Changes at the CTC

At least one of our  Eden Valley members has been trying to get to the bottom of some changes which appear to have been happening with regard to Technical articles on the CTC Forum and in Cycle magazine. In particular it seems Chris Juden's continuing involvement in this area will change. I have received from Janet Gregory our NW councillor a little more information but recently received this email from Paul Tuohy:

Dear CTC Group Secretaries,

Following David Woods round robin email we feel it necessary to clarify the position of the CTC as much of Mr Woods email to you is factually incorrect, therefore please do not send it on to members.   Matt Mallinder shared the message below identifying the background to recent changes in his team to increase our support for Groups, we will be doing the same to the full membership in Cycle magazine.  To reiterate;

With leisure and recreational cycling increasing significantly in the UK, the first change that we’ve made is to create a team dedicated to supporting CTC member groups, campaign groups and other cycling groups. Julie will be joined by Mark Slater and Ben Rowley.

In order to help us all reach out to these new cyclists the team, over the next few months will be talking with you and be putting together a programme to support and facilitate the diversity of CTC events, rides and member activities. We plan to provide you with additional marketing support and training and we’ll also be looking at specific IT tools to help you maximize your own promotion and social media reach to these new cyclists.

Another change is the creation of a new Communications Manager and marketing support which allows us to publicize the wider achievements of CTC’s groups, through all of our comms channels- Cycle, website and social media.

To be able to make these changes we’ve had to look at the limited resources that CTC has and how we can best support our 67,000 members. With every greater access to online information and with demand significantly decreasing, we’ve decided to cease a dedicated technical/info helpline. 

Members will continue to enjoy Technical and Touring features, Q&As and reviews in Cycle magazine, on CTC website and by dipping into the breadth of CTC members’ experience via the CTC forum.

We will also looking at how we can increase participation in CTC’s various Touring competitions and ‘reasons to cycle’ such as the British Cycle Quest. The IT team are already making improvements with individual pages dedicated to your group on the CTC website so visitors can easily find out about you and a search box for group rides and events directly on the homepage.

It is unfortunate that a small minority of people feel unable to support these changes but with so few people actually using technical and touring telephone support we felt justified in redirecting our limited resources for greater member benefits outlined above.  These are tough economic times and we need to make choices about how we use our resources to support all our members but clearly we can’t keep everyone content. 

Best wishes

Paul Tuohy

Paul Tuohy
Chief Executive
CTC, the national cycling charity  

Email: paul.tuohy@ctc.org.uk
Web: www.ctc.org.uk

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