Voting and Annual General Meeting Details
- Oldham Athletic Supporters Foundation
- Jun 24
- 3 min read
Our Annual General Meeting is taking place on Monday 30 June at 7pm. All OASF members will be sent a link to a Microsoft Teams meeting so that they can join wherever they are.
The meeting will include an update from the current OASF board and presentation of the financial accounts.
We will also be voting:
To elect new members of the OASF board.
Whether to disapply audit requirements for next year's accounts (requires at least a 75% majority to pass).
To approve last year’s accounts.
OASF members who signed up by 30 May will receive an email inviting them to vote. The voting period will close at 23:59 on Monday 30 June. If you need any support submitting your vote, please contact hello@oasf.co.uk before the deadline.
Election
The Election Management Group have confirmed the members nominated to stand as candidates for this year's election:
Jim Booth
Damian Collinson
Paul Prendergast
Maurice Scott
Chris Stringer
You can download their election statements below.
Because there are fewer candidates than the number of places available (6), a confirmation vote will be held in line with our Election Policy. This means that OASF members will be asked to vote 'Yes' or 'No' for each candidate. Every candidate that receives more ‘Yes’ votes than ‘No’ votes will be elected, unless that number would be less than the minimum required (6) to form a board.
If elected, the three candidates with the most ‘Yes’ votes will be granted 3-year terms while the other elected candidates will be granted 2-year terms.
Disapplying Financial Audit
As a community benefit society, OASF is required to get its accounts professionally audited every year unless its members vote to disapply that requirement at the preceding AGM. If OASF members vote to disapply the financial audit requirement, OASF is instead required to get its accounts independently examined (such as by a qualified accountant), but this would be cheaper than an audit.
Financial auditing is very expensive as it must be done by a specialist auditor. Quotes for this work are around £3,000 to £4,000. That is why we are asking our members to vote to disapply the audit requirements for the next set of OASF accounts, as they did last year.
On its website, the FSA provides advice on the difference between an audit and an independent examination:
"In essence, an audit will assure members that the accounts are right, whilst an independent examination will confirm to members that there is no evidence to suggest the accounts are wrong.
The independent examination does amount to an Independent Review of the Trust Accounts and therefore goes some way to meeting the principle of openness by providing a level of comfort to Trust Members that the accounts presented at the AGM have been subject to an independent review.
Nevertheless, it is for the members of each individual Trust to decide whether the independent examination is sufficient as a form of scrutiny of their Society Board Members."
The vote requires a majority of at least 75% to pass.
Financial Accounts
As a community benefit society, we are required to lay our accounts before our members. While members don’t have to approve our accounts, we are putting last year’s accounts to an approval vote. This adds another layer of scrutiny on top of the independent examination which has already taken place.
Members' Questions
Members can ask questions during the meeting via the Microsoft Teams Q&A feature but we are also happy to answer any questions via email (at hello@oasf.co.uk) for those who want to do so privately.
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