To all Fans Club / Shrimps Trust members and Morecambe supporters,

Firstly, apologies that you haven’t heard much from those who are in the process of setting up the Trust. As you can imagine we’ve been fairly busy, like all of us, trying to make sense of what is going on at our beloved football club, as well as working through mounds of paperwork.

Here’s a catch up on where the Trust is up to.

As you know, we received all the paperwork for the Supporters Trust. The first batch of documents establishing the Trust were signed at a meeting of what was the Fans Club committee on the 12th of January. However, more documents followed plus example rules and other documents. Everything has now been submitted. Supporters Direct are now filing these with the relevant authorities. The biggest of these is the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), basically the regulator of all things banking and financial, as it will help us if we ever need to raise finance through issuing shares or borrowing money.

Only by being formally incorporated and registered can we really begin to put words into actions. Our understanding is that this will all be in place by the end of next week but if that changes we will let you know.

A huge thank you to all the team who’ve spent many hours and late nights working on all this and to the team at Supporters Direct for their help and advice.

A founding board has now been established. This consists of the following Trustees – Paul Carter (Chair), Richard Allan (Secretary), Stuart Rae (Treasurer) and Ian Lyon (Vice-Chair). In addition, we’ve co-opted the other members of the Fans Club committee to assist with the transition to becoming a Supporters Trust.

Organisationally, we’re now putting in place all the rules and turning example documents into our documents. We’re also setting up the means by which we can hold an AGM and with it an election of Trustees, if required. Once that’s done we’ll then announce the date and venue for an AGM, where the current Trustees will stand down and a new board will be appointed / elected by you the members of the Shrimps Trust.

If you’re interested in becoming a Trustee, we’re now asking that you email shrimpstrust@gmail.com with your details. If you’ve got the experience to make a difference then please come forward. In your email please provide your name, contact details and a paragraph about yourself and why you think you would make a good member of the board, this will be shared with all members. In the event that more than 10 people put their names forward an election will be held, which every member can participate in, details of which will follow. Finally to apply you must be a Trust member to be eligible to become a Trustee. If you haven’t already joined you can do so by CLICKING HERE

Marketing wise, we’ve decided for day-to-day usage to shorten the name to the Shrimps Trust. We’re now working on producing a logo and then, once done, changing social media pages, membership cards, stationery, websites etc. etc. This is going to take a while so please bear with us.

We’re incredibly grateful to the wonderful team at Morecambe Press (http://www.morecambepress.co.uk) for their incredibly generous offer of free design and printing. We can’t thank you enough.

Also to Morecambe fans Rob Ellis and Callum Strong for their offer to work on the branding and website for free. Rob runs the rather brilliant Lancaster agency Hype 36 (http://www.hype36.co.uk) and Callum is a very talented WordPress developer (http://www.callumstrong.co.uk). It is fantastic to have so many talented people amongst our fans and membership.

When the website is live we’ll publish all the paperwork, minutes and correspondence so as to remain as open as possible.

As regards to the on-going situation at the club, there is a limit to what we can do prior to being formally constituted. However, the Trustees are writing to the board of Morecambe FC to open a dialogue with the club. We’ll publish and share anything that others are willing for us to say publicly, as it is vital all members hear the information when it is put to us.

We’ve also opened a dialogue with the administrators to PMG Leisure – Moorfields – who’ve asked us to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement and that will be fully respected.

More will follow shortly.

Finally, on behalf of every member of the Shrimps Trust, and we’re sure all fans, our grateful thanks to Jim Bentley, Ken McKenna and the squad for performing so magnificently during this huge period of uncertainty. Rather than let it get to them they’ve used it to their advantage and been a real source of pride for every Morecambe fan.

And another huge thank you to all the staff working so hard for the club at Morecambe FC, PMG Leisure and Morecambe FC Community Sports. Your efforts under difficult circumstances are appreciated by all fans and the wider community.

Thanks to everyone for all you’ve done to help the Shrimps Trust to get to where it is.

Best wishes and up the Shrimps!