I will not be attending the National Council Meeting on 22nd October. Kevin is my deputy and will be attending on behalf of Sussex Coiunty. These notes are to help him prepare.

I am making these notes for my Deputy National Councillor for Sussex, Kevin Long. I will not be attending the meeting on 22^nd October as I will be at Veterans’ British League in Derby. There will be several National Councillors missing for the same reason. I asked for the date to be changed, but was advised that this was not possible. Because this is the date that Adrian Christy and Sandra Deaton are available.

• Whilst they are important people to proceedings, they are guests.
• Surely, it would be better to cater for the members of the National Council rather than guests.
• This is typical of their dealing with the membership.
• Which is why we need a good representation of the membership as the Fourth Member Elected Director.

Agenda

Once again, a very crowded agenda with too little time allotted for any kind of in-depth meaningful discussion.  There is no mechanism in place to go into more detail.

Minutes from 11^th June.

• Adrian Christy played a blinder by introducing the new strategy.
• Discussion of the Resolutions for the AGM. More positive than it would have been previously to seeing the new strategy.

• Never seen a breakdown of the spending and budget for the £1.3m into GBTT.

• A lot of unclarity about various elements of income and expenditure.

MAG cost effectiveness of tournaments.

• Need more communication, transparency and accountability
• Needs to fit in with Competition Review and Strategy

Membership Plan for TTE?

• Common-sense recommendations that need to fit in with strategy

MAG Update Note for National Council

• Interesting projects and a number of papers put to the Board. Need to await responses and next steps.

Must be frustrating to do so much good work for so little return.

Transforming Membership Proposal

• Very good concept reviewing what membership involves and how it is financed. Interesting to see that the first meeting of the review panel is on 14^th Who is on that panel? How was it selected? I do not remember seeing any communication asking for volunteers.

Chair’s Report

• Should be titled Chair of the Board report. How many Chairs? Poor punctuation in the title.
• Commonwealth Games – good for games makers, not good for most players.
  • From the original Mission 2025 – By 2022 we will top the Commonwealth Games table tennis medal table. India and Singapore were above us.   Australia got more than us.
  • Our women’s team lost to Wales for probably the first time ever in a competition.
  • Men underperformed against expectation.
• European Championships – nothing to report on the table.

Little wonder that Simon Mills is no longer with TTE. I am attaching my email from September 2020 as a reminder that this should have happened at least two years ago.

Is there a transparent recruitment process in place for the replacement for Simon Mills?. Although I am surprised that he needs replacing.

Why are we not provided with a report from the ETTU Congress? Since our delegate has now left the organisation, I hope that we have records of the discussions. Has the Board seen anything at all?

The Congress also agreed that there would be a constitutional change to move away from an audit review to undertake a full audit of an International standard.  What does that mean? What are the consequences?

Who is attending the ITTF summit in December? If we are sending two delegates, this represents a good opportunity for succession planning.

As I write my report the election process for the addition elected Board director is progressing. We will be delighted to welcome the successful candidate. –  This sentence could probably be completed by:

• Now that we know it will not be TC.
• Now that we have sponsored our preferred candidate by allowing access to our database for his campaign.

No mention of the shameful delay that meant that the 4^th Member Elected Director was not elected in time for the first Board meeting of the season in September.

I am sure that great care was taken to try to choose skill sets that I may not have. I am attaching my candidate page and also notes that I prepared for the Nomination Committee. As you will see, I was more than qualified. But I have better things to do for now.

Very concerning about the communications on the International stage..

• What succession planning are we putting in place for future representation?
• How is England voting at ETTU and ITTF meetings and AGMs? Who is deciding how we vote? Who gets any papers and information in advance for input?

Competition Review – we all look forward to receiving a “clear conceptual insight”. A review two years further on still at the consultation stage. When is it actually going to be implemented?

CEO updates

Very informative – Quick run through everything that is going on. Please keep producing these.

Finance report

The timing is to the period ending June 2022. I guess the timing is too tight for this to be any more up to date.

