Wing Guardianship of Civ Com

Can a Civ Com under Wing guardianship be stopped from meeting using spurious excuses from the holders of the guardianship. Some members of the committee have been trying for 8 months to have a meeting called but is being resisted by the Chair(Wing guardian). numerous e-mails have been sent and ignored by the chair or citing spurious grounds for not meeting.

ACP 11 states that a Civ Com meeting should take place at a minimum of quarterly. Is the chair acting against the strictures of ACP 11?

This is an on-going thing as some of the Civ Com members tried to resist a co-location of their Squadron fearing it was a slowly occuring merger. Some have written to MPs and the CRAFAC and the RC, the latter did not take to the idea that mere ‘civis’ should challenge their decisions when communicated in a very direct manner, in fact they did not like it all. I suspet some people have never had their decisions challenged in their lives.

The crux is, can a Wing guardian stop a Civ Com meeting?

Wow that is a weired situation. As civ comm I would contact your Region Chairman and simply state that you’re being stopped from having a meeting and just see what happens. Could one of your 8 not become the Chair? There are responsibilities the Committee have and you are being prevented from doing them.

Sorry my mistake you don’t have 8, how many members of the committee do you have?

three maybe four which is the minimum. I was chair and withdrew due to the mendacity of certain non Civ Com people and potentential professional conflict regarding the legalities.

There no mention of Wing Guardianship as far as I cam remeber in ACP 11.

No nothing in ACP11 as Wing are just stepping in to keep things legal. As far as I see it you have limited options:

  • Find a new Chairman. This would be the best outcome as Wing don’t have time.
  • Escalate to Region Chairman for advice.
  • Ask the current Chair for a date of the AGM. Every Sqn needs one of these as per ACP11.
  • Invite the Chairman to a meeting and do it with or without him. If things go smelly you can at least point to the minutes and say you tried. You could at least minute a discussion about the current Chair. Note, your ability to agree things maybe limited if you don’t have a quorum.
  • Invite the Chairman to attend the meeting but online. You will need a free video conferencing app like Skype or Zoom and you would need to minute who came in remotely but it may encourage the chair to attend if he doesn’t have to travel.
  • Everyone travel the Chairs location for a meeting.

I can’t think of any other options here, the uniform branch of the Wing have no power here however, your CO could escalate as a concerned CO.

Good luck!

Some helpful suggestions there and, as ever, a bit of commonsense will be the best way forward.

But Wing or Region have no legal basis to interfere and there is no ‘chain of command’ over the civilian element despite more recent attempts to create one (or at least the impression that there is one. There have been instances where this has occurred and each time Wing/Region has been shown to be wrong. Wing are typically too much like administrative puppets and Region are too steeped in their own interests. Neither have any depth in knowledge of Charity Law and approach this with a sense of assumed control which does not exist in a court of law (hence the pained efforts to keep everything away from the courts - but then who wouldn’t?).

The changes in the current ACP-11 can only be regarded as lawful if they are independently discussed and voted to be adopted by CivCom trustees which some may do and others not. Just issueing a ne ACP-11 from ATC-HQ does not make it a legally enforceable document. In my experience, most CivCom members are not appraised on the extent of their responsibilities and legal obligations Lawfully, the only people who can deal with your chairman are the fellow trustees who have legal authority. Wing have no guardianship role to play and are actually required to act independently in the interest of their own charity.

All that said, your chairman must operate within the adopted constitution which will be the ACP-11 revision that has been last adopted by vote at an AGM. It may be that you have your own constitution which, as long a it maintains the same charitable purposes, is also quite lawful, and necessary through registration if income exceeds the current financial limits.

If your chairman does not call an AGM as per the constitution (which I will assume is one version of APC-11), then fellow trustees should act to promote and even hold one with the chairman invited. The offices of the CivCom are only electable and it would be the responsibility of the other trustees to carry out the election.

If there is not a quorum, then the recruitment of other eligible trustees is a must and cannot just be the WIng Chair and his mate rolled in for the night to make up the numbers for their candidate.

If you as the Chair have concerns regarding professional conflicts (and I do not know what they may be) then you should discuss these with your fellow trustees and have every right as trustees to vary the constitution by which you operate and adopt by vote, again, without change to the charitable objectives as they are. There are trustees who have done this.

If you cannot gain a level of agreement within AGM timescales, then you probably have to stand down and maybe report any specific instances to the police.

I think (may have misunderstood) but the issue is with Wing acting as the chair and the constant denial for a meeting. This one is an odd situation however, there are grounds, and a procedure that can be followed to raise a complaint which has a way to escalate up to Region and HQAC. Having used the complaints procedure myself when I was Chair, it’s reasonably robust however, you have to push hard as there will be a lot of reluctance to escalate. In this case you would need to start at Region level as the Wing Chair is probably the problem.

There is far more to this as well.

Just sent you a direct message on here Bob.

Who suggested co-location and why?
What does the OC think, or are they hog-tied by the CoC?
If I were the OC I’d be moaning that we can’t do anything because Wing are blocking things, because it is still an independent squadron and has its own funds. But then if the squadrons merged, the squadron being lost would have to use the existing funds for the existing cadets and property disposed of before closing the accounts, as I’m not sure the money or property would or could be transferred to the new merged squadron, as one charity can’t donate to another IIRC and as I understand it all squadrons are now regarded as separate charities.

I do like the challenging through MPs etc, as said an unwelcome situation for the RAF types.

Who are the RAF types? Do you mean the representatives of our parent organisation, the one that funds the majority of what we do?

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“the one that funds the majority of what we do?”

… errr … think you will find that is the MOD as the RAF are not a legal entity and without such financial identification.

… and of course that will be the MOD which is publicly funded through tax …

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Indeedy. For their careers they will have not been directly questioned from outside the RAF from someone like an MP, which will need a satisfactory answer, as the MP has to respond to the questioner who is a voting member of their constituency.

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I defer to the superior knowledge of public accounting and the administration of the defence vote. As for questioning, external or internal, I assume that they would have been held to account for many things surely…?

And some MPs are taking an interest in the workings of the ACO and not to the ACOs benifit. Awaiting developments.

Ooooooooh, how exciting.

Sarcasm or support?

Bit of both I suppose!

I am aware of an instance where an OC Wing actually prevented or banned an item being added to the agenda for a Wing Chair’s meeting; that is contrary to my belief that OC Wing (and Sqn OC) was only an ex-officio member of the Civcom, and as Rumpole said, with no voting rights.

If the OC Wing can dictate the Civcom agenda, then that makes the Chair simply a puppet of the uniform chain.

That is not what it says in ACP11,but who are we to argue when the Wing Chair has been instrumental in getting Squadron Civcom to sign acceptance of the revised ACP11 - pressurised selling without due regard to the conventional way of running a charity, and the need to vote acceptance of changes and decisions.
.
And whilst you might think it logical as a constituent, to take your problems to your MP, it does seem that when they have to deal with Government Departments, they might not be in a better position than we lesser mortals. .

Things aint what they seem.

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I have contacted my MP and all they got back was a cut and paste from documents from an FOI request.