Austrian Alpine Club (UK) Ltd

The Management's refusal to have the Club's Accounts audited

  1. The Club is very definitely a UK Private Limited Company.
  2. Its annual accounts are not audited,
  3. The relevant Government website listing audit exemptions for Private Limited Companies, (https://www.gov.uk/audit-exemptions-for-private-limited-companies), states that:“Your company must have an audit if at any time in the financial year it’s been one of the following”, (which list includes) “carrying out insurance market activity.”
  4. The only reasons for joining all other UK mountaineering clubs are to meet up with other members at club meets/events and/or to access the club's own UK mountain huts.
  5. The AAC(UK) is uniquely different. The Club's 2023 Annual Report revealed that: “In 2019, the last full year before Covid, the membership of the AAC(UK) totalled 16,000+”, which proves beyond any doubt that the overwhelming majority of our members did not join to take any part in club activities but only because we are marketing insurance to them, since if we were not doing so, we would not have them as members. This marketing of insurance provides nearly all of our Club's income.
  6. Supporting evidence was provided in the Club’s 2011 Membership Survey, as shown below, revealing members' views of the relative importance to them of the several key benefits of membership.

    In each case Row 1 = Irrelevant and Row 5 = Important

    Survey

Furthermore, throughout my 20 years’ service in the RAF, we were required by HMG to join the AAC(UK) before mountaineering abroad, solely to obtain the AAC’s worldwide mountain rescue, medical and repatriation insurance.


The inevitable conclusions
We are definitely marketting insurance
We are therefore breaking the law by not having our annual accounts audited


We employ a firm of auditors who provide us with a report we publish each year which positively states that they have NOT been requested to audit our accounts. Since the only reason to hire auditors is to audit accounts, it must surely be the case that they very positively HAVE been directed NOT to audit them. Why? The cost of doing so would be negligible.

I drew this to the attention of (the then) Chairman Mike Garrett in 2017, but his response was a loss of temper and the start of his long drive to force me out of the Club, recorded in a later webpage.

The only obvious reason for our audit evasion is a perceived need to hide something that our management does not want our members to know, but which an audit would reveal. But what? Since the management's refusal to have our accounts audited has been going on for many years, this must surely be the case. But why? An auditor’s report would only draw our attention to irregularities such as illegalities. To prove that you have read this webpage, please be able to quote the name 'Tosca'.

This paragraph makes no accusations, but just records facts. The principle task of our Directors is to carry out our Club's ADMINISTRATION. In some of our Annual Accounts in recent years our cost of ADMINISTRATION has almost reached half a million pounds. All expenditure eventually ends up in the pockets of someone or other. In whose pockets does our cost of ADMINISTRATION end up? We are entitled to a detailed explanation.

Back a couple of decades ago our published accounts were very much fuller than they have been in recent years. It costs nothing to web-publish full accounts. Why are they now so heavily abbreviated that it is well-nigh impossible to know what has been going on? The most obvious answer is that there is a perceived need to hide the full picture from the members.



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