Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

Personally I think any accreditation is only really valid on the day that accreditation is awarded. The criteria to achieve that accreditation can soon slip afterwards.
Much like an MOT, it only says, that on the day of assessment that vehicle is road worthy and should be OK for the next year, but six months later it could fail an MOT test due to wear and tear or maintenance checks lapsing.

 

Has anyone received a ballot for the Trusteeship election, or heard of a timetable? I did write to Mr Miles and Mr Nicholson and have heard nothing - I'm just concious that it is July tomorrow.....

 

Not a dickybird. I thought they had arrived today, but it was only the Bluebell Stroudley carriage fund's newsletter.

 

Don't forget that the May AGM was closed rather than adjourned, and your articles don't appear to allow for a postal AGM or, indeed, a ballot outside of a general meeting.
It would, however, be valid to call the AGM for (say) 2am on a Sunday morning in someone's bedroom in (say) east London!
Also don't forget that it can only be a maximum of 15 months between AGMs. If the May AGM was invalid or inconclusive, then on August 15th the whole trust becomes unconstitutional.
Ian

 

There is an argument that the current incumbents have already achieved that dubious status.

 

The issue will be demonstrating that latter point.

From afar, it seems you have a group of people who think the recent meeting was not valid; and a Trust Chairman and Secretary who think it was. So there's a dispute, and I can't see that the Charity Commission will wish to get involved. So unless someone has got deep enough pockets to challenge it in the courts (which I think would be fraught with peril on all sides) then it is the incumbents' words against the challengers; and in that situation the incumbents hold the upper hand.

Don't ask me what the solution is - I don't know. But it feels to me that if the current board wish to just brazen it out, they probably have the opportunity to do so, at least until the next general meeting - which could be a year away.

Tom

 

Tom

You may well be right about this. It does leave me feeling that I have been defrauded whilst paying my annual sub.

 

The fact that some of us think the AGM was invalid does not ipso facto make it so, but neither does the fact that the Chairman and the Secretary think it was valid make that so either.
The timescale for giving due notice of an AGM is set out quite clearly in the M&AoA. On the basis of the evidence available to those of us who have looked at the dates of known actions, that timescale was not met - the notices were posted out too late (by two days apparently). AFAIK to date neither the Chairman nor the Secretary have provided any firm evidence to the contrary and one has to ask - if the evidence exists, why not provide it?

 

It appears that the Commission have taken interest, and did so before the meeting. It also appears that the resulting guidance to the trustees on how to behave was ignored in how they conducted that meeting; what little was said about Commission guidance in the meeting was a very partial regurgitation of generic advice on trustee boards’ general duty to recruit with care, and not remotely specific to the issues raised that evening and beforehand.

As a trustee elsewhere, I would be approaching the Commission myself if a similar position were to arise, by raising a Serious Incident Report. This is on a path that can lead towards disqualification of trustees.

I agree with the characterisation of the views around the trust, and the difficulty in achieving an internal resolution. However, with a previous AGM election fiasco, this looks less like a difference of opinion, and rather more like a deliberate power play by the incumbents.

The pity is that the working through of this will both distract from the genuine challenges facing the railway as it seeks to expand, and also inhibit genuine strategic review of how to address those challenges.


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It would seem that an approach to the Charity Commission is more likely to achieve a result than discussion on here.

 

Thanks everyone. As I posted on Exmoor NG, all Mr Miles needed to do was lay out a timetable. But he chose not to - which is curious, and would lead anyone to ask why?

As Mr Miles accepted in Lynton that there was no link between the voting and his proceedings against Anne Belsey, there cannot be any reason to delay the voting for that reason, but given that all of the materials have been with Mr Nicholson and Mr Miles since the close of nominations in April, I'm at a loss to think of another reason for the delay -- and if there was a reasonable one, then the Trust would have said something.

I'm afraid this looks like more bad practice and the unconscionable vendetta that Mr Miles appears to be leading against Anne.

I really hope I'm wrong, but unless there's a really clear rationale for the continued delay, then this very troubling explanation looks more and more likely to be accurate.

 

I think we need to do both, @MellishR - the membership need to know what is going on, and on recent form, we're not going to get that from the Newsletter.

 

My personal belief is that an accreditation system is a must at this stage if for nothing else but to help set up a management structure that will work for the whole group. At present there appears to be very little in the way of organisational management and who does what and when.

An accreditation system will help us develop the roles and responabilties of the trustees, the CIC directors and anyother directors of any other sub group of the trust.

 

I am no expert on Accreditation, but I don't think it does what it sounds like you want it to do.

 

Toby Fenwick's Eleven Theses should be posted on the entrance door to Woody Bay Station

 

As a bystander it seems to me that the best option is to report the illegal actions to the charity commission, in the hope that they can disbar the trustees, followed by the calling of an EGM, to elect a new board then sack the chair, and secretary , as they have been found to have acted against your own articles, step two needs to be a meeting of every organisation involved in the L&B to some how simplify the organisation, and set up better lines of communication and if possible merge everything into two organisations, one dealing with the running of the railway, and the other funding and purchase of the track bed, clearing and maintaince of the disused track bed, as it becomes availible, and possibly an estates section that deals with the old station house, woody bay station and other station sites that are now owned by the railway.

 

Toby, maybe the delay with the voting papers is so that the 'Anne' issue can be sorted out first (although as agreed by the chairman it must be totally independent and if it is not are we back to square one). If Anne is found to be guilty as charged and her membership revoked before the election then it gives the opportunity to play her down on the accompanying resume and recommendation list. interestingly though is the fact that certain trustee's actions ( or lack of) seem to have exceeded those levelled at Anne in the first place

 

An accreditation system by itself does not do or say a lot, but it does make the group think about its current governance systems, and if they are good enough and if they are still appropriate to the project itself.

Since the L&BR as a whole appears to be lacking any joined up writing I think for now that it is a good foundation to explore to see just what we can learn from it.

It could turn out to be less than usless for the L&BR where as on the other hand it could give the group the push it needs to adopt best practice across a number of fields.

We simple don't know until it is looked at in detail

 

Maybe the apparent delay is so that they can be posted with the next magazine.

 

The accreditation scheme we have been discussing is for museums, I don't think it would be applicable to the railway itself or the operation of it.
In my view museum accreditation is a level to aspire to and perhaps attain if possible, but it may not be workable for all museums.