Current standing of UKRDA Board
Postby Bekah08 » Fri Feb 07, 2020 12:33 pm

Following the EGM in October 2019, 12 directors were voted in by our membership. 10 of those were brand new to the role and as you can imagine we’ve been working hard over the past few months to establish ourselves, working practices, and getting to grips with our new roles.

Although we’ve been working hard behind the scenes, our engagement on the forum has lapsed for which we sincerely apologise. This lapse was simply due to the fact that we’ve been finding our feet in circumstances that were less than ideal. This post is intended to let you know, as we release meeting minutes, of the current state of the board and the reasons why they’ve been delayed.

In November we were made aware of an WFTDA grievance process involving Michelle Petti Philips. As details of the situation were confidential, we were not in a position to discuss this. This information was not brought up during the election of directors and the general consensus of the board was to freeze Petti’s activity until the grievance was resolved. Our Communications Director - Dawn 'Bob' Fletcher - resigned in November due to the Board's position on this matter. Due to the reason for the resignation and that the process hadn't concluded, we did not communicate this with our membership.

The grievance process came to an end in November and the board asked Petti to voluntarily resign from her position as we did not feel it appropriate for a member of the board to have an active sanction against them from a governing body. Petti did not feel she had been able to exercise her duty as a director due to freezing her activity and therefore did not feel she needed to step down. By mid-December we voted to remove her from the board of directors and posted on Facebook that we now had 10 directors. We accept that this should have been posted on the forum first.

During December and into January, a third Director – Keleigh Shepherd – stopped engaging with the Board. We were not given a reason, and despite efforts to contact her we took her disengagement over a prolonged period as resignation. She was officially removed in January.

You will also have been aware of our struggles to gain access to bank accounts belonging to the UKRDA. We have been hard at work to regain these accounts and this has taken up a lot of time and communication with the board. We can confirm that we are making a lot of progress and have regained some control and access to our original bank account and are actively working toward the access of the second. We can also confirm that we intend to carry out a thorough investigation on a previous Director’s conduct and hope to update you with more information on this soon.

To confirm where the Board currently stand as of February 2020:
Chair (and acting Secretary) – Emma Coots
Vice Chair – Hazel Mochan (Hazzard)
Finance and Admin – Bekah Campbell (resigning mid-February due to university requirements)
Grievance – Gemma Atkinson
Governance and HR – Jen Baxter
Officials, Gaming, and Sanctioning – Steven Liner-Douglas (Rollin Rat) (Ratti has officially resigned his position as a UKRDA Director due to personal reasons but is staying on as Head of the Officials Committee)
External Engagement: British Championships, WFTDA, MRDA – Jon Arden and Helen Northmore (dorkmistress)
External Engagement: Juniors – Lorraine England (Lottie) (Please note that Lottie is currently on medical leave but will return in a couple of weeks)

From the original 12 members of the Board voted into position in October 2019, we have 6 active, 3 resignations, 2 removals, and 1 on medical leave.

As previously stated we wholeheartedly apologise for the delay in communicating this with you, our members, and hope you can appreciate the period of upheaval and extenuating circumstances we’ve been operating in. Rest assured that we are committed to working to address this and will keep you in the loop of further developments.

We are looking at restructuring the Board in order to better serve you and will be consulting with you on this very soon. We also intend to advertise a number of roles very shortly to help strengthen the Board.