United Kingdom: ME Association news

harping on - to the best of my knowledge, the ME Society was only dormant up until 2018 then it distinctly did stop registering as dormant, and maybe began to hold some assets, liabilities and / or reserve, since it stopped filing £0

Instead, from January 2019, it registered as quite big i.e bigger than a "small company", and so it had to provide full accounts

It suddenly got big, big enough to provide and file "full acounts" with a directors report, every year from 2019-2023, according to Companies House

So in some way I guess it is trading in that category:
‘Total Exemption Full Account'
meaning:​

https://mooreks.co.uk/insights/audit-exemption-and-how-to-take-it/

​

The Society got bigger in some way when it transtioned from dormant to fully accounting. If small, then it would have listed as 'Small Accounts' not full accounts.

I don't give a hoot but if its not dormant then it seems its trading under an ME Name very closely associated with the ME Association, most likely with MEA knowledge, using its address

I don't know if its just a technicality that looks like trading, or if its MEA-related or just using the MEA address and otherwise no-one else's busines.

 

This question has been floating around for quite a while now, I’d say a year. Well before November. I can’t imagine if you were destroying it that you wouldn’t check it over .

I don’t think but can someone confirm that whilst they must be kept 10yrs it’s not a case of having to destroy after that time (which would apply eg to certain types of personal data / different types of info have different regs) ?

 

I am not disputing that. I am simply saying that Charles starts off with a series of weak and misleading statements about what we know. As if he is offering pearls of scientific wisdom to the masses.

 

To be honest, with all the current admin overheads, and insistence that ethical, PIP, R&D and whatever boxes are ticked before you even write a grant you don't get much change from £1M for the tiniest of real studies. £100,000 would just offset some costs for a pilot project you have already done on money 'borrowed' from another grant. It would to fund a project de novo.

MEA have been very good at providing small stop gap sums, which are very valuable at a gestation stage. But things are now at a stage where serious choices need to be made about substantive projects. £2M is probably the starting sum for one of those.

 

The Special Resolution that was passed on 18 November 2014 has already been posted in this thread. Here is the certification letter, signed by the then Company Secretary, Gill Briody, that accompanied the copy of the Articles, as sent to Companies House:

 

As the General Meeting for voting on the Special Resolution had taken place in November 2014, a report of that year's AGM and a report of the General Meeting would have been expected to have been published in the spring 2015 issue of ME Essential.

Notice and voting slips for the Special Resolution and notice of that year's AGM would have had to have been sent out in the Autumn or Winter 2014 issue.

(It's possible, but not yet established, that the AGM for 2014 and the General Meeting for the Special Resolution were held on the same day, as they had been in November 2013.)

 

It remains exempt from filing full accounts:

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06898702/filing-history

03 Sep 2024 Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2023

 

Why on Earth are the MEA creating such a palaver about failing to provide what ought to be a very simple paper trail for adopting the current articles of association?

 

That's Neil for you.

I suggest that you email the office and ask them to provide a copy, quoting the Act.

 

@bicentennial

It's likely I still have the emails between me and Neil Riley from early 2009, when I enquired about the reference to the "ME Society" on their website's landing page, on one of my old laptops which can still be persuaded to boot.

But given the current issues with the MEA and given that I am still in correspondence with Companies House in relation to the 2014 Articles, I'm not sure I want to spend much more time on what appears to me to have been a company registered with the intention of protecting the use of "The ME Society" by other ME organisations (in particular, by former MEA trustee, Diane Newman and the Cambridge and Peterborough ME group and Colin Barton's Sussex and Kent ME group that had both been using the name informally) which has since served no other purpose.

 

The only possibilities I can conclude; Riley is trying to be clever (and failing), they have something they really don't want to make public, or, they are just utterly incompetent and should not be in charge of the charity (or, a combo of a three).

 

I bet there is a member somewhere who has a pile of MEA magazines (unopened, of course) from the year dot festering in the corner of their living room. We need to find a hoarder.

 

Not sure if you're just making a light-hearted comment here but if you're serious, one option would be to start a new thread with that request as the title.

 

All of the above

 

For what it is worth, the Sheffield ME and Fibromyalgia Group are hiring a Charity Director. Details, United Kingdom: Sheffield ME & Fibromyalgia Group News

If a local group can do that then I would have thought that a national organisation with considerable reserves should as well.

 

At this stage, it truly feels like all sane and rational reasoning has left the building.