April 2026

Hello everyone, it’s great to be writing to you again. I said last time, that I would only write to you when I had something to say, so I was interested to read Jonathan Woodrow’s letter to the Editor in February’s Revcounter, in which he suggested that members may like to hear a bit more about what the Board of Directors were involved in and what they were planning for the future.

I’ll be honest, most of the stuff the National Executive Committee are involved with on a day-to-day basis is pretty routine, boring stuff, but occasionally something comes along which is important to all of us, and which needs communicating to you all. It just so happens that this month, I have two such topics to share with you… both appear somewhat boring, but nevertheless, I would ask that you stick with it and hear me out. Thanks.

Firstly, membership renewal time is upon us again, and it is with some sense of satisfaction that I can report that the cost of your membership remains the same for yet another year. The cost of membership has remained unchanged since 2016, and during that time UK inflation has risen by 36%. That means that if your membership cost had been increased accordingly, we would now be paying £68 for a single membership! The opportunity to avoid this increase has been achieved through prudent management by the Directors over that time, streamlining the Club’s operation, introducing new technology to our processes and making savings wherever possible… the introduction of e-membership cards being a good example. This work has delivered a real saving to the membership. During that period though, the costs from our suppliers has continued to increase in line with that inflation and has sometimes outstripped it… postal charges being a key contributor to our increased operating costs. The situation is that currently our European and Overseas memberships are actually costing us money to deliver, with the expensive cost of posting Revcounters to our overseas members tipping the cost just over the membership fee we charge. The Board have decided to subsidise the deficit for the 2026/7 membership year, but there is concern among the Directors that UK memberships will be affected in the same way by 2027/8. Consequently, I am establishing a working group within the national Executive team in the next few months, to look at the projected costs of membership going forward and asking them to recommend a pricing structure for 2027 onwards. I don’t want to pre-empt their findings, but I think it is a real possibility that there will be a slight increase in membership costs next year. Needless to say, I will keep you all informed of any developments in this area.

The second subject I want to bring to your attention is ‘Safeguarding’, and why it is extremely important to both the Club, and to you as a Club member. As I’m sure you all know, the Austin Healey Club is recognised and affiliated with Motorsport UK (MSUK). MSUK support and enable us in the running of our various Motorsport activities, as well as providing us with permits and certificates of exemption for our various touring assemblies, which we hold on the public highway. Consequently, we simply must be affiliated to MSUK, to run the Club activities that we do. MSUK have decided that, as with all their affiliated clubs, we need to adopt their position on safeguarding, and as such we have appointed our Vice Chairman, Dave Colwell to the additional role of Safeguarding Officer, to put this in place for us. My thanks go out to Dave for taking this on.

Dave has written a comprehensive article on the subject, which appears later in this issue, and I would encourage everyone to read it thoroughly, so as to understand this very important topic, and to appreciate why it is so important to both the Club itself, and to us as individual members. This could have ramifications for all of us, both corporately and personally, if we don’t get it right, so please give it ten minutes of your time and look at Dave’s article and the various associated documents that appear on our Club’s website. I cannot stress enough; how important this is. Many thanks in anticipation…