Treasurer

Founded 1980

Chair:

Secretary:

Treasurer:

Graham Smith

Jan Thompson

Graham Mumby-Croft

Graham Mumby-Croft

Treasurer

Issue No. 77 Spring 2017

From The Treasurer.

As many of you will be aware, as Treasurer, it has long been my particular “hobby horse” to get to grips with the

twin issues of subscription rates and the cost to the Association of providing members with PGA diaries. These two things are inextricably linked as the cost of providing a diary is included in the subscription rate of those members who chose to receive one, and for the past couple of years we have been making a loss on every diary we send out.

At the 2016 Annual General Meeting, the Committee decided to bite the bullet and put forward a resolution to revise the subscription rates and to introduce a provision for allowing a review of subscription rates every 2 years. This resolution was passed

Implementation of the resolution began by publishing the details in the Summer Edition of the Newsletter, and soon after this I wrote to every member who was receiving a diary, asking them to inform me if they wished to continue to do so, or reduce their subscription and stop receiving a diary, and either way, to return to me a revised Standing Order Mandate. At the end of August I posted out 260 letters to those members and this included several members living overseas in places including Australia, New Zealand, Cyprus and Spain. As I write this item in the second week of January, I have yet to receive a response from at least 50 members to whom I sent a letter, including all but one of the overseas members.

The second stage of this process was to write to those members who were paying less than the new minimum of

£13/year subscriptions, again enclosing a new Standing Order Mandate for return to me. The response to this

Mail-shot was much more positive, and as an added bonus I got to correspond, and in some cases talk to people, that I had not spoken to for over 20 years; in one case I chatted on the phone to Ken Drummond who retired from Strangeways in 1988 and who I last met on the day of his retirement. It is good to know that there are some people who have or are close to achieving the pinnacle of having drawn a pension for longer than they had to work for it.

The current position is that following this exercise we have reduced the number of diaries that we provide from

260 to 116 for the coming year, although this number is changing all the time as we are still being contacted by

people who want to know why they have not received their diaries. This equates to a saving of £170/year just on postage costs. In addition, we are now well on the way to achieving a much simpler subscriptions structure based on just two payment levels, £20/year including diary and £13/year without. The next stage of this process is to try to reach out to those members who have not responded to our correspondence in the hope that they will contact me to conﬁrm, and if necessary to revise, their subscriptions to the new rate. Please remember, if you were already paying a £13/year subscription, and not receiving a diary, then there is no change in your subscription rate and you really do have to “do nothing”.

When the Committee ﬁrst discussed the proposal to revise the subscription rates there was a real concern that in contacting members and asking them to revise their subscriptions we would run the risk that many would decide that they no longer wished to continue their membership, or would feel that an increase in subscriptions was a step too far and would resign. I am happy to say that of all those who have responded to our correspondence the rate of resignation has been very low indeed. In fact, we have only lost 4 members during this exercise and only one of those was truly exorcised by the increase in subscriptions.

As it is now the end of the ﬁnancial year for the Association I am in the process of preparing the books to send to the auditor for checking. This is done because technically the RPGA is mandated by the PGA and our ﬁnances form part of their accounts: consequently each year I have to send our books to their accountant for checking. It is clear that the exercise to tackle the subscription issue will have an impact on this year's accounts, particularly postage costs, but I am hopeful that this will settle itself out in the coming year. The good news is that we remain solvent and have suﬃcient cash in hand to cover a year's running costs

You may recall that in an earlier “From The Treasurer” I shared with you my frustration at the service we receive from the Shared Service Centre, who now carry out all of the accounting roles for H.M. Prison Service. I am sorry to report that they have not improved and I am still awaiting an invoice for last year's AGM which was held at Newbold Revel. If their service is true to form I will likely receive an invoice toward the end of March, (some 9 months after the event) together with a snotty note telling me how disappointed they are that I have not paid an invoice which they had not previously sent me. With this in mind, you will not be surprised to learn that we are actively seeking an alternative venue for this year's AGM.

One of the accounts that we run as an association is the Benevolent Fund, which was created when the PGA passed over to the RPGA what was their Charity Fund. At the time it was felt that the RPGA would be in a better position to make use of these funds as our members were more likely to ﬁnd themselves in a position where ﬁnancial help might be required.

This fund has been the subject of much discussion at Committee level, particularly in regard to how we use it, and the criteria we apply for making grants. In addition, discussion has taken place about how we could create some income to this account as, with the exception of one small bequest last year, there has been no income to this account since it was originally passed over to us from the PGA.

This fund is not a large one: it currently stands at £5000, and we do not make a great deal of use of it. The last grant was paid eighteen months ago for £500 made to the wife of a member to assist with travel costs whilst he was an inpatient in care. However, the general opinion amongst the Committee is that it is useful to have such a fund available for use and it should be retained. As the fund is small it can only really be used to make one-oﬀ grants to assist with situations where no other source of help is available and the situation is temporary, or for a limited time period.

The fund is not a “Social Fund” to assist people who are simply suﬀering ﬁnancial diﬃculties, but rather one to provide temporary support to people who ﬁnd themselves in a position of needing assistance due to ill health or similar unforeseen circumstances. Each application is treated with the utmost conﬁdence with only 3 people on the Committee being in possession of all the details.

I am therefore using this opportunity to draw your attention to the fund for two reasons: ﬁrstly to ensure that you know of its' existence, so that in the event that you, or another member who you may know, ﬁnd yourself in a position of needing some short-term ﬁnancial assistance, you are aware that the RPGA may be able to assist. The second reason is to ask you for ideas about how we can generate income for this fund in order to ensure that we have an availability of funds into the future. Using the example of the last grant we made, for £500, we could only provide 10 such grants before the funds were exhausted.

Please be aware that I am not looking to start a fund-raising exercise on this but rather sowing the seeds for ideas, including the thought that if you wanted to help other members in the future, you might consider making a bequest in your will to the RPGA Benevolent Fund.

Graham Mumby-Croft

Treasurer