Students of things official will be aware that the AUK Board have been proposing a redraft of the AUK Regulations.
This has long been an interest of mine so I thought I'd have a go, the results of which can be seen at
regs.paudax.com.Aside from some inevitable fine tuning my feeling is the document is more or less 'ready to go'. The document has been available through the AUK forum for a while but as we head towards the AUK Reunion it seems appropriate to bring it to the attention of a wider audience. Regardless of whether it is adopted, I'm happy at least to have taken the opportunity to set out my view on what the AUK regulations should look like, as they will inevitably shape the future character and direction of AUK.
For me, the key points are that:
- AUK is first and foremost a Club that should be governed by its Members. With that in mind I've worked to clarify the relationship between the AUK Company and Club, working on the basis that the Company (only) exists to serve the Club.
So whilst the AUK Company Articles define the governance of the Company and the powers of the Board to manage the administration of the Company & Club, key Club matters such as membership fees and charges, affiliations, events and awards are laid out as AUK Club regulations.
- These are the
AUK Regulations, i.e. not the ACP/LRM/UAF regulations.
- These are the AUK
Regulations, i.e., the governing set of rules covering AUK Club events and activities laid out as a single document.
Clearly some additional notes will be useful to explain the background to various parts of the regulations, to explain why things are the way they are, but the immediate aim is to focus on the regulations themselves. Doubtless more detailed/relaxed event specific notes for Event Organisers and Riders will form part of the AUK website and event documentation, however, that comes under the heading of
presentation. This document represents the underlying regulations on which any such advice would be based, and would be managed by AUK Members through the AGM rather than by AUK Board and website content editors.
N.B., if the document appears rather long, it's simply because you've never seen the regs for all the various AUK events and awards in one place before!
In taking on this project I aimed to improve the regulations structure and language, so that they are easy(er) to navigate, easy(er) to read and to improve their clarity of meaning. Whilst sections have been restructured and various clauses reordered and reworded, it is intended the revised regulations remain consistent with the current regulations and thereby with the AUK systems and website(s). I’ll look to prove that later by providing a cross-map of the current and revised regulations. Any changes to the current regulations - mainly to codify current conventions and practices not included in the current regulations - are laid out in the introductory notes.
Happy reading. Feedback welcome.
Paul Stewart
AUK General Secretary, 2013-2015
p.s., To address a point of concern to many upfront, the revised regs continue to recognise two basic categories of Brevet, BR and BP. This provids a simple way of defining how AUK events are categorised for AUK awards purposes. By allowing that all AUK events fall into one of these two categories means they are automatically eligible for RRTY, AAA, etc. as appropriate. This approach does not rule out additional Brevet Categories and/or award schemes (Diagonals / Verticals / Squares / whatever) being introduced at a later date. Also, eligible AUK events would continue to be validated by ACP/LRM/UAF as now subject to meeting the requirements of those organisations, so in that respect, ‘nothing has changed’.