Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

The M&AoA do allow for the submission of a proxy notification by e-mail. However such a submission has to be to an e-mail address, and in a form, specified by the Trust. As the Trust so far has failed to specify either, then any submission sent by e-mail risks being rejected as 'not valid'

I can find nothing in the M&AoA which allows for the electronic submission of actual votes, even is something as simple as a scan of a signed voting form :-(

But of course, in order to be able to vote, first you need to receive the Agenda and voting forms Which could, with relatively little effort, be uploaded to the web beforehand.

Sadly, the Trust really does languish 'in the dark ages' as far as such things are concerned, yet how much does it pay for its shiny 'new' website?

 

To be fair I am pretty sure a polite email submitted by those overseas, with relative details such as membership number from the email address registered with the membership secretary, and indication of vote, sent to either of the secretaries would be accepted. The email addresses are in the magazine. It's not that hard to find a solution.

 

You may be right, but...who would risk 'losing' their vote under the current cirumcumstances?

The M&AoA define a formal process for at least the proxy nomination aspect. IMHO it is not unreasonable these days to expect the Trust to provide such a process. After all, there has been much said recently about their failure to follow the GM notification process, despite it being clearly defined, so an 'undefined' voting process seems rather a risky thing to use.

 

Only if you make a big issue it of it. I am sure I could find a way to get my vote in by reasonable means if I needed to.

 

With no disrespect to you or to the relevant secretaries, this is something that should not rely on goodwill and chance. Your ability to get a response is different from that of others, who will be less well connected and not necessarily so likely to get a response to those emails.

In the context of recent events, where technical breaches have given rise to this re-run, there should be absolute clarity on how such proxies will be handled.

However, to those arguing that this should just be done, I know from other organisations I've been involved with that electronic votes do need to be properly provided for.

 

Perhaps you could explain exactly how you might achieve this Dave?
I do not wish to go into details but rest assured I have taken up the matter of late arrival of voting papers with the Trustees Board.
Incidentally I received my (worthless?) Voting Papers on Tuesday 9th May! How pray could they be returned in time except by email??

 

Email secretaries, enquire how to proceed and if copies of papers can be sent in pdf form. If possible receive copies, either print, sign and scan and then send back or if acceptable indicate in email voting preferences.
I've done this for other legal situations which arose after my mother's passing in January, I'm sure a solution can be found here.
If at the moment email response is not in any way acceptable then I am sure it's something we can resolve before next AGM.

 

You were lucky. Mine arrived today !
I did email the Secretary with a proxy for the AGM, quoting the appropriate section of the Articles and my membership number, but had no acknowledgment and have no idea if it was passed on to my nominee.
I really can't understand what the problem is with simple email correspondence, we've been using it for the last 25 years ! Scanned attachments are a bit newer, maybe 20 years.
Certainly by 2005 I had over 80% of the members of the moderately large society of which I was then Secretary on email, and all notices were sent by that means, except for those members who still needed "snail" mail. The savings in both time and costs were enormous.

 

To be fair, I am pretty sure that it is for the Trust/CIC secretaries to make the process easy, transparent, and widely known, without overseas members (or others similarly disenfranchised by distance or circumstances) having to resort to ad hoc communication by email.

 

Wasn't this what was done with the 'options' consultation. In fact I think UK members could submit their choices by email

 

Knowing air-mail has been disrupted as a result of Covid, I did ask for the papers to be emailed but received no acknowledgement. There seems to be something wrong with the administration !

 

In West Northamptonshire the AGM papers have yet to arrive. Presumably they are languishing in the sorting office in Northampton... this is however nothing new as the last few newsletters have been subject to similar delays of 4 weeks or so.

 

It was. So why can one part of the admin. do it but not the other ?

 

That is appalling !

 

I'm actually going to speak up for the secretaries here. Both are voluntary, both have at times huge volumes of correspondence to deal with, both I should image could do with assistants at times, perhaps a company or legal secretary.
I guess that's OK with everyone with the cost involved in employing secretaries to the level of qualification? They don't come cheap mind you.

 

Everyone assumes that a recipient will receive your mail. There a few reasons, but one them can be because of the language used. A good e-mail provider might reject an e-mail containing threatening or abusive wording. Probably the more widely used Gmail, HotMail etc. will pass the mail. And it might not arrive due to it being considered SPAM in line with the recipients internet settings.

 

In fairness, the failings of Royal Mail are not the fault of the Trust, and have only recently got to this stage. Earlier in 2022 and 2021, post from the Trust arrived reasonably quickly to us, so this was not a reasonably foreseeable matter. Clearly there is a need for the Trust to modify how they send newsletters, etc. out (and I understand that the Trust agree with this), what perhaps will take a little time is finding the right solution. I know from being a company director just how long these 'little' jobs take to do, they need to be researched, a suitable solution found, and then they need to be implemented.

 

Sorry, Dave, I think you over rate the Secretary's job. Yes, it will require time to attend meetings and write up and distribute the minutes and maintaining the membership records may get busy from time to time, but there is nothing there that would require the level of expertise of a qualified Company or Legal secretary. It might pay the Trustees, if they have not already done so, to look for somebody to assist with things like mail-outs, or possibly minute taking or membership renewals, which would involve only a few hours at a time, probably voluntary but, even if paid, only minimal expenditure.

 

that's not strictly true for everyone - here in my bit of West Northants the AGM papers arrived within about 48 hours of the first mutterings on here that they'd been sent out - I actually returned them the same day. I've got no idea what tranches, or similar, they send things out in but I'm typically somewhere in the earlier people saying that they've had something. I do remember the newsletter that explained what was happening (probably the mailing before the AGM papers) I seemed to be about a week after most people on here, but that so far is the exception.

 

Must admit, for a while I wasn't getting email from some people, then all of a sudden it began coming through again, even now I don't know why those emails were lost.