Membership Matters: Lancashire

 

19/05

Still win-less (the only county not to win in 2025) and with supporters feeling betrayed and ignored,

Lancashire County Members Group, who like to compare their plight to that of other counties, published these numbers comparing Lancashire membership totals with with those of Notts and Surrey.

The caption area of Manchester is multiple times that of Nottingham, whilst the caption area of leafy Surrey and south London will be Manchester's x 2 or 3. Surrey will always have a major advantage when comparing numbers.

13/05

Dear Board Members

Lancashire CCC (the Club) is a members’ county cricket club which the Board is supposed to be running for the benefit of Members and others to enjoy cricket.

However, the Club is struggling — both on the pitch, financially and for the continued support of loyal fans.

You may have noticed our problems are widely discussed in the media.

Members have been trying to get their voices heard for years but have been met by broken promises including but not limited to member representation, handpicking “member” representatives for the Board, the stifling of debate and latterly, the attempted censoring of member motions as well as denying members a vote and a say on how their Club is run at the AGM on 29 May.

So what are our concerns?

Loss of focus on Lancashire CCC

Last season’s squad faltered after being reduced in size and with key experienced players retiring without replacement. We have recruited an excellent overseas batsman and without his runs, we would be at the bottom of Division 2.

No doubt we had to manage our cashflow carefully given our published accounts in 2023

showed £43m of liabilities, comprising £33m bank debt and £10m of other liabilities

to service.

We are using £6m of advance ticket sales to help finance the Club and with no major international Test match to sell for the 2026 and 2027 seasons (and possibly no concerts either) then that £6m needed replacing quickly, hence the cost cutting we have all felt. Instead of being honest about that, members were told that we were willing and able to spend the full salary cap on players.

We don't blame you for focusing on the Hundred sale and associated windfall for the Club. We shudder to think what might happen if that money doesn't come in. But you sound more excited about growing the Manchester Originals audience to 22,000 a game than promoting Lancashire CCC.

Instead of encouraging people to come to the Blast as the Chair pledged, the Club closed stands last summer, locking people out and limiting capacity to around 5000. The Club blamed members for reserving tickets but not attending previous games for its decision to limit capacity. Surely you should be insisting that management do their absolute best to encourage people to come to these games?

Just look at

our membership numbers compared to Surrey and Nottinghamshire

CCC.

At a packed AGM last year, 55% of members voted to reprimand the Board for its failures to keep its promises on important governance commitments and specifically in terms of listening to and acting on the concerns of members.

Instead of showing genuine contrition and improving member participation at board level, you have doubled down on restricting members being able to stand for the Board, rejecting member feedback given openly in consultation in November, using restrictive criteria and skill set requirements to fill board vacancies. It is factually wrong of you to state that members did not offer alternative options We request this point is acknowledged at the AGM and an apology given for this mistake.

We urge you to act positively on the following member concerns. No more empty promises, just actions please.

Member Concerns

• Starving Our Team: Chair claimed the full salary cap was available for player investment, but the CEO told the BBC that only Surrey CCC were anywhere near able to do that and we won't be for 18 months.
• Is it true that we were paying our player's expenses late last season and how was this justified?
• The Chair’s number 1 priority set in 2023 was winning at least one men's trophy by 2025. Instead, we are languishing in the bottom half of division 2 a year after the target was hastily re-set to win two trophies by 2028.
• Emptying Stands: 2024 T20 crowds dropped to under 5,000 from over 10,000 in 2019. We make no real efforts to promote watching county cricket, unlike other more progressive counties who have innovative offers and have increased member numbers and attendances.
• Suggestions put forward by Lancashire fans and members to help grow our audience were not even acknowledged.
• We continue to produce dead wickets for four day cricket with our

  club out-grounds attracting bigger crowds

  .
• Shrinking Our Club:  We are growing membership numbers by offering cheap membership packages with Test cricket tickets being a prime benefit.  If there's a marquee Test to sell the numbers go up and then down again the next year.

