Although plans to build the new indoor tennis courts have been put on hold for the forseeable future, chairman Dr Mark Muhlemann said that the club will be able to pay back the loan they had been given to develop the courts.’The scheme is not going ahead: it has been postponed but not abandoned,’ he said.He said that the 85 or so members who attended the meeting were obviously apprehensive about what the executive committee were going to say at the start of the meeting.’We told them that the executive committee had put financial controls in place to protect against any future overspend, and we have introduced cost-saving measures to generate income to keep the club in the black this year.’Among those measures will be a reduction in staff salaries which will be made by reducing the opening hours of the club bar.’It may not seem like much, but it has been open for more than 90 hours each week, with the resulting need to pay staff for working those hours.
A small club like ours cannot afford that but there will be no job losses in the immediate future, no major redundancies.’He said that the committee will also be actively promoting the club to encourage new members to join, and there will be further fundraising initiatives.’The club will survive,’ he said.One member who attended the meeting said that he was impressed with the way the executive had gone about trying to solve the problems.’Mark handled it well, he and the treasurer spelled out the problems clearly and hands were held up.
They gave a clear picture of what had gone on, and what was going to be done, and everyone was pretty positive about it.’Another member commented that he felt reassured that the club wasn’t going to go under.He said: ‘The committee does the job voluntarily and I think they’ve worked hard to try and sort things out.
And to some extent they inherited the problems from previous committees.
I think the majority at the meeting will support what they’re proposing.’
