Bowling News
Have your club membership fees increased this year? That increase could be prompted by the BCGBA decision to introduce a national levy of £1 for every bowler that a club has. This is to fund a new national strategy to help address the falling number of bowlers, clubs and leagues.
The County organisations have been given the responsibility for collecting the levy charge from each club. They are allowed to retain 5p in the £1 for administration tasks in collecting this levy and forwarding on to the BCGBA by the 2025 deadline of 31 May. This is year 1 of 3 years that this levy will be applied with the expectation that it will be confirmed or increased after year 3.
It is expected that the JustGo national BCGBA database is the basis for identifying the fee that each club will have to pay. That is a problem in itself as I am not aware of any club that is happy with the quality of data in that system and the last time I looked at the two club records on the system that I have access to there were no membership records at all - they had all been deleted from the previous year.
This is the third consecutive year that the BCGBA has tried to implement a levy on all bowlers although the amount of the levy has fluctuated over that time. The threat remains in previous attempts at introducing the levy that non-payers will be suspended from all BCGBA leagues and competitions as can be seen from the 2023 rule proposal below that failed to get passed. Yorkshire CCGBA has historically opposed the introduction of a levy in previous years but supported the 2025 introduction which was passed in January this year.
In January 2024 the BCGBA proposal to implement a £1 per bowler levy on every club in the country failed as their financial accounts showed reserves of £385,000. The same proposal in January 2025 was passed.
A similar proposal in 2023 was also defeated with the proposed rule change threatening to suspend any bowler who had not paid the £1 levy. It passed the responsibility of collecting the fees to the county bodies allowing them to withhold 5% of the total collected as an administration fee.
The formal 2023 proposal said:
MEMBERSHIP – Individual Membership – Rule 1a
Proposed by the Management Committee
Add a new sentence to the end of the rule ‘All players registered to one or more counties shall pay, via the county of their primary affiliation, an annual BCGBA fee of £1.00. The sum is to be paid by a date set by the Management Committee. Counties shall retain 5% of all such monies collected on behalf of BCGBA as an administration fee. Any player failing to comply by that date shall be suspended from playing any form of competitive Crown Green Bowls until the sum due is paid. Any player in default from the previous year shall remain suspended until all past dues are paid.
At the Annual General Meeting of Yorkshire CCGBA it was noted that JustGo is the tool for collecting the base membership data upon which the cost per club will be determined. If bowlers play for more than one club then each club will have to pay that levy on their behalf. The intent is to reconcile Bowlsnet league records with JustGo records to catch all bowlers regardless of how many clubs they play for. It will be the clubs responsibility to how they fund this additional cost. Many will have no choice but to pass the full cost on to their membership.
This levy of £1 per bowler per year is for an initial 3-year-cycle period to fund the BCGBA National Development Strategy 2025-2030. The cost in Year 1 of funding the strategy is estimated at £110,000. This National Strategy covers the next 5 years and there is no indication of any funding arrangements for years 4 and 5 of the Strategy implementation.
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