Membership

Introduction

Rights & Liabilities

Membership of BCA runs for one year from the date of joining.  The membership fee is £20.00 per annum.

VOTING RIGHTS
Group members will be asked to nominate a delegate from within their own organisation to vote on their behalf on matters raised at the AGM.  Members may be nominated for election to the Board of Trustees.

DATA PROTECTION
Buckinghamshire Community Action is registered with the Data Protection Agency and all information is kept on a computerised database.  The information will not be passed on to outside agencies.

LIMITED LIABILITY
Buckinghamshire Community Action is a company limited by guarantee. This means that it does not have shares or shareholders, but instead it has members. Its day-to-day management is carried out by the directors, but by becoming a member you will be entitled to do the following things:

• to attend and vote at general meetings; normally there will be one meeting per year, called the Annual General Meeting or AGM, and you will be given at least three weeks’ notice of the place and time of the meeting. We may also need to call other general meetings in exceptional circumstances
• to receive the annual accounts of the company
• to elect directors by voting at the meeting
• to vote on any fundamental changes to the nature of the company, its name, its purposes, or what happens to its profits.

You will not be entitled to receive any dividend or other income from the company.

If the company makes a profit this will be retained to help pay for the company’s activities in the following years.  If the company is wound up you will not receive any money from the company because its constitution requires that it should be paid to some other charity or charities.

The constitution is made up of the memorandum and the articles and the rules. The memorandum sets out what the company can do and why it exists; and the articles deal with the holding of meetings, the admission of members, the election of directors and other rules relating to the running of the company. These are legal documents that are registered on the public records for the company held at Companies House. They may also be inspected at Unit B The Firs, Aylesbury Road, Bierton, Bucks HP22 5DX where you may also inspect the rules made by the company to date.

You will not be liable for any debts of the company by becoming a member. You will not be liable if someone brings a legal case against the company. This is because like most other companies it is a limited company, which means your liability as a member is limited. If the company is wound up (which may happen, for example, if it cannot pay its debts) then you will have to pay no more than £10 to the company. This is the amount that you ‘guarantee’ or promise to pay to the company by becoming a member, as set out in clause 7 of the memorandum. In addition, if you have paid a subscription to the company there may not be enough funds left to return to you any of that subscription, even if the winding up happens part way through a membership year.

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If you require further information about membership please telephone BCA on 01296 421036.