Following on with looking at matters within Lancashire County Cricket Club and my recent podcast with Alan Higham, the founder of the County Cricket Members Group, matters at Lancashire continue to develop at pace.

A Special General Meeting of members is due to take place on Monday 1st September 2025. Initially the meeting was to address two resolutions, namely:

Resolution 1: Pursuant to Rule 18.12, the Chair is removed from the Board with immediate effect.

Resolution 2: The Members have no confidence in the way in which the Nominations Committee currently operates, failing to interview valid Member applicants.

With the resignation of Andy Anson as Chair, announced to members on Monday 4th August, this resolution has been superseded and is no longer relevant.

The second resolution remains though. Members are calling for a vote of no confidence in the way in which the Nominations Committee operates. To the casual observer this may appear to be a rather arcane and somewhat irrelevant argument, but I’ll contest that it is not – it directly addresses accountability and governance.

Details of the Nominations Committee as set out in the Club Rules are as follows

7. Nominations Committee
The Club shall have a Nominations Committee.
17.1 Constitution
17.1.1 The Nominations Committee, which shall be a stand-alone committee of the Cluband shall not be a sub-committee of the Board, shall comprise three persons, namely:
17.1.1.1 The Club Chair;
17.1.1.2 one Board member selected by the Board; and
17.1.1.3 one person, who shall be a Member but not a Board member. The person on the Nominations Committee who isn’t a Board Member, but an ordinary Member of the Club, shall be appointed by the Members at an AGM by election from candidates nominated by at least two Members of at least three years’ standing. This person must be approved by the Nominations Committee pursuant to Rule 17.5.3.
17.2 The Nominations Committee shall not be quorate unless all members are present.
17.3 All decisions of the Nominations Committee must be unanimous.
17.4 The Nominations Committee shall meet as frequently as they determine what is necessary for the proper discharging of their function.
17.5 It shall be the function of the Nominations Committee to:
17.5.1 identify, interview and recommend persons for nomination as Elected Board Members;
17.5.2 interview and, if thought fit, recommend as Elected Board Members any Member who applies to the Nominations Committee for membership of the Board; and
17.5.3 interview and, if thought fit, recommend as Elected Members of the Nominations Committee any Member who applies to the Nominations Committee to be the member on the Nominations Committee as referred to in Rule 17.1.1.3.
17.6 Subject to approval by the Board, the Nominations Committee shall set selection criteria in relation to candidates wishing to stand for election as Elected Board Members. Such criteria shall be available from the Club and shall be designed to ensure that the Elected Board Members possess the quality, skills and experience that the Board requires to manage the
business of the Club. A skills matrix for the Board shall be updated after each AGM and published on the Club’s website.
17.7 In addition to Rule 17.6, and effective from the 2025 AGM, the Nominations Committee shall at all times have regard to the need for the Board to have two Board Members that have been elected pursuant to this Rule at an AGM from a choice of candidates from the membership, providing a sufficient number of candidates have put themselves forward, with at least one of
these Board members being male, and the other being female, to ensure a balanced gender representation. Also, one of these Board members must have the suitable skills and experience to take responsibility for member services and member communications. The second Board member candidate from the membership must possess the quality, skills and experience that
the Board requires to manage the business of the Club at that time. Any such Member of the Club who submits an Election Notice shall be considered for the Board positions to which this Rule relates. Such notice must be signed by that individual and two other Members who shall have been Members of the Club for three consecutive years immediately prior thereto. Such notice must be received by the Secretary not later than 31 January immediately prior to the next AGM.
17.8 A member of the Nominations Committee shall serve for a period of three years with the option of two further periods of three years with the consent of the Nominations Committee and the Board.
17.9 Should the situation arise as described in Rule 11.2.5, where there are insufficient Board members available to sit on the Nominations Committee, due to vacancies left on the Board, then the Chief Executive and Secretary would step in to fill any vacant positions on the Nominations Committee and facilitate the recommendation for election of new Board members.

The Board’s opposition to Resolution 2

The Board via formal communications with the membership (SGM 1 notice) recommends rejecting Resolution 2.

In addition Gillian Singh made a video presentation, published on YouTube (the link is worth clicking on as I see Alan Higham has given his detailed response in the comment section below (here)

The Full Transcript of the video can be read here: Gillian Singh transcript

Those members questioning the manner in which the Nominations Committee operates and therefore expressing no confidence in the Committee, (a view that I share and wholly support) make the following observations:

The criteria stated by Gillian Singh for her Board role are completely different from the criteria set by the Board for the role and advertised to members.

Additionally, her testimony in the video provides evidence that three Club rules have not been adhered to, and were broken:
1. Not all applicants were interviewed.
2. ⁠The Board consider that members should only be involved in appointing two directors – the roles currently occupied by Peacock and Singh.
3. ⁠The member representative on the Nomination Committee is chosen (presumably by the Board) from the MRG membership rather than by the members.

Rules 17.5.2 and 17.5.3 are very clear (17.5.1 included for context)

17.5 It shall be the function of the Nominations Committee to:
17.5.1 identify, interview and recommend persons for nomination as Elected Board Members;
17.5.2 interview and, if thought fit, recommend as Elected Board Members any Member who applies to the Nominations Committee for membership of the Board; and
17.5.3 interview and, if thought fit, recommend as Elected Members of the Nominations Committee any Member who applies to the Nominations Committee to be the member on the Nominations Committee as referred to in Rule 17.1.1.3.

There is an additional comment to make. In the video, Gillian Singh makes the following point

…  in addition, at Lancashire we also follow extra governance. So we follow the governance code of conduct for the ECB and for Sport England. 

They (the application processes) follow all the codes of practice that you are supposed to. And in addition, they also follow Sport England and the ECB’s Code of practice. So all I can say from my experience to date within my appointment is that they have been excellent to work with. They have all the skills required to make sure that a business of our size has the right skills in the non-execs that they appoint.

The implication of the above is that adherence to the governance code of conduct for the ECB and Sport England effectively dismisses any notion by the members of no confidence in how the nomination committee operates,

This, however, fundamentally misses the reason for the call of no confidence in the way the Committee operates. The resolution is based on the belief that club rules were not adhered to. Their first duty is to the rules of Lancashire  County Cricket Club Limited.

It is an important test of the members rights to hold those in positions of authority and with important governance roles to account – I strongly urge members to participate.