Resignation fromCommittee

[Jules B]

From my vantage point as an average runner the FRA leadership do a great job and I'm VERY thankful for their voluntary work. When there is so much pressure on people's time I'm honestly speechless at some of the comments being directed at them.

A few people on here sound like they have swallowed the safety management textbook at work but there is more than one way to skin a cat. Without seeing the Coroner's letter the average fell runner can't assess whether the rule changes that have been put in place are sensible or not but since the FRA Committee have I'll trust them to do the right thing.

I think it's interesting how people demand volunteers who have been elected to do a job come on here to justify/debate their decisions. For me debate them in the appropriate meetings etc with the appropriate people and then go home and go for a run!

Anyway - thanks again FRA leadership!

[Mark G]

There is a misconception that the Coroner imposed prescriptive requirements on FRA. His Regulation 28 Report simply required that "action should be taken to prevent future deaths". He listed seven "matters of concern". There was no actual direction from the Coroner as to what changes should be made. That was for FRA to judge taking advice from wherever it chose. Indeed, when the requests for action (leading to the seven "Matters of Concern") were made to the Coroner in court, he said that he could not guarantee that they could be implemented. So he recognised the potential difficulties himself. It was up to the FRA to determine what was sensible. If FRA chose to take advice mainly from lawyers then it took a very grave risk on behalf of race organisers. By choosing to impose impractical prescriptive demands on race organisers, FRA has presented them with a big problem. Many race organisers have recognised this. Others will follow.

Andy Walmsley has made a brave determined attempts to steer the FRA ship off the rocks in the face of ill-informed resistance. He has now inevitably decided that his priorities must transfer to those race organisers who recognise the problems. This issue won't be resolved by FRA until those on the bridge of the once great ship FRA (with their eyes closed) hand over to more able captaincy. Otherwise, FRA will be left governing races which are a very faint shadow of what fell racing is all about.

Good luck Andy. You'll have lots of support because the future of fell racing depends on it.

Keith Burns

I agree with Keiths comments. The coroner can and has made recommendations but I dont understand why the FRA feels they have no option but to follow them to the letter. I suggest a more measured approach would be to write back, thank him, reassure him that we will adopt and use those we are able to and explain why we cant achieve others. This would then provide an audit trail for the new rules, justifying the decision making process in adopting some of his recommendations and rejecting others. Even the parts we reject as specific mandatory requirements could still be adopted as good practice to be used in circumstances where its possible to do so.

[Henry Porter]

Not really.
I have served for 12 years, and I was Chairman for 3 of them. Members come and go every year. Some make more noise than others when they depart. I have seen at least 25 Members change in my time. But there is massive experience sitting round a FRA Committee table and some of the newer Members are as intelligent, wise, capable and committed to fell running and serving the membership as I have known.

The current Committee is excellent and the current Chair has brought a fresh vision and has steered the FRA through, with the death of Brian Belfield , probably its most challenging period in a generation.

The Committee is made up of 22 people (although they don’t all turn up to every meeting!) and is a testament to democracy. No one person, even me when I was Chairman!, can overrule the good sense of the many wise fellrunners and race organisers who sit round the table.

Criticising the Committee is what fell runners do, it goes with the territory, if you can’t handle it then don’t join the Committee.

But there is not a single assertion that has been made on this Forum or facebook that cannot be truthfully and completely answered by the Committee. But there are only 22 of us and 7500 members and Officers do have other things to do in the interests of the membership and if the Committee starts responding to every point on here it will need to grow to 23 people by employing a full time media officer.

My question to people who wonder what is wrong with the Committee is “how many Officers do you actually know?” and if the answer is “none” I then ask “well do you really believe that people of the stature within fell running of Scoffer or Jon Broxap or Alan Brentnall or Alan Barlow or Brett Weeden, all of whom have served for at least 12 years, have suddenly, collectively gone off their rockers?”

So “It must be very exciting at the moment”?

Not from where we sit and when we walk away, as we all will, some of us wonder who will step forward to take our places if members really believe what they can read on here .

OK Graham, maybe I overstated it, perhaps it's only 'quite exciting' or a 'bit exciting' or even 'not at all exciting'. Mind you I wouldn't get too exercised by forum comment, there seem to be only about twelve active members most of whom don't race anyway (judging by the 'running but not racing' thread) so they wouldn't require your services anyhow.

[alwaysinjured]

How do you know it has been appalling handled? All we get is Always' point of view and now one resignation - doesn't mean it is appalling handled just that some people disagree with others.

Personally as I have said before I would like to thank the committee and support them - and I say this without knowing any of them!

Since Andy W posted his frustration of all of that on facebook, and a dozen of us were criticised for going to kendal to express the same frustrations it is hardly just one view! Have you not read what MargC has been saying?

[alwaysinjured]

I agree with Keiths comments. The coroner can and has made recommendations but I dont understand why the FRA feels they have no option but to follow them to the letter. I suggest a more measured approach would be to write back, thank him, reassure him that we will adopt and use those we are able to and explain why we cant achieve others. This would then provide an audit trail for the new rules, justifying the decision making process in adopting some of his recommendations and rejecting others. Even the parts we reject as specific mandatory requirements could still be adopted as good practice to be used in circumstances where its possible to do so.

Well said.

[alwaysinjured]

From my vantage point as an average runner the FRA leadership do a great job and I'm VERY thankful for their voluntary work. When there is so much pressure on people's time I'm honestly speechless at some of the comments being directed at them.

