Sussex Premier Cricket League restructure for 2017 is delayed after concerns are raised

The proposed restructure for the Sussex Premier Cricket League for the 2017 season has been delayed after more than 20 clubs raised concerns that it was flawed.
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Four SCPL clubs - Ansty, Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and Lindfield - raised the concerns and had backing from more than 20 of the 40 member clubs.

The concerns raised were that the proposed restructure was flawed and was rushed through.

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They called for a Special General Meeting but the League decided to delay the restructure without the SGM going ahead.

The news of the delay came in an email to all clubs from league chairman Bob Warren.

Here is the email in full.

The SPCL EC acknowledges the concerns voiced by a number of member clubs in respect of the changes of the 2017 league structure and has decided, with the agreement of Zac Toumazi, the Chief Executive of the Sussex Cricket Foundation, previously the Sussex Cricket Board, to delay the re-organisation of league cricket in Sussex. The concerned members had called for an SGM to discuss the issue. At the bottom of the email sent to clubs was a possible future structure of the SPCL, which incorporated clubs from the Mid-Sussex League. Interestingly enough this type of structure has been looked at by the EC previously. It had to be put aside because it became apparent, at a number of ALG meetings how difficult it would be to integrate the Mid-Sussex League into the Sussex league structure. Given it took several years to get to the position we started the 2016 season with, our experience is that deeper integration with the other three leagues will be just as difficult.

Some of you will be aware; in fact I mentioned this in my last email, there is a strategic group, under the Chairmanship of our President, David Bowden, looking at the development of Sussex Cricket in the whole. It is likely that this group will come up with major recommendations, which will then be put to the various leagues and their clubs for discussion. Their interim report will be available in September of this year.

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Moving back to the SPCL situation, if the rules were applied as written, because any application to call a SGM has to be signed individually by the secretaries of at least 12 clubs and has to have an agreed proposal and has to be delivered to the Secretary of the League, the EC thinks it sensible to work round these requirement by adding the item to the agenda of the League’s meeting to be held on the 19th of September. Unless there are numerous objections to this suggestion this is how we will proceed.

In the meantime we have to decide what we are going to do with the 20 teams, who would have been moving to the feeder leagues. As all our clubs are playing this season with the proposed league construction for 2017 in mind. It would seem, therefore, to be wrong to alter the free flowing structure we have in place for 2017. Logically, therefore, the simplest solution would be for us to place those 20 teams in new divisions called Divisions 6 East and 6 West. This solution would satisfy another of the results of the Players’ Surveys’ of shorter travelling time in lower divisions. This would mean that 40 of our teams would be regionalised. This is on top of agreed earlier starts and mixed formats. Much of what the players wanted.

As stated before, unless there are numerous objections, we will deal with all the above on the 19th of September.

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