Minutes of KDCS Committee Meeting - Mon 28/09/26 Sprint Mill

  

Present: Anne Brookes (Chair), Martin Slader, Jim Carson, Will Beck

Apologies: Tim Goffe, Phil Morgan and Paul Crooke

1.    Actions from previous meeting

ACTION:  Anne to send follow-up email to new members who are not on email lists.

Done.  Sent follow-up emails to 5 new members: received 4 responses and added 3 to MTB/road lists and 1 had health issues.

ACTION:  Update the Code of Conduct to strongly advise that riders wear helmets on all rides (Anne) - Done

ACTION:  Arrange payment of £100 to CMR (Martin and Anne) - Done

ACTION: Add August & September ETs to the KDCS calendar - Done

ACTION: Adopt the term RC in all communications about rides (ALL) - Done

ACTION:  Update the Code of Conduct for riders and RCs regarding personal responsibility and insurance. (Anne) - Done

ACTION: Create a membership renewal system to be instituted from 2027 (TBC/Anne?) – NOT ACTIONED, NEEDS FURTHER DISCUSSION

ACTION:  Anne to investigate use of Google Groups - Done

ACTION:  Send out communication/talk to members to ask for new committee members (ALL) – ONGOING.  Paul Crooke has volunteered to organize the Xmas dinner and may join the committee.

2.    KDCS Archive

Edward and Romola had spread out their collection of documents, files, photos and other material that they have gathered since the establishment of the club.  Anne spoke with Edward before the meeting started to establish their wishes.  They are keen for club members to take and keep whatever may be of interest or importance to them or the club.  They had not sorted any material that they wanted to keep personally.  We (the committee members) had a look through and discussed options.  We agreed that the newsletters, photos, press cuttings and some publicity materials were probably of most interest to current members.  We suggested that these could be displayed at the next AGM to generate interest in anyone keen to keep them.  Martin was interested in the newsletters and took them away to read and identify any articles that we might digitise and add to the KDCS website.  Anne took the press cuttings and publicity material.  The remaining material included old accounts, meeting minutes, campaigns, articles researching bike-related gear, dealings with council members, maps and leaflets relating to cycle routes and holidays and much more.  We decided that most of this was of less interest and relevance to the club as it is now.

ACTION: Anne and Martin to identify archive material for digitising and to take archive items to next AGM

ACTION:  Make club members aware of the archive collection and encourage anyone with an interest to take action

3.    Ride reports

MTB (Will)

Will reported that the MTB rides were going well and that they still managed to put on a ride every week so far.  He then reported on an incident when Lynne fell and broke her wrist, which raised a few issues:

·        Emergency contact details and registering for MTB rides – Will did not have a contact number for Geoff, who was not at the scene, and needed to be contacted after Lynne was helped back to the start.  This was because Geoff and Lynne had arrived at the start without previously contacting Will, who makes a list of phone numbers when people register for the ride.   We discussed this and agreed that we should communicate to members again the importance of letting ride coordinators know beforehand that they want to join the ride and to give emergency contact details.

ACTION:  Anne to add reminder about registering for rides into next club-wide communication

·        Wearing helmets – Lynne was not wearing a helmet.  We discussed this and the club policy of not enforcing helmet-wearing.  We agreed that this policy should change to make it mandatory for helmets to be worn on MTB rides, because of the increased risk of falls.  This change will be proposed to the membership at the next AGM.

ACTION:  Propose change to helmet-wearing policy to members at AGM for a vote.

Another MTB topic discussed was the balance of e-bikes to manual on rides and whether it is a contentious issue.  Will reported that e-bikes are in the majority on most rides but that it generally does not become an issue, although in a big group on cold/wet days, waiting around is not pleasant.  Anne reported that a new member had decided not to join the MTB rides because they would not ride in mixed groups (from previous bad experience).  After a recent MTB ride that was specifically for e-bikes only, Will reported that the feedback was that this was “not a good precedent to set” and so he does not anticipate having segregated rides in the near future.

Road rides (Anne)

Anne reported that the struggle to fill the weekend road rides calendar is ongoing with no responses to the latest pleas for volunteers, but we still manage to do an average of two rides per month, with more in the summer.  The majority of rides are coordinated by just 4 members (Andy G, Pete A, Martin S and Anne) with others members doing one or two rides per year.  We discussed an idea from Bill on putting ‘leaderless’ rides on at weekends for some favourite routes that have been ridden repeatedly, following the Easy Tuesday format.  Anne agreed that it might come to this but that she preferred coordinated rides with a bit more individuality.

Other rides

Tim was absent but had sent news that the EWCAN rides (Easy Wednesday Café and Natter) have continued with small groups of riders but could do with more publicity to attract more riders. 

Jim reported on the Easy Tuesday rides, which have finished for the year and continued to be well-supported.  He has set up a WhatsApp group of the regular riders, which is working well.  He is starting to coordinate the Easier Tuesdays.  We agreed to send an email out to all members to let them to contact Jim if they wanted to join the WhatsApp group and how to find out about the Easier Tuesday venues.

ACTION:  Anne and Jim to coordinate an email to members about ET rides 

Martin reported that his second ETOS ride (Easy Tuesday on a Saturday), was well-attended but that people were asking him about the next one rather than anyone else proposing any. 

We did not discuss any Away Trips.

 

4.    Club Communications – Email, Website & Facebook

KDCS website/Blogspot

Jim reported that he has started to make a few changes to the website but hopes to get into it properly now that his retirement is imminent.  One item to address early on is to make the site secure by changing it to https.  Currently it is http and this causes warnings, which may put off new and existing members from accessing the site.

Club emails

Regarding email communications, Anne reported that she had set up a Google Group for the committee (and had sent out invitations the day before the meeting) but then discovered that all members had to have a gmail account in order to access the group and start a conversation, which make it unnecessarily complicated and a non-starter, so will abandon that idea.  She will pursue other avenues to find a better mechanism than Hotmail.

ACTION:  Anne to find alternative to Hotmail for club and committee emails.

 

5.    Next Meeting

The committee agreed to meet make the AGM the next meeting in the new year.  Date to be decided.

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