  8604 in Ashes year 2023 and then down again to 5022 in 2024.
• We actually had only 1400 full annual members in 2024 (plus 690 life members) according to the Club Secretary.
• The first purpose of our Club is the promotion and furtherance of Cricket. Yet we are widely criticised for not being invested in the long term good of the county game, wanting to pull up the ladder as one of eight top level clubs. We referred to

  non-host Hundred clubs as "Minor Counties" in official minutes

  and even compared some counties to "heroin addicts" at a members' forum.

Blocking member elections and real member representation

• Rejecting applications from highly qualified members from standing for Board elections, refusing even to follow Club rules and having the Nominations Committee interview them, denies members a choice & undermines accountability.
• Board members wishing to be re-elected should not be put forward unopposed in this way, otherwise what is the point of limited terms for Board directors?
• The Chair’s 2023 promise of two members on the board now sounds very hollow
• None of the three members put forward by the Nominations Committee for the controversial second Board member role state how long they have been club members, indeed only one mentions being a Club member at all. Only one of the three candidates appears to meet the criteria of 10 plus years in a senior operational role in major events despite the Club using a skills matrix to exclude longstanding and experienced members who put their names forward.
• In short, the Board is using its control of the Nominations Committee to ignore highly qualified and long standing experienced members with a contribution to make in favour of parachuting in newly minted members who won’t challenge the status quo or hold the Board accountable.
• When this process is questioned (with evidence) and in particular when concerns are raised about how and why the Board has dealt with historic complaints about highly inappropriate social media posts by an official holding an important Club role, not only does the Board look to hide behind privacy and confidentiality, but actually condones and endorses this misconduct by targeting the whistle-blower with an unlawful suspension whilst keeping the official in role.
• Those of us who know the full facts have lost confidence in the Nominations Committee and feel sure that a majority of members would agree if the full facts were widely known.

Stifling dissent

• Edited & misrepresented the 2024 AGM resolution (12b) on Membership Terms and refused to answer difficult finance questions openly.
• Wasting Club money on lawyers to threaten members for defamation for pointing out what was in the published accounts. Refusing to allow a member to speak at the AGM in opposition to Club proposed motions despite giving advanced notice of a request to make these points of view.

What do we want?

A member orientated vision with specific goals for LCCC:

• Stronger Team: Boost player/coach budgets by 2026, recruit the best, develop & retain our best young talent and incentivise performance.
• Great Member Experience: Address the dead pitch that’s delivered moribund first class cricket for some time now. Improve the pavilion with more general member seats & act on our Chair's criticism that it resembles a staff canteen rather than an historic cricket hub. Offer better member parking and food/drink offering. Flex our security for a warm visitor welcome. We are a members' cricket club not a budget airline!
• Grow Lancashire: Increase T20 crowds, promote county cricket, encourage members to bring friends and incentivise lost members to return.
• Fan Voice: Elect three member chosen directors by 2026, consult meaningfully on how to spend the Hundred windfall and honour your promise to give members a binding vote on any reduction in county cricket. Accept and embrace member accountability at member meetings, aim to please by actions not to placate by empty promises.

What next?

In desperation after years of trying to get proper member representation, 163 members tabled four motions for discussion and votes to the 2025 AGM including a six page dossier that details the Board's governance failings. We could have insisted on a SGM immediately but were mindful of the costs and put our trust in the Board to treat these fairly at the AGM.

Rather than allow a debate on these resolutions, the Board has sought to curtail and control the agenda to avoid debate and scrutiny through a combination of claiming confidentiality or concluding that the proposed resolution is not valid. It has given little meaningful answers to the complaints and refuses to share the facts put forward by the petitioning members. Thus it is denying the wider membership the chance to make a fully informed decision.

This is a wholly unacceptable way for the Board of a member-owned club to respond to genuine member concerns tabled by such a large number of members.

We call on the Board to reflect on the points made in this letter and hold a SGM (either on the day of the AGM or no later than the end of June) to set out how the Board will address each of the concerns raised here and give members a meaningful vote on their responses. There are plenty of experienced, passionate Lancashire members willing to help the Club succeed at Board level, if only you were willing to allow that.

