A. New clause in the Constitution to address membership legality issue – The Chairperson updated the meeting on the progress of the BDAC application to become a Cooperative.
Any change to the Constitution must be approved at an AGM it is therefore proposed that the following two clauses be circulated to Association Secretaries for circulation among their members to be voted on at the 2025 AGM.
That the BDAC shareholder should be a single elected officer of each Allotment Association under Management Agreement with Birmingham City Council.
1.1 The individual shareholder voting on any proposed amendment/addition to the Societies Rules/Constitution must cast their vote in accordance with the wishes of the majority of their Represented Association Membership, this majority to be determined by a ballot of members on a form issued by BDAC Ltd. The ballot results are to be forwarded by the Association to the Secretary of BDAC Ltd via BDAC Website not less than 14 days prior to the date of the AGM/EGM of BDAC Limited at which amendments are to be debated.
The proposed change means a named person has to hold a share. This method by which the secretary holds the share and casts votes on behalf of tenants. The secretary will ballot the tenants of their site. Potentially, there could be a voting form online on the BDAC website. That would necessitate a change in the constitution, which can’t be done at this meeting but has to wait till approved, so this is just for information at the moment. Votes would be registered by the number of votes per site, not as a single vote. The BDAC is not in a position to host 7000 tenants, so that’s why the vote has to be representative. The Ballot is to be held on individual allotments and forward scores to BDAC, eg 30/70. It may be possible to look at proportional voting, where larger sites can get a bigger vote share. That clause will be sent to all secretaries to get feedback from all tenants.
There were many questions from the floor as to how this could possibly work regarding sites being different sizes, having more members than other sites and this being a lot more work for Association secretaries/committees. It was also questioned as to how the BDAC would know if the vote made by the secretary is indeed the opinion of the tenants.
If anyone has any feedback or ideas on how else this issue could be resolved, please contact the BDAC.
The question was asked also which constitution the BDAC is currently running under, the Chairperson replied the final version of the model rules that were published at the AGM before this meeting.

B. Next steps: Begin formal discussions with BCC on 3 major aspects of BDAC allotment site Management