** You must be a British Mountaineering Council (BMC) member to sign this petition **

We think the British Mountaineering Council (BMC) needs your help as a member.

On the assumption that a second set of articles of association is being submitted to the BMC as a special resolution (at 75% majority threshold at AGM) to counter those submitted by National Council, as agreed on 28th April, it is proposed to submit a simple member driven ordinary resolution (50% threshold at AGM) that states:

The British Mountaineering Council (BMC) should ensure it is the representative body for, and retain its status as the National Governing Body (NGB) for, climbing, hillwalking and mountaineering. It should implement organisational change in line with the spirit of the Organisation Review Group (ORG) and Implementation Group (IG) recommendations, and good governance practices, and seek to achieve the tier three governance standard as defined by Sport England’s Code of Governance for the purposes of working with, and receiving funding from, Sport England and UK Sport.

This is to ensure that, regardless of the outcome of the vote on the competing articles, which could end in a stalemate, that there is a majority mandate for the overall direction of travel.

It is understood that the BMC is considering waiving the 45 day deadline for submitting resolutions, which could benefit all proposers of resolutions, however, this could be subject to legal challenge and therefore my view is that this should be submitted before the deadline of 1pm 2nd May 2018 in order to ensure it fulfils the current rules of the organisation. The articles are clear that:

51.2 All resolutions to be submitted to a General Meeting of the BMC shall be delivered to the CEO in writing not less than forty five clear days before the date of the meeting and shall be signed by not less than twenty five Voting Members as proposers of the Resolution and failure to comply with these requirements shall render the resolution invalid.

If the BMC is unable to implement the changes required in order to meet Sport England’s Code of Governance, or if BMC members take the decision that pursuing Sport England funding is not the right choice for the BMC, we feel it would have a great detrimental effect on climbing, hillwalking and mountaineering as a whole.  It will not only impact BMC funding, and funding for the great work that partners such as Mountain Training do, but we believe that it will also significantly weaken the representational position of the BMC to all its stakeholders, be they the UK Government during political lobbying, or landowners during access negotiations.  Why would any government department continue to listen to a representational or governing body that does not comply with the code of governance it requires, or indeed any representative body which does not adopt good governance practices?  This will impact the BMC’s recognised representational status as a whole.

We have heard during feedback that the BMC cannot be both a governing body and a democratically run representative body for its members.  We maintain, however, that these two types of organisation are not mutually exclusive of each other, nor do they have separate codes of good governance.  We believe, through implementation of our recommendations, that the BMC will be able to effectively fulfil both of these functions, for its members, on behalf of all climbers, hillwalkers and mountaineers.

If you wish to be a signatory to this motion, you must be a member of the BMC to add your signature to this proposal.  Please ensure you are a BMC member, and write your full name as held by the BMC, using the email address that they have on file.  The resolution requires 25 BMC member signatures, however we wish to act openly and transparently and seek as many member signatures as wish to support this motion to be put forward to the AGM.

Feel free to email your support for this resolution to john@johnroberts.me

Proposed by John Roberts (BMC member, Alpine Club Member, Climbers' Club Member)