Bowling News
Recently we posted the story of the BCGBA £1 levy enforced on every bowler in the country to raise funds to support the new national strategy. This is expected to raise the £110,000 to cover the Year 1 costs of a 5-Year Strategy. No contribution from the £385,000 reserves in BCGBA accounts are to be used to fund this strategy. In fact there are no plans to spend any of this 'reserve' at all.
The BCGBA have declared that these sums will be collected by the County organisations from all clubs in their area by 31 May 2025. Yorkshire CCGBA have since circulated an email to all clubs stating that they will be invoicing clubs by 15 April with the expectation that all these invoices will be paid by the end of April.
Every bowler registered with a club will go towards that invoice total if they are representing their club in a league competition. If a bowler is registered with more than one club then each club will be liable for that levy payment. Social bowlers (i.e. not playing in any league team or individual competition) are exempt from this charge.
The means of collecting all these numbers is by using the data on the national database which is called JustGo. Each bowler with a BCGBA number has a JustGo record on the system. In addition each Club and League also has a record on the JustGo system. Your club should have received training on how to use it. Individual bowler records have been added to the system when it is was first established. It is the responsibility of clubs to get their membership details up to date on the system. Whatever records are on the system on 15 April will be used to invoice each club. Yorkshire CCGBA have stated that they will be checking the JustGo records against Bowlsnet League records to ensure that all bowlers have been captured on the JustGo system.
JustGo has a large customer base world-wide but if it isn't implemented correctly it is never going to work. I have heard horror stories about the roll-out of the system across Huddersfield area clubs and Yorkshire CCGBA have admitted that they have had big problems in our area. My concerns are on two fronts. The training and on-going support. In my own experience the training was conducted over the phone, I didn't receive any documentation to aid me at all and the support is totally provided by one individual who is on holiday at present. I am aware of others who haven't received any training but did get a username and password and others who just got a paper introduction.
Having being granted access to JustGo over a year ago I have tried to use it for the two clubs where I have access to their records. I have real concerns about a number of aspects of this system. As someone who has 40 years experience of being responsible for computer systems from those in air-conditioned aircraft hanger-like big computer rooms to devices keeping people alive on intensive care wards, I hope that I have a good feel for what works and what doesn't and at present I don't believe that JustGo is ready to be used for this purpose.
I accessed the system recently to do the start of season tidy up knowing that some records needed deleting - two deceased bowlers, another one in prison, a small number having stopped bowling due to health conditions and 3 or 4 new bowlers. On logging in I spent some time before getting around the system only to find that all the records for both clubs had all been deleted. No explanation where they had all gone. There were over 100 records for one club and around 50 for the other but now it was zero for both. I know that I am the only user with access to one of these club records and probably both.
I reported it to Yorkshire CCGBA. No response to date. So for that reason I know that the system isn't reliable for use in creating a bill for each of these clubs. I could start again to input the records but why would I when I fear that the same would happen again. I need some answers as to what happened to cause this deletion before spending time recreating all 150+ records.
So where is your club as regards JustGo? Has your club access to the system, received training and updated all their records? Are you happy that the system has an accurate record of your club membership? Are you happy to be invoiced on the numbers on JustGo?
I get the feeling from listening to a number of clubs they have severe reservations about the quality of data on the system. That may be because they do not have access to the system or are aware of many errors on it and cannot correct them. I don't think that Yorkshire CCGBA or the BCGBA appreciate the current status of these records and will blindly go on sending out invoices based on historical records that have never been verified by some clubs.
It would be good to get a feel if this is just a few isolated cases or is it worse than that. If you are an official of your club then please take a few minutes to complete the survey below to help collect this information. Should the survey flag up a consistent concern about using these records then I will forward this information to Yorkshire CCGBA so that it will be no surprise when some clubs contest the invoices received.
So what do you think about JustGo? This is the opportunity for clubs to register any concerns they have about the system and the state of it's club records. It will be of little use to raise those concerns after your club has been invoiced for the £1 per bowler levy.
You don't have to leave your name and contact details unless you want to but please answer the questions honestly. No names or clubs will be shared with anyone but it would be good to find out the depth of the problem and alert Yorkshire CCGBA to the potential difficulties that they are creating for themselves if more than just me have lost confidence in the system.
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