Action Plan 2018 / 19

The majority of the actions from the 2018 Action Plan have been achieved. The outstanding actions are:

1. Club house and toilet provision – several plans are being looked which were discussed at the AGM and will be consulted on and implemented as soon as possible by the committee
2. We have implemented cashless “pay & play” for the junior coaching – where children attending on a “Pay & Play “ basis are billed at the end of each term. For the moment, we decided not to introduce this for the adult sessions (Sunday evening and Thursday morning) since the existing systems are working well.
3. Improvements have been made to the club admin systems, but this still needs to be rolled out to all committee members, so that all can make the best use of Clubspark, etc to minimise their admin time.
4. Discussions with HMRC are still ongoing with regards to confirming the club as being a Community Amateur Sports Club (CASC)

Actions for the committee to implement over the 2018 / 19 season are:

Membership

Overall membership has been climbing over the last couple of years – from 150 in 2016/17 to 176 this year which is really positive. A lot of this is to do with the success of things like the Friday Fun Nights and Becky’s Sunday evening coaching sessions. Also, the numbers of juniors at coaching is very healthy again, thanks to Ben making links with Hilton Primary School.

As last year, the aim is to maintain / increase membership numbers by keeping all of this going and running regular events, friendly tournaments and pay & play sessions for non-members where possible to provide an initial introduction to the club for new contacts and an incentive for them to join or continue participating at the club. We’ll also continue to ensure that everyone who wants to is given a chance to play in matches.

Continue running the Friday Fun Nights. It has been decided not to run these during any school holidays as attendance is much lower, but dates set for this year so far are 5 April, 3 May, 7 June and 5 July. As last year, more volunteers are needed to help run these, as there was a core group of people who ran all the sessions last year. The committee welcomes suggestions from members about how to improve these sessions so that more adult members come along.

It is proposed to increase membership costs for 2019/20 by approx. the rate of inflation (3%) this year. Rates agreed at the AGM are:

• Family £245 (Early Bird £220)
• Junior £48 (£37)
• Senior £115 (£100)
• Student (living at home) £50 (£40)
• Student (living away) £40 (£30)

Repeat the “15 months for the price of 12” membership package that was introduced last year, to encourage new members to join the club in Spring.

Remove the outdated category of “social member”. The club runs many activities where there is different pricing for members and non-members, so there is no longer really a use for a social member category. However, there are a few individual instances where reduced membership fees are justified and these will continue to be assessed on an individual basis by the committee, in particular the membership secretary.

Coaching

Ben has now taken on the role of Head Coach and is doing a great job. During the past year, a key focus has been on ensuring that all our coaches have LTA accreditation and most are now accredited.

There will be a review of coaching provision from September because three of our key coaches (Alex, Lottie and Roo) will be probably heading to university. Ellen Taylor has just done her Level 1 course, but a gap is developing with not many juniors coming through as potential coaches for a couple of years. So, we will look for other coaches in the area who may be able to commit to running regular sessions for us over a longer timescale – particularly on Thursday nights when Ben and Jane are not available.

Shelley Baker introduced an excellent paper form for recording junior details, consents, etc during last year. However, since most of our records are now online on Clubspark, new starters are now being asked to log all their details on this instead. Shanti Hunter, our new Welfare Officer, is working on the crossover from paper to online.

Matches and Social Tennis

Last season, Chris Booth kindly organised a number of different social tennis sessions and mini competitions in different formats. Those who attended thoroughly enjoyed these, but Chris found it a constant battle to encourage enough people to come to make the sessions worthwhile. Similarly, although we have tried to run social sessions during the week on Tuesday evenings, these have been very poorly attended. Only the Sunday morning social session seems to carry on running consistently.

We will try again this season with a selection of activities on different nights over the summer season to encourage club members of all playing levels to play against each other and mix more socially.

Meanwhile, most members seem to want to play matches and we have had an influx of extra male players this year. So, an additional fourth men’s team has been entered in the Derby Summer League and we ran four men’s teams in the Derby Winter League and will continue this next year. This gives a little less time for other activities, but seems to be what members prefer to do.

During the summer season, a selection of other nights (not necessarily all on Friday) will be kept free from matches for internal matchplay, tournaments and themed social sessions, etc. in between the monthly Friday Fun sessions. Many ideas were tried last year with varying success, so suggestions from members about what they would like to run are welcomed. In particular, it has been suggested that we organise a talk or two to give players tips on the mental side of the game – possibly utilising our county players or top local coaches such as Keith Reynolds.

We will continue to engage in LTA initiatives, such as the Quorn Family red-ball tournament, Benenden fun sessions, etc.

Roger Butler is now our designated “cluster” rep and will continue to create links with other clubs in the area to run friendly matches or mini-tournaments at different agegroups.

General Club Maintenance

Grant Redfern and Simon Peck have managed the general club maintenance really well this year, with plenty of assistance from committee members and several other very helpful members such as Hector, Suzanne and Julie Lea. There are a few minor repairs to be done, but no major expenses and the courts are in good condition, just needing moss killing once or twice a year.

Continue to assess the options for a toilet block and extension to the clubhouse / portacabin. Ideas will be discussed at the AGM and for discussion with members and then implemented during the season. The AGM agreed on a budget of up to £20k, which the club has enough savings for, whilst still maintaining sufficient funds for resurfacing the courts when this becomes necessary.

The Golf Club have agreed to resume cutting the grass around the courts for the forthcoming season – a huge relief to everyone, in particular Grant who went to unbelievable effort last year to keep the grass short.

Charity Event

We will run a charity event in the summer. The committee will consider suggestions for what this event might involve and which charities it would be raising money for. Examples considered are a 24 hour tennis-a-thon or playing against / at every other club in the Derby area. All ideas and suggested charities welcome and hopefully plenty of members and perhaps other clubs will get involved.

General Admin

Our CASC status will be re-applied for and we will continue to appeal to the HMRC for wrongly removing our CASC status in 2016.

Create a shared online document store that can be accessed by committee members – any members with good IT skills who might like to help with this, please volunteer to join the committee.