We now turn our attention to supporting the team over the coming days as we look to improve our fortunes on the pitch at Northampton.

17/04

You ask the question and a reply, surprisingly promptly on this occasion, is received.

Members' Forum 9th May Hadlee Hall (Radcliffe Road Stand 2nd floor) at lunch

16/04

One knock-on effect of the pavilion works currently crawling along at Trent Bridge is that Members' Forums will have to be timed or accommodated differently to previous years as the Randall Suite, now known as the clubhouse, is otherwise engaged during the lunch session.

Is there anywhere on the Trent Bridge site that could host Members' Forums at lunch intervals? Perhaps the Restaurant Six...

The Randal Suite could be used if Forums were to be scheduled before or after play on any match day, it's not rocket science and just needs the motivation of those concerned to pull their fingers out and to make things happen!

Logic would expect the first Members Forum to be scheduled during this first block of four games, two of which are now missed opportunities. The last two matches are against Sussex starting 25 April and a game verses Hampshire from 9 May. Logic isn't always a close ally of cricket administrators...

so when Lisa, Mick, Andy and Peter can we expect the first of 2025's Nottinghamshire Members' Forums?

08/04

01/04

OUT OF SYNC TRENT BRIDGE

£23 for a Championship day or £7 for the final dodgy (light-wise) last session - is not the way to grow interest

11/03

As Trent Bridge marketting goes into over drive, here's just a reminder of how you can limit the amount of spam they send to your mailbox.

At the bottom of every email the club sends, there's a link to unsubscribe or to set preferences.

29/01

A second Membership Focus Group has been added for 5 February at 6 PM

If you're interested in attending this second date, kindly register below.

21/01

Posted on X by Lancashire Members Group and I suggest going on to Twitter/X @LancsCCMG and read their posts. There appears to me to be many similar problems that members have there as do members at Trent Bridge/

A plan for unity

Last week, I highlighted governance problems resulting from recent Club decisions. These are issues that go back many years and I have been giving careful thought on how to solve them.

First a few words to explain how we got here.

Background

When asked to get involved with cricket governance at Lancashire in 2019 by George Dobell as a Cricket Supporters Association board member, it became clear to me that there were long standing member complaints of poor service and communication from the club. Management were also very stung by the personal nature of some of the public criticisms from the fans.

I've spent 30 years in professional life where member or stakeholder representation on boards is a fundamental way to make decisions and resolve problems.

It was clear that this didn't exist at Lancashire CCC in a way consistent with it being a members' club.

Club management chose the people on the Member Representative Group (MRG) and stated all member issues had to be routed via them. No employer gets to choose the Trade Union reps.

A Nominations Committee (NomCo) had to be navigated for any member to sit on the Board. Member interest in applying was low; the Club became used to finding people from outside and gave up asking the membership to stand for the board.

Solution

Following the 2021 AGM I met with the Club to explore solutions. I asked them to consider:

1. Two Lancashire members elected onto the Club's board from a choice of candidates by the members;
2. The MRG to be fully elected by members with light screening by NomCo to ensure applicants could fulfill the MRG's terms of reference

Campaigns

The Club did not want to do this. Famously recording in a MRG meeting that the trouble with members electing people is that we might choose "the wrong type of person".

It's been a long journey since then involving thousands of road miles, supporter surveys, campaigns, member resolutions tabled at three AGMs during which the Club has made changes to respond to members concerns. But yet.....

Problem

Club officials simply do not want to relinquish tight control over who can represent members on the MRG and Board.

NomCo has gone too far in screening out applicants. It has disregarded aspects of Club rules on Board member selection; exceeded its own remit in screening MRG applicants and some of its detailed operations would be difficult to justify in public to the members.

If most members were reasonably happy with how things are at the Club, that might not matter much. The astonishing vote to reprimand the Board at the AGM last year was clear evidence that despite the strong loyalty members feel to support the Club there was a need to go further.

