Late last year we conducted a survey amongst our members to see what you think and to identify any changes that our members would wish to see. At a recent committee meeting we discussed your feedback and in this newsletter we would like to communicate our proposals to you.

Simultaneous Pairs

Broadly speaking you feel we play enough of these events and now that we have prepared hands each evening with printouts these events maybe have lost some of their attraction.

The cost of the Sims pairs is more of an issue and at £6.50 as a result of the increase in table money starting to look a little expensive. We propose to trial one event in September where we do not use a paid director and this will reduce the cost by £1.00 as well as reduce the loss to the club when we run these events.

We will judge whether this is successful before making any final decision about the programme for the future.

We will however continue to use a paid director for all competitions.

Rotas

Many thanks to all of you who continue to volunteer for one of our rotas. We could not continue to operate without many of you making that contribution.

If you would like to direct please talk to Tim Cooper about this.

If you would like to volunteer for the signing rota please let John Wareham know. There is always room for more people to help and reduces the frequency others have to do it.

The duties are not too onerous.

• Arrive at 7.00 to organise the signing in rota and take the money
• Bring some milk for the teas and coffees which you pay for from your own table money
• At the end of the evening help with the clearing up and putting equipment away.

Standby rota

There was not a great deal of support for members to volunteer as a stand by for an occasional evening.

However we would like to trial this and John Wareham is looking to establish a rota for the two months of May and June to see whether this is any demand from members for this service.

If you would be willing to do this please let him know perhaps when you regular partner is away on holiday.

We want to try to improve our attendance levels which will also help with our financial situation.

We are also looking at the website to see if we could use it to help with ‘find a partner’ and we will keep you updated on this.

Open Evening

We plan to run an open event on the 1^st Sept 2015 which will free to everyone. We plan to market this around the area and at all local clubs to see if we can attract some new members so please start to spread the word nearer the day. We chose that date as one which is easy to remember.

Competition rules

We are proposing to update these rules and in general reflect what actually we have been doing for some time. However we will also need to look at some of the competitions which have rules regarding the number of pairs competing and try to reflect the average attendance we now experience. Ideally we want more people to play at these events but if we have lower numbers we will have to reflect this in the rules.

These proposals will be circulated to all members for consultation and feedback in the near future. No changes will be finalised without hearing your feedback.