Minutes

Meeting: CDSA meeting

Date: Monday, 17^th May 2010

Present: Graham Smith, Diane Broom, Vanessa Nicholson, Matthew Law, Cindy Albright, Gary Hatt,

Apologies: Kevin O’Donoghue; Jamie Polk,

No.	ITEM	ACTION
1	Minutes of previous meeting. · Disabled Toilet – stewards have been advised · Programme – Covered in meeting · Disabled visit to Cobham – will not go ahead as we will need to open it to all disabled and non-disabled. If we do go ahead it will be for committee members only. · CDSA in Magazine – currently have someone from the magazine coving the CDSA meeting. · CDSA Banner – covered in meeting · Matchday Security checks – security have been informed and will do appropriate checks.
2	Matters Arising.
3	New Members Introduction Orders are taken until kick-off for disabled fans that require refreshments for half time.
4	Alternative program format Matthew did a poll with the following result: No interest 5 Audio 0 Screen Reader 0 It will still be something Chelsea look into, we do not mind paying for a service that will be used, but due to lack of interest we will look for a cost effective solution.
5	Banner Update After a suggestion of the name “Inclusive Blues” was suggested, the feedback was: Inclusive blues ‘sounds a bit boring, like some sort of political correctness statement’. What’s that all about? Alternative suggestion: Part of History – CDSA, 100% able to support. Overall feedback from emails were 13 agreed with the name 3 disagreed A few suggestions were made, such as to add the disabled logo as it’s a universal logo for disabled. The banner will be placed on the Disabled Platform once it’s decided what the banner will look like. It was decided that as there was no strong following on any of the banner suggestions that we would look into this at another time. Also profile of CDSA has been raised and we now have the magazine article also.
6	Committee Introduction of the new committee and thank you to going out committee. Was suggested to have the committee pictures on the website. Committee members would need to agree to this before we continued. Was suggested that ML maybe sit elsewhere in the stadia to interacted and be able to mingle with other disabled supporters.
7	Other Business Wheelchairs put away Disabled members who do not require their wheelchairs during the game are able to fold their chairs and sit on the seat provided. Wheelchairs that are folded away need to ensure they are not blocking the passageway. Disabled Membership First year of not having capped membership, will see how the many members join and will discuss this again at the policy meeting in the new season. We will not be able to cap membership so will discuss what we can change. We are asking all members to provide proof of disability again, which worked well last season. Disabled Season Tickets – Viagogo Disabled Season Tickets will not be available on Viagogo, this is due to them being a zero value and us not being able to control them only going to Registered disabled fans of Chelsea. Season Ticket holders unable to attend a game need to inform the Disabled Department so that we can re-distribute the tickets to our Disabled members, this includes Matchdays. Members are able to call or drop an email. Empty Seats on matchdays Was mentioned about empty seats on matchdays, Chelsea FC are currently tacking this issue. There are also a large variety of reasons why members do not turn up on the day and only inform us after a game is played. This is looked into after each game by Chelsea. Members are also reminded that not all seats in the Front 2 rows are registered disabled seats and some are purchased as Non-disabled season ticket seats. These seats will not be looked into.