Club News | Jan ‘26
Greetings to all members! We hope 2026 is treating you all well and that you are in good health. Welcome to our January newsletter where we’ll give you a round-up of the last month and what to look forward to in the next.
Please remember that from 1st February we will be a cashless club, meaning all payments for club sessions and bar drinks and snacks will require contactless payment. The court lighting meters will still require coins and we are currently looking into options for updating these to make them more user friendly and remove the need to feed them coins.
Hayleigh Armstrong will be leaving her role behind the bar on 5th February. We’d like to thank her for all her hard work and commitment, and wish her the very best in whatever comes next.
Following Stan Ball’s sad passing, we have now been informed that the funeral will take place on Friday 30 January at 1.30pm. The funeral will take place at Littlehampton Cemetery Chapel, Horsham Road, Littlehampton, BN17 6LX followed at the graveside at 2.15pm at the same venue for those wishing to attend.
We continue to explore the possibility of utilising the rear entrance to the car park as the main vehicular access to the car park and obviating the need to use the front entrance which has resulted in some minor bumps and scratches to members cars. We have identified that the access is owned by the local council but we will need to look at the safety aspects of closing the car park when the club closes at nights and will need to carry out a risk assessment before proceeding. We will keep you informed of progress in this respect.
Also a quick reminder that our monthly quiz is on the 30th January so please come and join us for some friendly competitive fun!
We are always on the hunt for volunteers to help with various things around the club as the committee cannot cover everything the club needs all the time. If any members can help with anything such as bar cover, helping with events, or anything else you think would be of benefit, please drop us an email at admin@lbsc.org.uk.
Recent Committee Activities
We continue to review the functionality of our admin systems and hope to make further improvements to streamline our processes and reduce the admin overhead. One of the processes we are currently trialling is recording attendance to club sessions directly into eBooking so that we can remove the admin overhead of processing the paper signing-in sheets. This means we can run reports from the eBooking system to monitor how the club is used and attendance levels of the club sessions which can inform our future decision making for club improvements. You may get a confirmation email of your attendance to club sessions as a result of this change. You can ignore these.
You will be aware that there has been much said in the recent past about the Club’s dire financial position. We are pleased to report that due to changes introduced by the Management Committee to streamline a number of administrative activities and automating a number of previously carried out manual activities, progress continues to be made in saving the Club money. As a result of these changes, the current prediction is that instead of sustaining a further loss this financial year the Club may be able to recover some of the losses made in the last financial year. We will keep you informed in due course as progress continues to be made. This is not a quick fix and hundreds of volunteer hours have already been required and continue to be needed to make improvements to the efficient running of the club and to keep it compliant with all health & safety regulations.
You may recall at the last Extraordinary General Meeting in August last year, a resolution was passed to establish a sub-committee to investigate the viability of reducing the wage bill by using volunteers. This sub-committee was not established because the Management Committee took it upon themselves to look at ways of reducing the costs incurred by the Club and steps were taken to reduce staff costs which rendered the resolution unnecessary.
We are also pleased to report that the revisions to the Alcohol Licence have been agreed by the local council and so the Club is now able to sell alcohol from 11 o’clock in the morning. We are hoping to take advantage of the sporting events that will be held later this year and will keep you informed of any events that we will be covering.
The club was well represented at the recent Masters County Challenge which took place over the weekend of 10/11 January. Linda Park played for the over 45s; Mitsuyo Kondo played for the over 45s; Meg Brackley and Andrew Wilson played for the over 50s; Sara Foster played for the over 55s; and Rob Martin, Trisha John and John Chard played for the over 70s. If you have any badminton or squash achievements that you want us to advertise and celebrate on our social media pages, please email the club admin@lbsc.org.uk with photos and full details of the tournaments played by Wednesday each week and we will look to post them!
Sam and Vanessa have been tweaking the website and our social media pages. If you haven’t already had a look at these, please follow the links below and give us a follow if you haven’t already on social media!
Fresh Gear Alert: Rock the New LBSC Look! We are thrilled to announce that the LBSC online shop is officially live! Sam has been hard at work behind the scenes to bring our brand-new logo to life on high-quality apparel.
We’ve partnered with a new premium printing service, Printify, to ensure every order is custom-made just for you and delivered straight to your door. To kick things off, we’ve launched with; The LBSC Moisture-Wicking T-Shirt.
Head over to the Shop page on the website and be the first to represent the club in our new colors!
Upcoming February 2026 Events
Here’s what’s on next month. Don’t forget, you can come down to the club to watch any of the league matches. The bar will be open for all the below events so why don’t you come down and cheer on your club!
Badminton matches (All start at 20.00 unless otherwise stated):
6 February: Over 60s mixed v Misfits
11 February: Bognor Mixed 1 v Felpham
13 February: Fusion League v Hassocks
18 February: Brighton Full Mixed v Hassocks
20 February: Over 60s v Chanctonbury
25 February: Bognor Mixed 2 v Felpham
27 February: Fusion League v Horsham
Squash (all matches start at 19.15 unless otherwise stated)
13 February: 1st Team v Middleton
Business League matches yet to be arranged
February social events:
21 February: Shuffleboard starting at 19.00
27 February: Quiznight starting at 19.30
We look forward to seeing you at the above events. Why not make your new year's resolution to visit the club a little more 😊? LBSC has been in existence for almost 90 years! Keeping it thriving into the future is something we can all help with by telling friends, neighbours, work colleagues and basically anyone about us and the activities we have to offer. We need more members and customers to help keep the club viable and fit for purpose, hopefully keeping us all fit and well in the process!
