Originally Posted by
Ninian1962
Just to provide some (hopefully) helpful further clarification on this.
The government White Paper dealing with clubs` requirements to have better meaningful consultation with their fans didn`t set out an exact composition of a Fans Advisory Board (FAB)which will be a statutory requirement soon. Its recommendations and expectations were however that its membership should include Trust and female membership.
To start the process off the recognised official supporters` groups were asked to elect members to the board from their boards/committees - two from the Trust, two from the Supporters Club and one from the Disabled Supporters Association. At a Trust board meeting myself and Mike Spear were elected to represent the Trust board. The Supporters Club Committee elected Jane Ford and Luke Sommerfield as their Committee representatives and Keiran Jones was elected by the DSA committee. In addition Nathan Griffiths was put forward (not sure if there was a formal vote on this) to represent corporate/club sponsor fans. Therefore six initial members of the FAB were elected as the choice of their respective groups.
The agreed aim was then to try and get as wide a representation of other fans onto the board as possible which is what the White Paper recommends and so applications were asked for to be another female FAB member, a representative for U25 fans and three others from other season ticket holders/members not in those first two groups. A lot of applications were received and so four of us from the initial member group spent quite a long time narrowing down the applicants to 5 in the U25 group and 8 in the "other" group (the ladies applicants were only 5 in number so no need to narrow down to a shortlist).
The quality of applicants was really good , as you can see from their statements accompanying their pictures on the shortlist) so it is now down to season ticket holders and members to vote in the female and U25 FAB members plus 3 from the other shortlist of 8 to try and get that as wide a spread of representation as possible. The vote is entirely down to fans , the club has no say in it.
The six initial FAB members have also been asked for statements about themselves which I understand will appear on the club website shortly.
Keith