The Duke of Connaught's Own Club Fareham

14th October 2025

Hello all,

Last Sunday 12th October, I spoke in the Club and stated that it was my intention to call a Special General Meeting. Having taken advice both from the Financial Conduct Authority and learned colleague’s and members, the plan will be as follows:

The S.G.M will be held on Sunday 7th December and will take place prior to the A.G.M. The doors will open at 0945hrs and the S.G.M will commence at 1015hrs. It is anticipated that this meeting will take no longer than 30 minutes. Once the S.G.M has finished, all members will be directed to the small bar (The Peter Knight Lounge) for a brief pause. You will then be invited back into the main bar (The Phillip Craven Suite), along with those attending the A.G.M which will commence as normal at 1100hrs. This is done for the purposes of keeping the S.G.M and the A.G.M as two separate meetings, as required under the F.C.A rules. It is also important for us to correctly record the number of persons attending each meeting.

The notice calling for an S.G.M must be posted up in the Club at least 10 days prior to the meeting, but I wanted to get this out to you as quickly as possible, so that you may digest what we are trying to do and comment as appropriate, with plenty of time. This means, on the day we hope any amendments and agreements are pretty much in place and the S.G.M then being a short formality. This will also be posted on our Facebook page and notices will be posted up in the Club in the very near future.

The topic of the S.G.M is to discuss certain rule changes that are highlighted below.

7)    ELIGIBILITY FOR MEMBERSHIP

      All members of the Club must be over 18 years of age.

1)    FINANCIAL MEMBERSHIP

All financial members of the Club must be fully paid-up members.

2)    TEMPORARY MEMBERSHIP

Person/s specially invited by the Committee, may be admitted to temporary membership for a period or periods which together do not amount to more than 90 days in any one calendar year. The total number of temporary members in a membership at any one time must not exceed 10% of the financial membership. During their period of membership temporary members shall have all rights and privileges of financial members except that they may not vote at any meetings of the Club.

**Amendment suggestion –

Temporary members should not be afforded all rights and privileges of financial members. If a temporary member, only at the Club for a few weeks, was allowed to play Chase or Key Draw and walked away with £20,000 never to be seen again….. can you imagine?

So we change that to say “temporary members shall only have rights and privileges to the Friday and Sunday Raffles, Hoy and Blackouts”.

8)    APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP

1)    FINANCIAL MEMBERSHIP

Applicants for financial membership shall be made to the Membership Secretary. Applicants must sign an application form for one share and provide a deposit of 5p, which will be returned in the event of non-acceptance as a member. The present name and address and occupation of each applicant signed by a proposer and a seconder who must each be a financial member of the Club must be supplied and shall be posted up in the Club for at least 48 hours prior to the proposed members name being considered by the Committee. The Committee has sole authority to admit applicants to membership or reject them. The decision of the Committee shall be final. Immediately upon admission the member shall:

**Amendment suggestion –

Currently we always have a 14 day period which has never been contested.

…and shall be posted up in the Club for at least 14 calendar days prior to the proposed members name being considered by the Membership Secretary liaising with the Committee.

10)  SUBSCRIPTIONS

3)    ARREARS

Any member who has not paid his subscription four weeks after it has become due shall be considered to be in arrears. The Membership Secretary shall post in the registered office a list of the names of members in arrears within the five days of their becoming in arrears and no member in arrears shall be permitted to use the Club or take part in its affairs.

4)    LAPSED MEMBERSHIP

Any member whose subscription is still not paid within eight weeks of becoming in arrears shall cease to be a member. The Membership Secretary shall post in the registered office a list of the names of persons who, for this reason have ceased to be members.

**Amendment suggestion –

We are already telling members that there is no longer any grace period and that once we are at 1^st October they are a lapsed/non-member. We cannot do this, and I’m surprised that no-one has yet challenged us on it. We are currently accepting renewals as per the rule book.

I suggest agreeing a reasonable timeline, but shorter than 4 and 8 weeks respectively, but also add “it will be at the discretion of the Committee to extend the period of time before becoming a lapsed or non-member of the Club”.

13)  ADMISSION OF NON-MEMBERS TO THE CLUB

In addition to members the following may be admitted to the Club premises at the discretion of the Committee:

2)    GUESTS OF MEMBERS

Any member may be accompanied by his/her children under the age of 18 as guests at any time when the Club is open. In addition to his family (see above) any member may introduce friends as guests provided that no member may introduce more than two guests at any one time and no individual may be introduced as a guest more than once in any calendar month. The member introducing them shall sign their name in a book kept for that purpose. Members shall be responsible for the good behaviour of guests introduced by them during the period of their stay in the Club and in the event that a guest is removed from Club premises for misconduct of any cause, the member introducing such guest may be dealt with by the Committee at its discretion.

**Amendment suggestion –

Guests may be signed in more than once per calendar month as long as they pay their £1.00 to get in. Agree how many times per month. Also, should it be more than a pound now? Maybe two or three pounds per guest?

The Financial Conduct Authority tell me that none of these rules appear to be “entrenched”, meaning that previous Committee’s have asked for entrenchment to stop future Committee’s from changing them. There is also no charge by the F.C.A to change these rules.

The Committee and I do not feel that there should be an issue with this and indeed, we feel that you will be supportive in our endeavours. We do look forward to your support or “constructive” criticism, should there be any.

As always, any questions, comments or queries, please click on the ‘Email Lee’ tab below to send me a message.

Stay Safe !