Annan Athletic propose community ownership restructure

We’re delighted to be supporting Annan Athletic via our Club Development service in their proposed ownership restructure. We’ve been advising and working with the club for the past year and are looking forward to attending their Open Meeting on the 19th of January where we will be on hand to answer any questions regarding the proposed structure and legal model.

The statement from Annan Athletic reads as follows:

“As it stands, Annan Athletic is essentially an unincorporated members’ club with a Constitution that doesn’t offer the club the necessary protection and powers required. We firmly believe that the correct model for the club is 100% community ownership through a Community Benefit Society (CBS) legal model.

A working party taking advice from Supporters Direct believes that the CBS is an appropriate legal structure to adopt which will safe guard the club, offer its members and the board limited liability and protects the club’s assets. By undertaking this process, the club will have constitutional community benefit and will commit to reinvesting all profits back into the club.

In order to move ahead with this proposal, we are undertaking a consultation process, not just with our existing social club members, but with anyone who cares about the club from the area. As part of this, we are holding an open meeting on the 19th of January at Galabank Stadium where representatives of Annan Athletic FC and Supporters Direct will be available to answer questions regarding the CBS model.”

You can hear from Phillip Jones from Annan Athletic on the proposals in an SD Podcast interview here:

In the interview, Phillip says:

“We’ve worked very closely with SD and we’ve looked at other clubs and the models available. We’ve determined the CBS model is best for us because 1) the liability is limited to £1 for members and 2) to protect our assets and 3) (and more importantly) is to give everyone a vote on decisions and that confirms our ethos of the society – it’s a true democracy and when this consultation is finished, we’ll be 100% fan owned”.

“The benefit of the CBS model is that every member of the society has a real investment in the club and it breeds an awareness of the club and a willingness for it to succeed. The other advantage is an individual who aspires to be on the board can do so via the structure and can be a real benefit to the club and although its all unpaid, there’s a real good feel good factor because you’re helping the entity succeed.”

“The expertise from Supporters Direct has been immense”.

New constitution

The proposed new CBS constitution can be viewed online by clicking the attachment.

The constitution is largely taken from the Supporters Direct model which is the same used by the other 50 supporter owned clubs. Alongside the main constitution we have the option of having side policies to cover some of the areas in more detail for example an election policy for how the election should run.

If you have any questions about the constitution or suggestions to make any changes Annan would like to hear from you, just drop us an email to

Once registered the rules can be changed but will need the right level of support from the membership before they are accepted by the FCA.

• Proposed Constitution

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