Abolish Booking Fee 50p and Booking
Stickers (Green)
‘Virtual’ General Meeting Conducted
by Email - Committee Consensus & Email Trail Below
Summary of Proposals and
Outcomes October 2021
From:
Thomas Bland
Sent: 22
October 2021 09:57
To: Steve
Edwards; Mark Sydenham; Simon Doran; 'Parkes, Harry';
Sandra Edwards; Elisabet Fernandez Potente
Subject:
RE: Plan for Return to Squash / Stickers & Fee Thoughts / More
Hello Steve
Apologies I
meant to comment and it slipped my mind. Essentially I’m fine with any of the
options to be honest. It might be nice to make it free for a month and promote
this internally to get people back playing again.
Bw
Tom
From: Steve
Edwards
Sent: 21
October 2021 19:12
To: Mark
Sydenham; Simon Doran; Thomas Bland; 'Parkes, Harry';
Sandra Edwards; Elisabet Fernandez Potente
Subject:
RE: Plan for Return to Squash / Stickers & Fee Thoughts / More
Thanks Mark
& Simon for your kind input,
All good
suggestions, so we have a few options on the table:
1) Retain
light fee at £2.00 for 40mins
2) Raise
light fee to £3.00 for 39 or 42 or 45mins - increase in fee to cater for loss
of 50p sticker revenue, ensure sufficient future reserves to pay for expenses
3) Make
squash entirely free for a month to encourage people to play
I think
we're pretty much all agreed no more green booking stickers,
booking still via sheet, but just write in both names & numbers - resurrect
online booking proposal
On
reflection, I think with around £6K in the bank there's no rush to jump in with
a decision yet, unless someone is very keen on one of the options, or an
alternative.
We'll also
have more info soon on interest, as I'm organising Tasters and Coaching to
start on 04 Nov 2021, and asking for people to register their interest.
Cheers,
Steve
From: Mark Sydenham
Sent: 27
September 2021 09:15
To: Simon
Doran; Steve Edwards; Thomas Bland; 'Parkes, Harry';
Sandra Edwards; Elisabet Fernandez Potente
Subject:
RE: Plan for Return to Squash / Stickers & Fee Thoughts / More
Steve
How about
we increase the time to 45 mins for £3 as we are
having 60 min booking slots (15 min base unit)?
That will still give 15 mins to clean up. I
wouldn’t bother with a 20p option.
But my
preference would be:
Make squash
free for say a month to encourage people to start playing again (Squashtober?) and then go to the £3 option with no booking
stickers. Online booking is surely a
must if we are removing the stickers.
Alongside
the free squash perhaps we should re-advertise the fact that we can provide
racquets (and balls) for people to use and put some in the locker in the squash
court foyer? Could we also run a new
beginners coaching course that is heavily subsidised? Or maybe a couple of free
coaching sessions rather than a whole course? Anything to try to get
people to start playing again.
Mark
From: Simon
Doran
Sent: 27
September 2021 09:01
To: Steve
Edwards; Thomas Bland; Mark Sydenham; 'Parkes, Harry';
Sandra Edwards; Elisabet Fernandez Potente
Subject:
Re: Plan for Return to Squash / Stickers & Fee Thoughts / More
Hi Steve,
This all
seems very sensible to me. We should keep the booking system under review.
I hope to
get back playing sometime soon, but I'm still in only one day a week at the
moment.
Best
wishes,
Simon
From: Steve
Edwards
Sent: 26
September 2021 18:48
To: Thomas
Bland; Mark Sydenham; 'Parkes, Harry'; Sandra Edwards;
Simon Doran; Elisabet Fernandez Potente
Subject:
RE: Plan for Return to Squash / Stickers & Fee Thoughts / More
Dear All,
Thanks very
much for your kind thoughts.
Just to
expand a bit on the proposal to set a one off fee of £3.00 for a game of
squash.
This
addresses a few matters by removing the need for volunteer sticker sellers
and removes an unnecessary point of contact for buying the stickers, in these
COVID times.
In the
current scenario a game of squash costs a max of £2.50, if we go to a one off
lights fee of £3.00 that's a small price increase in 12 years (last price
increase 01 June 2009, see AGM & VGM notes on
website).
