BCA Ballot - Have Your Say!

All BCA members whose emails addresses BCA holds should by now have received an email with a 'voting token' enabling them to vote in the ballot for the election of BCA chair and on the various constitutional changes that have been proposed.

If you have not received this email, you should contact the returning officer and ask for this to be sent.

Voting will remain open until midnight on Sunday 31st October 2021.

Please forward this email to your members so that they know to expect an email from BCA regarding the voting.

There are two candidates for Chair, Russell Myers (current acting Chair) and Rostam Namaghi (currently the Publications and Information Officer). You can read their election statements here. There are also links to recorded interviews with both candidates linked from the same page.

Please take the time to read/listen and form your own views on the candidates.

The proposal to allow regional councils to appoint their own bolt installers is uncontentious and is supported by the CSCC Equipment Officer, Andrew Atkinson.

This clause prevents the BCA getting involved in the internal workings of a member such as a club, regional council or access body unless invited to do so by the member.

A poll conducted by BCA of its members returned a majorty in favour of the clause remaining unaltered.

There are various alternatives to the current clause, but if you would like to keep the current position of non-interference, the way to achieve this is by voting against all the alternatives. That way, if they do not reach the margin required for constitutional change, all the alternatives will fail and the status quo will prevail, so it is not a case of needing to vote for what you might see as the least bad option.

This has been included under the heading of Simplifying the Bureaucratic Structure. Although in general, such simplifications are often a good thing, in this case, the inclusion of the merger of these two committees is a complication.

CSCC's Equipment and Training Officers are both against this proposed mergers, as is the BCA's Training Committee. To the best of my knowledge, since the resignation of the previous convenor of the BCA's Equipment Committee, the committee has not met to discuss the proposal.

The CSCC's Training Officer, Dave Keegan, read the following statement at the BCA eAGM on behalf of the BCA Training Committee:

“The training committee has discussed and is against the proposal as a whole. The issue is with the merging of training and E&C, and the committee is open to becoming a working group. The training committee is open to future discussions to streamline processes and improve the training on offer to the BCA in the future.”

The CSCC's Equipment Officer, Andrew Atkinson, is also against the proposed merger. He believes that the two committees provide different perspectives and that a merger would have the effect of reducing overall safety standards. He has used the following example to explain his reasoning:

“Given a choice of knot, it is easy to do a test and say that in these circumstances this breaks at this force. Some knots are stronger than others. However, it may be that the stronger knot is really hard to make and difficult for people to recognise but works in situations where the weaker knot does not, and vice versa. It is equipment's role to look at the knots. It is a training role to look at whether the knot with less strength is better to be taught as it leads to less catastrophic failures in less experienced cavers. If the committees are combined it is likely only one will be deemed safe.”

All these seem uncontentious.

I am happy to discuss any of the above further if anyone would like to contact me direct.

Linda Wilson
CSCC Representative on BCA Council
11th October 2021

See also:
BCA eAGM 2021

BCA Ballot - There's Still Time To Have Your Say!