Equality Act 2010

This new Act of Parliament came into effect from the 1st of October 2010 and will apply to all golf clubs. The main provision of the act directly affecting a private members’ golf club is to make it unlawful for management of any private members’ club to discriminate against any individual.

To study and help us better understand these new arrangements the General Committee earlier this year agreed to set up a small ‘Steering Group’ from its number with additional representation from our Ladies Section organized under the chairmanship of Mr. Garry Wilkinson.

The first steps of the ‘Steering Group’ was to examine our constitution, rules, bye laws and procedures and to immediately discontinue any arrangements that could be described under this new act as discriminatory.

At MGC we have a long admirable history of incorporating into our practices and procedures rules that permit the participation of all our membership and their sections in the collective management of our club. We now under these latest reforms need to include practical systems that consent to equal access to all categories of membership to our facilities.

To achieve this we plan to introduce only two categories of membership a six day membership which will operate from Sunday to Friday and a seven day membership. Juniors under the age of eighteen are not affected by these structural changes so their category of membership will remain unchanged.

The MGC annual competitions fixture list will remain fully operational for Saturday competitions and will be open to all seven day members.

Between now and 2012 the government will be taking additional formal soundings on age related subscription concessions and will advise golf clubs of their longer term views on this subject in due course. Therefore, it is anticipated that some level of age and service related concession will continue until further notice.

These are fundamental structural changes introduced by government legislation to the management of our sport all of which demands our complete compliance.

Issued by Mr. Garry Wilkinson Chairman MGC Equality Steering Group on behalf of the general committee 8th October 2010