- We have finally submitted our application for charitable status. This required many hours of work as we had to provide full details of all our documentation including accounts, annual report, memorandum and articles of association,business plan etc (see later) .The Charity Commission will appoint a specialist caseworker to consider our application: however, they have a backlog from February 2019 so we are unlikely to hear anything for some time.
- The Committee held a meeting with the team captains to discuss a number of issues with them but also to ensure that they and the regular team members receive the recognition that they deserve for the major contribution that they make to the excellent reputation that Southbourne Tennis Club enjoys. Whilst we are rightly extremely proud of the fantastic programme of community tennis across the whole ability range that we offer we need to equally acknowledge the people young and older who turn out all year to represent the club.
- Clubhouse – you will already have spotted a few small changes to the layout of the clubhouse. This is largely due to the ‘Members Experience Working Group’ arising from the Club Business Development Plan ably chaired by Richard Dear. He and his team have been meeting regularly to explore how we can improve the overall ‘feel’ of the club and continue to ensure that it is attractive to existing and potential new members. They are seriously considering purchasing a coffee machine, buying new chairs and tables to create more of a cafe style space and altering the notice board layout to make it more user friendly subject to sufficient funds being available. We hope that you will all feel that these small scale changes will be an improvement. We are also hoping to engage with a student from Bournemouth Arts University to develop a plan for the redesign the overall interior of the clubhouse.