28/05/2020
Membership Ballot Update
We would like to thank all those members that have shown support for us over the last six weeks, but unfortunately, due to the way in which BS have chosen to run the membership ballot we have decided to rescind our request.
When we presented our petition to BS, asking for a vote on our proposal regarding grants to PTOs, BS sought legal advice and informed us that there would need to be a physical General Meeting in order for members to vote on the proposition. This would have required six people to attend in person, in order to be quorate and members casting a proxy vote with the result being based on the total number of votes cast for or against the proposition. At the time we were still in strict lockdown and PTOs did not wish any members to be put at risk, no matter how slight, so we asked for an electronic vote to be carried out instead, which BS agreed to.
During the process of finalising the wording for the landing page for the ballot, the following was noticed:
“According to the Companies Act 2006, in order for this resolution to pass, a simple majority of the total voting rights of eligible members is required (therefore abstentions count against).”
We sought confirmation from BS that this meant that the result would be based on the total number of eligible full members (currently circa 2000) rather than the total votes cast. In other words, we would need to secure at least 1001 votes in favour, in order for the proposal to pass. Historically over the last 7 years voter turnout for BS Council Elections has only been on average 18%, and if it were the same for this ballot, even if everyone voted for the proposal, it would still fall short.
We fully understand that the Companies Act 2006 stipulates that this type of vote should be counted in this way, however the Board of Directors if they were so minded, could decide to count the votes in the same way they do for all other Association business (Council, STC, Riggers, MDC, EPC, AGM, Elections) with the result being on the total votes cast rather than eligible members. We feel that their refusal to do so makes the ballot unfair.
We considered returning to BS and requesting a General meeting as per their original legal advice, but, after much discussion decided that we did not want to cause any further expense to the Association or further confuse what has already proven to be a far from simple process.
There are a number of other factors, which for brevity we do not want to expand on here,
th
but we will be hosting another Zoom meeting on Friday 29 , when we will be happy to
provide further information and answer any questions you may have.
