Royal Dornoch Winter Newsletter 2024

this will have to go to an AGM – where there could
again be a blocking coalition.
Contracts
Because a club has no legal identity of its own, it
cannot itself form contracts, bring legal claims (or
defend them) or own property. It must do so through
the officers. Hence the officers may be exposed to
personal liability. If the club’s assets are not sufficient,
or the officers are unable to get an effective
indemnity, it is possible that a creditor of the club for
instance could pursue an officer that contracted with
them personally. This can lead to difficulties; for
instance an officer may contract with a supplier of
goods. If the officer then leaves that post (and often
the term of office is only a year) or the club itself, then
the supplier can still look to that officer if the club
doesn’t pay the supplier. They would be entitled to
an indemnity from the club of course, but that might
not be much comfort if the club has closed.
Tony Barlett – I am speaking to you really because
as you probably remember in 2019 I was part of
the committee that approved the clubhouse
design. That was at a time when the costs, the
building costs were about £7 million and the total
costs were about £11 million.
We weren’t at that time speaking about any
borrowing at all, only for very short term
borrowing to give a bit of latitude at the end of the
project but it was never intended to draw down on
these facilities.
Since then I have changed my mind on this and I
changed my mind on this really for two reasons.
Firstly, I think £15 million is a huge amount of
money to spend on the clubhouse and really when
you have (a local population of not much more) –
a local membership of 300.
The second thing, and we agreed differently at the
meeting the other day, I personally don’t like
borrowing £5 million and particularly when the
club is so dependent on visitors and I know the
visitors income has been very good and my view is
if the visitors keep coming we can make the
payments but I still think there is a risk. I don’t
think it is a minor risk.
So basically we will have some issues on visitor
numbers that will mean that borrowing the money
is not the right thing to do. I would much prefer
that we kept within our own resources.
When we think about it, less than half of the club’s
expenditure is covered by members subscriptions.
Nevertheless work with the basis that almost
certainly that this resolution will be passed tonight.
I have got one or two quick questions on the basis
it is passed. The first one, does the £14 million
include the fit out costs and I am assuming it does.
To what extent are the tenders going to be fixed
price. I think the words when I met you and Rob
the words were – “fairly standard building
contracts”. I am afraid I have got no idea what that
means but I do find it slightly odd in the current
times when there is huge inflation that we can tie
the contractor down to any form of fixed price, or
significant amount of fixed price.
The third thing is the loan agreement that we
negotiate with the Bank. I am not quite sure where
we are with them. I know there are some offers.
These agreements have to be irrevocable. By that I
mean, that once we start, I am assuming that the
project I am assuming we will start paying the
money up to a certain limit. That’s probably the
major part of what money we’ve got and then the
53