I attended the main CPSA AGM in March.  This meeeting may turn out to be a turning point and hopefully lead to a more open board where the feelings of grass roots shooters and the membership are considered more fully. Draft minutes should be available shortly but the main points interest were:

Academy: Was discussed at length.  On the face of the accounts it appears that the academy ran at a loss of £63K last year and this appears to constitute the fees paid to the two consultants, there was heated discussion following probing questioning from the floor.  Phil Boakes stated that he could not do without the two technical  consultants!

World Sporting: Was discussed at length. Again Mr. Boakes defended the decision to drop the previous arrangement with America.   Mr. Boakes suggested that the membership had no strategic vision, the members present seemed more concerned that the board just don’t seem to take members wishes into account.  The floor asked for a single member of the board to stand up and say that the sporting going onto a three year international rota was a good idea.  There were no takers.

Special Resolution:  This resolution moved that the office of CEO should not carry an automatic seat on the board.  There was no discussion around this presumably because the weight of proxy voting made it obvious that the resolution would pass.  This turned out to be the case with in excess of 85% of the votes cast being in favour of the removal of the CEO from automatic membership of the board.  I should minute that I carried 49 open proxy votes to the AGM (more than I sent so some must have written to HQ nominating me as a proxy).  I voted in favour of the resolution despite some reservations that the result will be a board with an even number of members.

Prize Money:  I raised the issue of the transparency of how prize money is dealt with.  In a statement I acknowledged that the board had dealt with this subject and had decided that it was powerless to force a policy on ground owners, I then went on to invite any member of the board to join me in making a statement that condemned the practice of “donating prize money to charity” when it was not clearly stated as a condition of entry that this was ground policy.  In the ensuing dialogue, despite repeated attempts to get any one member of the board to say they disagreed with the practice, no board member was prepared to make a statement other than stating that there was nothing they could do about it.