NGS Consultation Report

Thank you to all the clubs which responded to the consultation which took place earlier in the year, regarding the National Grading Scheme (NGS).

Gordon Rainsford collated the responses, and made recommendations to the EBU Board, based on the replies. A report from the consultation is available to read here.

The board approved a course of action at its meeting in June, and this information was circulated to clubs last month. The ‘headlines’ are given below:

• The 'exemption' for hosts (and their partner, if they wish) will still be available.
• ‘Exemptions’ are only available to hosts (and their partner if they too wish to be exempt) who form ‘unfamiliar partnerships’.
• 'Exemptions' must be registered with the EBU, via a section of My EBU on the EBU website, as soon as the host knows they will be playing and wish to be exempt, and in any case no more than 30 minutes after the start of the game. They must also notify us via the scoring submission.
• Clubs and members are reminded that the 'exemption' must be used appropriately, and the privilege can be removed from any individual club or member if it is misused.
• Other suggested changes to the NGS were noted, and considered, and some may be revisited in future, but no further changes are to be made at the present time.

If your club uses, or may in future use, the exemption, then we would ask that you read the report and familiarise yourself with the criteria which must be met. Please also circulate this information to anyone at your club who acts as a 'host'.

Some clubs have commented that the lack of an internet connection at their club makes using the notification system difficult. We hope that in such circumstances those hosts affected can instead register using their smartphone. We are sympathetic to those who have neither an internet connection, nor a strong enough phone signal to get online, but we needed to introduce a system which could not be circumvented by those who only choose to opt out once they know how well they have done – i.e. it needed to be done at the start of the session, but at a point when they knew that they were playing with an unfamiliar partner (some hosts find that due to fortunate circumstances they play with their usual partner after all, so wouldn’t be eligible to be exempt, and nor would they wish to be).