Disappointing sales of centenary book. How many have been given away? When is the remaining stock likely to be sold, if not now? What a missed opportunity. 

Q&A

Neil Rogers does not understand how frustrating it is not to receive the results of any survey. I presume that these have been incorporated into the Competition Review. If not, why not?

I do not believe in anonymity in surveys. If you have given answers that you would not be wiling to defend, then they are not worth putting forward.

Board Minutes from 08/09

What is happening with the revised Purpose and Vision?

 National Championships – need to review how they are run as well as the finances. Currently, they are not fit for purpose and unattractive to any sponsorship, other than historical close links to table tennis. Surprised the Events and Competition staff do not appear to be part of this discussion.

What is happening with the Level The Table charter?

Some legal fees had been included in the current budget of £7-8K and it was confirmed that only VAT was being paid on the ongoing legal case. How much is involved? Why is TTE only paying the VAT? What is the capital sum? How is this being paid?

How many legal cases are TTE dealing with at this time?  I am aware of two.

With regard to the Employment Tribunal claim. The Board was recently given the opportunity to stop these proceedings.

• A lot of money was spent on the Stockwell Report, which was unnecessary.
• Part of the Tribunal Process is that any claim is referred to ACAS for mediation. It could have been resolved at no cost at the outset.
• The offer was that proceedings will stop immediately on the resignation of Sandra Deaton.
  • It seems that the Board rejected this offer. Why?
    • Sandra is due to finish in April 2023 anyway.
    • Her staying until April means that the resolutions for the AGM 2023 will already have been put forward.
    • A whole season of Board meetings will have occurred.
    • A whole season of International Conferences will have occurred.
  • Money still continues to be spent.

In future, the Catt v TTE case may be quoted in worker rights cases. Although, it is not due to set a precedent. This is likely to happen from the next hearing which will have received “guidance” from the EAT about the law to apply in this case.

Further on if the whistleblower case is heard, this may be considered to be on a par with the various issues made public about gymnastics, cycling and cricket.

 This could involve reputational damage to our sport.  And the board has had the opportunity to stop proceedings at several stages.

The departure of Simon Mills actually proves that I was correct about him.

Yet that email triggered the campaign against me.

My original whistleblowing meeting with Sport England was arranged by an old friend who has since become an Appointed Director. He would have known all the original circumstances. The remainder of the Board, other than two, were not around and therefore are unaware of the appalling behaviour that I encountered. 

So, I am disappointed that one set of sycophantic, invertebrate nodding dogs appears to have been replaced by another set. 

Perhaps the membership should be given an opportunity to take a view on this matter.

 Cost of living

AC requested a discretionary amount of up to £50K to be added in the budget and the Board agreed that a payment to each staff, each month would be made up to the end of the financial year, with this amount sought to be recouped over the next two years. How will this money be recouped? From whom/where?

Women and Girls – Who is MLS?

MAG thought that the AGM had gone particularly well and confidence had been shown in the Board.

Confidence in the board was not shown.

Any voting was entirely in the hope that Adrian Christy and the new strategy would change how table tennis is run.

Competition Review – Need to be careful about scrapping the County Championships. Also, if VETTS take over the VBL, it will look to keep the proceeds. So TTE would lose a lot of revenue. Additionally, if VETTS takes over all veteran events, TTE will see a mass exodus from the membership as the veterans will have no perceived need for TTE.  Look forward to seeing the feedback from the NC Select committee.

SV would provide her Reports to SW to add to the Board folder rather than update at the meeting.  Was this really an issue that should be on public record?  Is this more bullying by the Chair?

It was agreed that a detailed planner of items to be discussed by the Board would be written to ensure items of importance received enough time to be discussed at meetings.  

Surely this is simple good governance practice and should always have been in place.

Management Report – Data share Agreement being created with new partners StreetTT

Presumably this is via an API. Similar to the one that the Board was advised was not permissible for TT365? How is this different?

Tony Catt

National Councillor, Sussex