UFRC New Constitution Proposal

At the Spring Meeting which will be held at the Lough Neagh Discovery Centre, Oxford Island on Saturday 4th March. The Committee is proposing to update the Constitution and modernise and bring it into line with current practice. We therefore propose to start the Spring Meeting with an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Federation to expedite this. The notes below aim to appraise you of the main reasons for the proposed changes so that these can be discussed at the meeting on 4 March and hopefully be endorsed by the Member Clubs of the Federation.  

The Spring Meeting provides an opportunity to update members on some key developments affecting UFRC. 

The main changes to the existing Constitution are:

1. The existing Constitution mandates two general meetings per annum. This has not been the practice although we generally have had a spring and autumn meeting, but the former was never run as a formal general meeting.
2. The existing Constitution provides for the UFRC owning property. Since we have no intention to do so, several clauses relating to that potential have been removed.
3. The existing Constitution provides for the UFRC investing monies etc. We have no intention to do anything other than keeping a current and possible a savings account. The clauses have therefore been removed.
4. The affiliated clubs are the members of the Federation. Inappropriate clauses relating to personal attributes of people have been removed.
5. The financial year of the Federation has been proposed to run from 1 July to 30 June of the following year. This will allow us to get accounts audited or examined before the AGM in October at which they can be presented and considered by the members.
6. A very complicated voting structure has been proposed to be removed. The Committee asks you to consider especially this change. We have not voted at an AGM for a long time and the voting rights qualified based on club size in the old constitution would be extraordinarily difficult to effect if a vote was required. We therefore propose a one vote per member club system.

We hope that the changes 1-5 outlined above are non-controversial. Change 6 could be and it is therefore important that we give early notice of out intentions to gauge the response to especially this latter change. If you have any comments do not hesitate to forward them to the admin email (admin@ulsterrambling.com) or the Chairperson Bert Rima’s personal email at bert.rima@icloud.com.

As the changes to the constitution require a 2/3 majority in the old Constitution and since we have to run this by the old voting system, I hope that as many clubs as possible will be able to send a delegate to the General Meeting so that we can make the modernisation of the Constitution a fact.