I hadn't
planned a price increase, it's a sort of inadvertent
result of putting all the fee onto the light meter.
It would be
easiest to base the fee on just £1 and £2 coins, so £3 would buy you 39mins (13
minute base unit). I'll have to see if 20p coins fit that scenario.
Although
the price increase is inadvertent, I think there's no harm in trying to bolster
the accounts to cover insurance costs and maintenance, although if the London
Cancer Hub proceeds at pace, then planning for the future might become
irrelevant.
Current
funds:
Santander
Business Online Acc £2,526.42 (Sep 2021)
Lloyds Club
Acc £4,667.59 (Dec 2020 last transaction) minus air con (£291) minus upcoming
insurance (£730) estimated balance Oct 2021 £3646
Combined
total £6172
So if we
don't have any huge bills and with a conservative annual expenditure estimate
of say £1300, that sum would last us 4-5 years without any income generation.
So current
proposals for your consideration are:
1) Retain
light fee at £2.00 for 40mins - no more stickers, booking still via sheet, but
just write in names - resurrect online booking proposal
2) Make
squash entirely free for a while to encourage people to play
3) Raise
light fee to £3.00 for 39mins - increase in fee to cater for loss of 50p
sticker revenue, ensure sufficient future reserves to pay for expenses
Let me know
what you think,
Cheers,
Steve
From:
Thomas Bland
Sent: 13
September 2021 17:29
To: Mark
Sydenham; Steve Edwards; 'Parkes, Harry'; Sandra
Edwards; Simon Doran; Elisabet Fernandez Potente
Subject:
RE: Plan for Return to Squash / Stickers & Fee Thoughts
Dear all
I’m hoping
to get back to the court in the near future so this all sounds good to me. I
don’t think losing the stickers will impact at this point in time and paying a
small set fee for lights is, I would have thought, acceptable to most.
Bw Tom
From: Mark
Sydenham
Sent: 13
September 2021 09:10
To: Steve
Edwards; 'Parkes, Harry'; Sandra Edwards; Simon Doran;
Thomas Bland; Elisabet Fernandez Potente
Subject:
RE: Plan for Return to Squash / Stickers & Fee Thoughts
Steve
That is
fine by me as long as people still sign the booking sheet so we can pick up any
new players. I am not sure that we need
a price hike do we? We haven’t had a
meeting for ages so I don’t know what our finances are like but we want to
encourage people to play. I still wonder
whether providing free lights will help encourage new players?
Mark
From: Steve
Edwards
Sent: 12
September 2021 19:18
To: Mark
Sydenham; 'Parkes, Harry'; Sandra Edwards; Simon
Doran; Thomas Bland; Elisabet Fernandez Potente
Subject:
Plan for Return to Squash / Stickers & Fee Thoughts
Dear All,
Just been
thinking about how we generate income after all the emails and finally getting
the squash court up and running.
There was a
kind suggestion from Mark to give out some free stickers and make the lights
free until Christmas.
We never
really got 'round to fully discussing that proposal, so I think we should
revisit that and look at other funding options going forward, as we shelved the
idea of online booking many years ago.
As well as
Mark's proposal, could I add another into the mix.
The idea
behind booking slots goes back to times when we queued outside the court for
the privilege of playing the next day as demand far outstripped availability at
the height of popularity.
Things are
very different now, and the number of bookings pre-covid were around 5 a week.
So I wonder
if it's time to abandon the stickers at 50p, retain the booking sheet until we
get around to an online version, and put the entire playing fee onto the
lights.
If we did
that, we would lose the 50p booking fee, but could take this opportunity to
include that loss in the light fee and round up to a levy £3.00 for a game -
all to the light meter?
We haven't
had a price hike for a decade, so I think that is justifiable raise, plus it
takes away the need for sticker sellers and is safer for Covid
with associated 'less points of contact'.
Let me know
what you think, or send in counter proposals, plus any ideas on how to get more
people playing....!
Cheers,
Steve
Steve
Edwards
on behalf
of
Ups Club
Squash Section Chairman
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