Starbug,

Is there a cost to the club for using the community trust as it is today??

A desk and a phone

But irrelivant now, the offer to work with/for the club has been withdrawn after 8 months waiting for them to make their mind up, the trust will now continue its community work independantley from the club, some of it done with new ' partners '

Amazing that Steve, so Hannah and Heather's salaries nothing to do with Leigh C, just phone and desk needed and we choose not to use their skills??

Who rejected the idea?

A brief history in simple terms

When AT had to withdraw his support , an audit was done of the clubs finances , that audit produced what looked like a significant cost to the club , but other incomes were not offset against the cost , however there was a cost to the club

So staff were made redundant [ a bit of a knee jerk reaction in truth ] , which could potentially have led to an infair dismissal case as it wasn't completely clear who actually employed the staff , ie , club or trust ? , however the staff wages did go through the clubs books as a result of former status of the community dept [ and possibly to assist turnover figures ]

So all this could have been ' messy ' last july/august , however to avoid that and look to the future , the staff continued with the work that was already in progress living off their redundancy monies and the staff along with trustee Lynn Calvert worked out a formula that would allow the trust to work with/for the club for no cost other than a desk and phone at the club

To do this a SLA , [ Service Level Agreement ] was put to the club to safeguard the trust and the club in defining where each other resposibilities and authority lied , this SLA was based on similar agreements that SL club have with their community trusts [ as almost all SL clubs have trusts running their community work as it is seen by the RFL as best practice as it opens up far more grant funding than a normal club run community dept ] , not forgetting that your community work is part of any SL application and the RFL contribute to clubs community work

This SLA was presented to the club last August , it was as I said based on other clubs , Leigh Centurions have asked us to ' simplify ' it twice , this we have done and were under the impression that it would be accepted last thursday , the club didn't agree to sign it so to allow the trust to look to safeguard its future the offer was withdrawn

Thanks for the explanation Steve.

In no way a leading question Steve, but what was the reason for the club not signing it?

Is there a Plan B?

No reason given , the only actual comment during the process was that the club didn't have any ' control ' of the Trust , although the trust did offer that the club appoint club employee's/Directors onto the trust as trustee's , the club declined this offer , citing a conflict of interest

Plan B for who ? , club or trust ?

The trust will continue with its community work , just not on behalf of the club

The club ? no idea

The club will continue on with their community work.

Thanks for that Steve, amazed really. Final decision by the club Steve from RB, TB, KF??

As an aside Ste, I was wrong in my earlier ' A brief history in simple terms ' post, in total the community Trust ammended the SLA ( Service Level Agreement ) 7 times at the request of the club , who then still decided it wasnt to their satisfaction

If that is the case how come Hannah & Heather work every home match?

Still amazed by this Steve, who at the club kept sending it back?

Because they end up getting asked , because they love, sorry loved working for the club, because its what they have been doing for the last 9 years, and it would now seem people who have been at the club 5 minutes think they know more about community work than they do

See you at the Fans Forum, click

Thank god for that! It was like listening to one of them blokes in the pub that says I am not going watching leigh while them lot are in charge.