With the start of the new membership year just around the corner, we would like to take the opportunity to let you know about some changes to the annual membership fee.
As you know, you have worked hard to keep the fee at £25 for the past few years, despite several increases in the England Athletics portion of the fee.
For the 2016/2017 season the total annual fee was £25. £13 of that was the England Athletics fee, which is set by them. The remaining £12 was your club fee which is set by us.
England Athletics will be raising their portion of the fee to £14 in the new membership year. If we continued to keep the overall fee at £25 that would therefore mean the club would receive less than £1 per month per member, which is not sustainable if we want to continue with things like the Mara Yamauchi training sessions, the Eagles track nights, the club subsiding events and paying for things like coaching qualifications and the XC and Summer Leagues.
Therefore for the 2017/2018 season we have decided that the total annual fee will be £30. With the EA fee set at £14 that means the club portion of the fee will be £16 or an increase of 33p per month.
For comparison with other clubs, the ESM fee is £45, the West4 fee is £39 and the Serpies fee is £44 (plus a joining fee!). We therefore believe this still represents excellent value for money and that the extra £5 will hopefully not pose a problem for any of the club members - it's not even enough for a large glass of wine!
You will receive the usual renewal emails from us in plenty of time for the start of the new season. Due to the size of the current membership we will be sending them in stages, so please do not panic if one of your running buddies has their email before you - it will more than likely be because their name is higher up the alphabet!