ACTION POINTS SUMMARIZED IN RED AT END OF NOTE.

  1. Apologies
  1. Apologies were received from Martin Turner, and from Lynne Melia
  1. Constitution
  1. There was some discussion as to the formal standing of the draft constitution considered at the last meeting. PR felt a further meeting open to the full membership, either EGM or AGM, was required to ratify this. After RB checked previous correspondence, it was agreed this would be ratified at the next meeting which would be organised as an AGM with as wide attendance as possible from the WFU fencing population.
  1. Minutes of the last meeting Friday 3rd October 2008
  1. HC apologised for the brevity of the notes, due to limited preparation time, and said these would be expanded and distributed with the notes of the current meeting. They could be formally accepted then. No action points not covered elsewhere.
  1. Treasurer’s report
  2. RB had banked the contribution by the region (£100) in the newly formed WFU bank account. PR handed over at the meeting the income from the WFU championships. Nothing else to report.
  1. Competitions:-
  1. Warwickshire Championships – Report

PR presented a financial report - in summary this had run smoothly with 63 entries producing a net profit of £652 for WFU funds. DT agreed to email RB the document containing the full breakdown of the competition finances. The event was felt to have been a success with considerable positive feedback from fencers. PR highlighted one problem with some of the boxes used being effectively single-weapon boxes as a consequence of the re-chipping process following changes in the timing rules. This had resulted in some boxes being chipped for sabre only. To note for future competitions.

  1. Future Warwickshire competitions?

A junior competition was discussed. HC offered to organise a County junior foil competition this later in the year. JW requested that no date be set until after the Regional Youth Teams competition had been scheduled. This was agreed. HC to note date of above competition and identify a suitable date for the Warwickshire competition to bring to the committee for consideration.

The existence of a trophy for the Warwickshire Mixed Triples event was raised.

  1. Excalibur

It was agreed that Warwickshire would be represented again this year. A cheque for the entry fee of £250 was provided on the understanding this was recouped from the fencers once the team was selected. PR was given a mandate to select and organise the team without the need to refer back to the committee. County colours/team t-shirts were mentioned – PR said this was already in hand.

  1. CSW and other Sports Partnerships
  2. Sports Unlimited – progress

HC said that she was waiting to hear the outcome of their application for girls-only fencing sessions. HC outlined the problem experienced with their grant application i.e. applications were required for single term blocks and no spreading of initial capital outlay had been permitted. Steps had been taken to mitigate the effect by scaling down the application and by providing for contributions by participants to be used to fund hire kit for future participation. JW suggested that there was possibly scope for the region to help here, by providing funds towards for the initial start-up costs. HC said she would pursue this if the initial bid was turned down, for future periods.

PR confirmed that he was receiving support from more than one Partnership Development Manager in taking forward bids for funding.

JW mentioned that she had been approached with respect to a grant application made in Birmingham to confirm NGB support for the project.

  1. CSW Bursaries for young athletes.

HC and PR were both aware of athletes for whom CAP funding would be applied (deadline in February). PR mentioned TAP funding, also via CSW Sport, which he thought was aimed at a higher level of achievement.

  1. Warwickshire Website
  1. RB outlined his background in web design and management and offered to design and maintain a WFU website totally cost-free to the region. This offer was accepted with thanks. HC requested that this be set up with at least one restricted access area for committee members, which was agreed. PR suggested a separate area for the Excalibur team, again this was agreed and RB confirmed would be simple to implement.

RB asked for support in finding content for the website – JW suggested DT act as assistant webmaster and help RB identify suitable fencing content for the website.

  1. AOB
  1. Coaches Database – Progress

Progress with the England Fencing database of coaches was discussed – this now contained coach educators and coaches would be added soon. However, it was not thought this would contain the geographical information local organisations would need to identify coaches in their area

The need to maintain an absolutely neutral approach to providing information about coaches was discussed. MW expressed some reservations about whether this was possible.

HC produced a (draft) pro-forma request to join a WFU coaching database. DT suggested this could be included as part of any WFU website, with coaches self-nominating via an online form and providing as much or as little contact information as they wished. This was agreed to be a good way forward, and RB confirmed he could set this up without problem. HC agreed to circulate the draft request for comment, before RB looked at turning it into a web form.

PR asked about the question of inclusion of coaches not on the England Fencing register. JW confirmed that Keith Smith had clarified this point, all coaches who met the minimum standard could be included whether their qualifications were via BAF, EF or other recognised body. JW also referred the meeting to the article in the recently issued Sword magazine (Jan 2009 issue) on Fencing in State Schools which touched on this point.

Some discussion about the background to the stalling of the new coach accreditation process, due to the need to align with Sport England’s requirements. Norman Randall would be retained as consultant for a further year, MW had been working with Norman on developing the coach accreditation courses.

  1. Child Protection Officer – responsibilities.

DT asked for clarification of her responsibilities as the CP representative on the committee. JW referred to upcoming changes in the CP process which DT would be kept informed of. HC suggested the committee CP role was to maintain an oversight of all the committee’s actions from a CP perspective – the issue of images featured on the WFU website was raised as an example.

  1. Communication

The need to communicate with as many WFU fencers was discussed and agreed as a good thing. It was agreed after discussion that the main point of contact could only be via clubs and coaches. Both affiliated and non-affiliated clubs should be contacted to ensure maximum contact –however, JW pointed out many clubs were not affiliated and in those circumstances contact details were often hard to come by.

HC said that in her original invitation to the first meeting, she had taken all available club details from the WM website and the BF website list of clubs. Postal notification had been sent to those clubs for which postal but not email addresses were known.

PR had become aware of another club which had affiliated in the last 2-3 weeks, in Rugby, and would provide HC with the email address of the coach, John Robinson, to ensure he could be included in future club mailings.

To ensure the widest possible circulation for the AGM notice, HC would circulate her list of contacts used for the original notice of reformation of WFU, and the committee would try to build on this from personal knowledge make it as complete as possible over the next 2 weeks. Contacts did not need to be affiliated to England Fencing at this stage.

  1. County Status

JW was in direct contact with Peter Smith of England Fencing, to clarify the status of Counties/Regions within the EF structure, as well as the insurance position. JW would be in direct contact with the BFA’s insurers, and hoped the legal positioning of counties and regions would be resolved soon.

  1. HC mentioned that at the recent Kenilworth Leon Paul competition, Tom Clift, a representative of CSW Partnership with responsibility for coordinating the local training facilities for London 2012, had come along to see a fencing competition in action, and had been suitably impressed.
  1. Date of Next Meeting

13th March was chosen as the preferred date, with 6th March as a reserve option depending on Martin’s availability. This would be advertised appropriately as a formal AGM.

ACTION POINTS

HCto distribute notes of previous meeting

DTto provide RB with accounts from Warwickshire Championships

HC to review date for Warwickshire Junior foil comp once regional team comp date set.

PRto select Excalibur team and organise attendance of Warwickshire team.

RB to set up WFU website and share with committee

ALLto review list of Warwickshire contacts and add to where possible

ALL to advise availability for next meeting.