The latest problem of setting a skill-set so specialist that virtually no existing member could meet it, let alone provide members with a choice of candidates, in the face of solid member opposition during consultation, is further evidence of the Board not appreciating the need to build bridges with its members.

Put this to the MRG and they can only say they will pass on the comment to the Club. They have no means to ask all members what they think on such a crucial issue.

Proposed solution A mindset change on NomCo to allow members greater choice in their representatives. Applicants for "member-reserved roles" should only be screened out if they are plainly unsuitable to do the role, not because NomCo prefers other members. I'd suggest the following.

1. The Club chooses a new NomCo chair and allows members to apply for the role of Non-Board member on NomCo.
2. Elections are held at the 2025 AGM for the member role on NomCo.
3. At the 2026 AGM, an election is held to select a second member for the Board from a choice of candidates.
4. The MRG empowered to be able to truly represent members.

• MRG to run annual member satisfaction survey ; results discussed each AGM
• MRG to be able to communicate with all members (with opt-out)
• MRG meetings scheduled & publicized on the website in advance
• Transparency on when MRG member terms end and elections are due
• MRG elections run according to the protocols agreed at the 2022 AGM with vacancies properly advertised with closing dates, applicants promptly processed & NomCo sticks to its terms of reference.

Unity

If these reasonable steps are taken then there is no need for a shadow group of members to lobby for change. No need for a 4th year of AGM motions opposed by the Club.

We will have a MRG that can do its function and is properly accountable to the members. The Board still has eight roles it can appoint to find all the specialist skills it needs and meet all EDI objectives. Crucially it has two club members, chosen by the members, to ensure the Board are kept closely informed about what the members feel.

The problems of the past can be left in past as we all work through the new structures. This account can close. I can just watch the cricket and support the team as I did last year at 13 different grounds.

We can unite on a common goal of success on the pitch

15/01

It would appear that Nottinghamshire or Trent Bridge PLC are having a membership focus group, but only for selected members. The below invitation was sent to my son who hasn't been a member for a number of years as firstly he played cricket himself at weekends, then and now he lives and works at inconvenient locations and hours...

Why they think that he was member in 2024, I don't have clue, but I haven't had an invitation and nor has my wife.

Here's the said invitation...

As the onset of the season draws nearer, we're keen to ensure that we are providing the best possible experience for our members, both this summer and across the years to come. With that in mind, and because you were a member in 2024, we'd like to cordially invite you to register to join a membership focus group, allowing you to offer your thoughts on all aspects of Nottinghamshire membership.  The focus group will take place at 2pm on Monday 3 February at Trent Bridge, and will comprise of an informal chat with a member of the membership servicing team, with complimentary tea and coffee available. A handful of parking spaces will be available on site, should you require one. Once participants have been confirmed, we will liaise with you regarding where you can park. To register your interest, simply complete the short form below - we'll select a small group of people at random to join us on the day.

12/01

If Pravda is working to the same timetable as last year, we shoild be receiving information about Committee elections in the coming week.

09/01

No mention from Pravda as yet, but our representative on the Cricket Members Group as distributed this memo:

Members of NCCC will be getting their voting papers soon as the AGM is on Monday 24^th February. I think this election will be crucial to Nottinghamshire’s future for a number of reasons:

1. There are four places up for grabs, three elected and one nominated.
2. There will be enormous pressure on those counties (15) who are still mutual societies, controlled by their members, to demutualise in the face of the possible/probable sale of English cricket’s assets via the Hundred franchises. County committees need to be formed of members who will put the long-term interests of the County and its members first.
3. The ‘turn-out’ for these elections at all counties is very low, so please do vote to show that we members care about the future of your club.

Nick Evans

Nick is standing in the said ballot and I read on Facebook that Steve Battlemuch is also standing. I'm not sure if the gentleman from Ratcliffe on Soar has made the ballot paper.

Again demutualisation raises its ugly head above the parapet. It was also in the background of the recent survey by the Grumbler - here and all stemming from the ECB sale of H*ndred stakes and the sale of Hampshire to foreign investors.

Read again this article by Mike Atherton in The Times previously on Nottsview here