Members who attended last Wednesday's meeting will know from the announcement made by Mike Bews that there is a good prospect that contracts will be exchanged and completed next week for the sale of the clubrooms at 12 West Mall and the purchase of new premises at 13 Montpelier Central, Station Road, Montpelier. This process has been protracted, mainly because the buyer of our clubrooms needed to obtain planning permission to convert them to a two bedroom flat and only applied for this in December. Permission has now been granted. Our plans for the building work needed to convert the Montpelier property so that it will be suitable for us have also been approved and estimates for the works concermed are being obtained. The likely cost of the work is about £83,000. Plans of the new premises have been displayed in the clubrooms for some weeks.
For the benefit of newer members, and as a reminder to others, we are in effect exchanging the properties and in addition paying the owner of the Montpelier property an additional £43,000.
When a move to Montpelier was first mooted it was clear from a survey of members' views that most were prepared to move to what should be better premises, with better parking, even if an increase in subscription rates was necessary. The questionnaire and the results of the survey can be found in the newsletter archive (please follow these two links to view the original articles -
link 1 and
link 2).)
Members will not, we hope, be surprised to learn that moving to bigger and better premises will mean that the club's running costs (heating, lighting, rates etc.) will be higher. However, on the plus side, we will be able to accommodate up to 50% more people, offer vastly improved studio facilities and have the space to display 200+ prints around the walls, plus much more. The covering notes issued with the annual accounts have made it clear for some time that, if the profit on the Bristol Salon and the income from the photographic course is excluded, the club's annual expenditure has been about £5,000 more than its income. In the new premises we estimate that it will be closer to £9,000. Future profit from the Salon and income from the course should continue to offset this deficit but the margin will be small. It should be possible to bring in some income from hiring out the new clubrooms but an increase in subscription income will be necessary. Ideally this would be achieved by an increase in membership but an increase in the subscription rates seems inevitable. Council will make a recommendation to members at the Annual General Meeting in July - by then we will have a better idea of the running costs and the effect on recruiting new members. If we could eventually increase the membership by, say, 50% then a similar increase in subscription rates may be sufficient. It is worth noting that if we stayed at 12 West Mall, and if a member paid to park close to the clubrooms (assuming a space could be found) it would cost £76 a year to pay the existing full subscription and come to the club on just thirteen evenings.
The following are simple comparisons between the current fees paid by BPS members and those of other local clubs from which you will see that even if subscription was to increase to £75 this would still be lower than most other (major) clubs in the area:
Max cost Cost per night*
Bristol £50 £50 £1.00
Kingswood £60 £60 £1.25
Backwell £20 + £2.00 per night £80 £2.50
Reflex £20 +£1.00 per night £50 £1.56
Taunton £30 + £1.00 per night £60 £1.88
* Cost per night for the full programme offered by each individual club.