A few people on here sound like they have swallowed the safety management textbook at work but there is more than one way to skin a cat. Without seeing the Coroner's letter the average fell runner can't assess whether the rule changes that have been put in place are sensible or not but since the FRA Committee have I'll trust them to do the right thing.

I think it's interesting how people demand volunteers who have been elected to do a job come on here to justify/debate their decisions. For me debate them in the appropriate meetings etc with the appropriate people and then go home and go for a run!

Anyway - thanks again FRA leadership!

Stop being speechless, study the facts and make up your own mind.

We have seen that letter indeed one motive for going to Kendal was to try to remove impossibly onerous obligations made in it, one of the points of disagreement for Andy.

As a marshall you may be glad we managed to get the phrase " marshalls can ensure the safety of runners" removed. Do you not question the wisdom of saying that, since you can do no such thing?

One fundamental disagreement we have is the executive belief that the way to prevent dissent to such letters is to restrict the circulation of them prior to committing, the same kind of thinking that failed to actively consult RO prior to july rule change.That lack of dissemination and proactive consultation with RO unable to comply as Wynn is what began the problem. The preston rule change draft was actively witheld before becoming fact as well. Dissemination is a corner stone of democracy.

I would rather the rule drafters had swallowed an HS textbook to put their methodology And terminology right, and yes there is another way to skin the cat, the right way, the FRA rules way is the wrong one.

If you had been following the debate you will know that Andys main bone of contention is that as the safety guy he was kept out of the appropriate meetings of safety committee so was prevented from debate there

Theres an easy way to get unanimity on any sub committee, it is to stop any informed dissenter to join it,it also ensures a unanimous wrong answer, for which it seems we should be grateful, and the statement so produced is why Andy resigned.

[Graeme78]

It appears that Andy Walmsley has presented himself in an extremely bad light. Such a bad way to go. Huge vote of thanks to the rest of the committee!

What's your basis for making such a damning comment?

I assumed it was sarcasm......

[Sam Harrison]

Not really.
I have served for 12 years, and I was Chairman for 3 of them. Members come and go every year. Some make more noise than others when they depart. I have seen at least 25 Members change in my time. But there is massive experience sitting round a FRA Committee table and some of the newer Members are as intelligent, wise, capable and committed to fell running and serving the membership as I have known.

The current Committee is excellent and the current Chair has brought a fresh vision and has steered the FRA through, with the death of Brian Belfield , probably its most challenging period in a generation.

The Committee is made up of 22 people (although they don’t all turn up to every meeting!) and is a testament to democracy. No one person, even me when I was Chairman!, can overrule the good sense of the many wise fellrunners and race organisers who sit round the table.

Criticising the Committee is what fell runners do, it goes with the territory, if you can’t handle it then don’t join the Committee.

But there is not a single assertion that has been made on this Forum or facebook that cannot be truthfully and completely answered by the Committee. But there are only 22 of us and 7500 members and Officers do have other things to do in the interests of the membership and if the Committee starts responding to every point on here it will need to grow to 23 people by employing a full time media officer.

My question to people who wonder what is wrong with the Committee is “how many Officers do you actually know?” and if the answer is “none” I then ask “well do you really believe that people of the stature within fell running of Scoffer or Jon Broxap or Alan Brentnall or Alan Barlow or Brett Weeden, all of whom have served for at least 12 years, have suddenly, collectively gone off their rockers?”

So “It must be very exciting at the moment”?

Not from where we sit and when we walk away, as we all will, some of us wonder who will step forward to take our places if members really believe what they can read on here .

Graham, whilst I do understand that the collective committee has neither the time nor energy to answer every question or comment raised on this forum, I do not understand why you haven't, in your single (recent) post on the matter, addressed Andy's reasons for resigning? Surely this at least deserves a response from the committee?

[alwaysinjured]

Graham, whilst I do understand that the collective committee has neither the time nor energy to answer every question or comment raised on this forum, I do not understand why you haven't, in your single (recent) post on the matter, addressed Andy's reasons for resigning? Surely this at least deserves a response from the committee?

The frustration is the lack of answer to ANY material question, not the failure to answer to all of them.

No answer has been provided to anything significant, GB picks up on an error of detail then disregards the generality.

Why was no vote taken on Andys proposal? A clear request refused?
I asked another committee member one of the few who will speak to,me, what the support was for the motion. He said he was not sure which way it would have gone, which proves the necessity of a vote

And that is precisely one issue, the chair hijacked the right of committee to decide, in violation of constitution, presumably because the chair did not want andy there.

Why the committee did not object to such malfeasance is beyond me, but it is also a fact looming large in his decision to resign. He expected support from committee to stand up for his rights, not necessarily his beliefs.

Why was andy ( or me ) not allowed to present the professional way to manage safety?
The refusal of unqualified people to even listen to alternatives from safety professionals is irresponsible, whether or not they adopt the measures.

[Witton Park]

He expected support from committee to stand up for his rights, not necessarily his beliefs.

Ditto

and all this guff about volunteering and experience. The sport of athletics is full of experience and volunteers.
The people on the FRA committee are no more learned or worthy than those at club, County, XC league committee level.
Criticism is not coming from a bunch of anarchic firebrands, it's coming from other experienced volunteers who may in some cases have greater or broader experience.

Andy W actually had long and specific experience that most right minded people would have expected to have been utilised by the exec of the FRA.