I think my comment earlier about "minding our own business" was probably ill-advised and poorly expressed in the heat of the moment. I apologise, and welcome Danial's further contribution to this discussion.
I must confess that (simple chap that I am) I remain a little confused, with one suggestion that this move is to help address the shortfall on card production / validation costs (a perfectly good reason) and another that there is a need to stifle some smaller events (OK, that's not exactly what was said, but it appears to be the underlying agenda). It may be that the latter has nothing to do with the registration fee, which is hardly going to be much of a barrier.
I find I have a lot of agreement with Danial's comments. I'm sure we have all attended events (and not necessarily with small fields) that fell well short of AUK's normal standards. And the issue of increasing cancellations could well indicate a reducing commitment. So yes, the bar does need to be set high. But I'm not convinced that discouraging small events is necessarily a good way forward.
Here in the SouthEast we have any number of events, and it is perfectly reasonable that there should be critical assessment of whether all are "needed" and whether some should be withdrawn. This is a (very difficult) task of the regional co-ordinators. But there are parts of the UK that are much more poorly supplied with events. Not this year, so much, but in a non-PBP year there are major gaps in the calendar in the north of England. We need to encourage people to come forward with events in these "sparser" areas, not put up more barriers that actually don't impact on the quality of the event.
Many new events will be small the first time they run. If they are successful word of mouth (such as on here) will quickly swell the numbers in subsequent years. If they are not successful (because of poor route, poor organisation, etc) they should be stopped.
