Dear all, we hope that you're are enjoying your summer breaks.
As you will see if you have been over to the club recently, the overhaul of pitch 2 is well under way. We met with the Contractor and Agronomist on site today and we hope, weather permitting, the initial overhaul will be complete in 3-4 weeks.

Thereafter will commence a period of contractual maintenance, undertaken by the contractor, for up to 12 months.

We will only be able to use pitch 2 at the end of the maintenance period, and only once it has been signed off by the Agronomist and formally handed back to the club. If we ignore this contractual obligation we risk invalidating the works guarantees and leaving ourselves compromised and possibly excluded from further Sport England funding in years to come. Once the initial works are complete we will reinforce the mesh fencing with additional stakes/posts and put up polite "Please Keep Off" signs.

Respectfully ask all members and players to comply with this, and encourage members of general public to cooperate as well, assuming they choose to ignore our requests/signage/fencing!

Finance Update

The nett cost to the club for pitch 2 overhaul will be between GBP 12,500 and GBP 18,000 depending on whether we need to utilise the contingency budget. The cost to completely overhaul the floodlights is circa GBP 10,500 plus labour. The club is envisaging spending further GBP 30,000 on overhaul of clubhouse (logic being that it will be our home until such time as we raise significantly more to build a brand new facility). Unfortunately the RFU Grant of GBP 10,000 will not be finalised in time for the club house works to be carried out this summer, so we are formalising plans to carry these works out in 12 months time.

We realise its disappointing that we will have to wait another 12 months, but far better we feel to do so on a manged and budgeted basis - and still be ready for the uptick in interest we hope we will see as a result of Rugby World Cup 2015.

The above planned expenditure, coupled with recent outlays for tractor and equipment, HD TV's and Sky HD, new furniture, set up costs of bringing catering in house and planning fees for new changing rooms and new clubhouse has, and will have, an obvious impact on the clubs finances. To counter this we need to ask the support of all of you in the following ways:

Timely payments of subscriptions/take up of family memberships. The Exec met on Monday 14th July to review fees and have approved an increase of GBP 10.00 per membership category. We arrived at this decision having canvassed peers at 9 other Essex Clubs and bench-marked our current rates vs theirs. It is again vital that all returning members re-new their memberships by the end of September. New/New members will, as always, be given a grace period (typically 4 weeks) to decide/pay.

Our policy on anyone facing difficulty in paying has not changed, and we encourage anyone who finds themselves in this position to please approach a member of the Executive Team - we want as many people playing rugby at the club as possible.

There will be numerous ways to pay the fees and this will be clearly communicated in the next 2-3 weeks - but again our absolute preferred method is via the club website, as this will assist greatly with the administration of collecting and recording memberships.

Gift Aid Any taxpayer is eligible to grant the club the right to claim gift aid on donations. This can be done once via the website and can be revoked at any time. We encourage all existing and new members/parents to do so. It really does provide the club with a much needed income stream.

100 Club Again we ask/encourage as many adults players/parents/supporters to join. It will help fund the running of the club and provide prizes for both individuals and Mini and Youth Sides. For info please contact Alan Hudson directly

Club Lunches These will be 7 lunches next season, and the profit we make all helps run our club - please support/attend these as best you can.

Sponsorship The club is always looking for sponsorship and unfortunately a number of last seasons sponsors have chosen not to re-new. If via your age groups you have any leads at all regards possible sponsors please do let a member of the Exec know.

RFU Grand Draw Tickets These will be available to sell later in year, and for every GBP 1.00 ticket we sell the club earns 90 pence. If every active member/player/supporter could sell GBP 10.00 of tickets over a 3-4 month period we could nett circa GBP 7,000 of much needed income.

In closing this pre-season update the club is commencing with its most significant infrastructure spend in many years. We sincerely hope these small steps demonstrate to you, our fellow members, that we are improving and updating our club, with the aim to have facilities commensurate with the levels of excellence that our sides attain on the pitch. We can only do this working together, and we sincerely hope we can count on all of your support to share the above messages with our broader membership/interested parties.

Many tks for your attention and cooperation.

Peter Watson/Honorary Treasurer on behalf of the Executive Committee
+44 7990 910 949