A Sad Announcement
It is with a heavy heart that we have to tell you that Stan Ball, one of our longer serving members, passed away unexpectedly yesterday. It is not clear at this moment in time the reason for his passing but those of you that know him well, will know that following a knee replacement recently, Stan was looking forward to getting back on court in the near future.
Stan will be sadly missed.
Stan had been a long-standing member of the Club Management Committee and had contributed to the turnaround in the club’s fortunes over the last three months, and to a much brighter future.
No details are available about the funeral arrangements, but we will let club members know what they are as and when the Committee are made aware.
I know that many of you, including us, have been both stunned and shocked by this news which we are finding difficult to process as it is an unexpected shock, particularly coming so soon after the passing of John Shepherd, another long-standing member of the Club and Management Committee. We were asked by John’s family to respect their wishes and not publish details about the funeral which took place just before Christmas. Regardless, they will both be hard to replace.
With all good wishes in this new year.
Stan Ball
4th August 1966 – 1st January 2026
Club News | Dec ‘25
Season's greetings to all our members and for those who do not celebrate Christmas, we hope you are all in good health and well. Welcome to our first monthly newsletter where we’ll give you a round-up of the last month and what to look forward to in the next!
It is with much regret that we have to inform you of the passing of John Shepherd, a lifetime member of the club. John will be sadly missed. He was instrumental, along with other committee members at the time, for seeking approval for a grant to enable the Club to build the badminton hall which we still use today. He was also responsible for supporting the badminton teams and using his considerable experience to encourage badminton players, both young and old, to improve to benefit the long term interests of the club.
What a month it’s been! Although the league matches for both badminton and squash have died down for December, we have hosted the Fusion league, Badminton masters and the Worthing Men’s Combi matches at the club.
The club nights have been busy, and it’s been nice to see some new members join this month and get stuck into the club sessions. Some evening sessions are low on numbers recently and the committee has been looking into ways to ensure the club nights attract members to play with others.
Our monthly quiz was another success! Congratulations to both winning teams that came joint first place this month. Well done!
We held our first ‘Meet the Committee’ event this month where members came and asked questions and suggested some great ideas for future club social events. Thank you to all those who came along, it was lovely to meet you all! We hope to see even more of you at the next one in a few months.
Hopefully you’ve all been a little warmer in the club after we had our broken boiler fixed! We’d like to thank all those who have donated towards this. It is very much appreciated and we are grateful for the generosity. Speaking of generosity, we are always on the hunt for volunteers to help with various things around the club as the committee cannot cover everything the club needs all the time. If any members can help with anything such as bar cover, helping with events, or anything else you think would be of benefit, please drop us an email at admin@lbsc.org.uk
Recent Committee Activities
The committee has been busy with a number of spinning plates in the last month. After sorting the broken boiler, we have ensured it is appropriately covered for the future, preventing any further outlays.
Stan and Alan have been researching the cost of shuttles and how the club uses these to see if there is any way we can reduce the cost of these as they have increased significantly in the past year. Did you know a single shuttle costs approximately £2.30?! Could we ask that any reusable shuttles left at the end of club nights are returned to the bar to help keep costs down?
Thanks to Dympna and Guy, the club lounge has a new layout, which hopefully has improved the Feng Shui and we are looking into how we can spruce up the club at a minimal cost. The committee is also looking into what other social and entertainment activities we could potentially host in this fairly large space during 2026. Please let us know if you have any ideas about this.
During the past week, Guy has begun reorganising the entry fob database. This has revealed that some club members have been assigned up to four personal entry fobs, despite only one being in personal use. It has also been identified that some entry fobs currently in use are not linked to a club member and therefore may be deactivated.
We would like to apologise to any club member who has been inconvenienced by issues arising from this reorganisation process. If you have any problems or concerns regarding your entry fob, please let Guy know and he will be happy to assist you.
We have spoken to a local mural artist with a view to potentially renewing our out-of-date club sign on the exterior wall, which will hopefully attract more members and allow people to find our club much easier.
We continue to review the functionality of our admin systems and hope to make further improvements to streamline our processes and reduce the admin overhead.
We are aiming to create some new club leaflets to promote the club, Sam has done a couple of these already, and can be used to give out to people at local events. We are also looking to design a leaflet describing our club rules to pin around the club.
Sam and Vanessa have been tweaking the website and our social media pages. If you haven’t already had a look at these please follow the links below and give us a follow if you haven’t already on social media! If you have any suggestions for the new website or socials, please let us know!
LBSC website (where you are now)
Upcoming January 2026 Events
Here’s what’s on next month. Don’t forget, you can come down to the club to watch any of the league matches. The bar will be open for the majority of the below events, so why don’t you come down and cheer on your club!
Sunday 4th Jan: Badminton Masters over 65s v Kent (League match)
Wednesday 7th Jan: Brighton Badminton Full Mixed (League match)
Friday 9th Jan: Horsham Squash (League match)
Wednesday 14th Jan: Bognor Badminton Mixed 1 (League match)
Friday 16th Jan: Burgess Hill Squash 1 Team (League match)
Sunday 18th Jan: Badminton Masters over 40s v Hertfordshire (League match)
Wednesday 21st Jan: Brighton Badminton Mixed Combi (League match)
Friday 23rd Jan: Middleton Squash Dev team (League match)
Friday 23rd Jan: Over 60’s Badminton Mixed (League match)
Sunday 25th Jan: Badminton Masters over 45s v Kent (League match)
Tuesday 27th Jan: Badminton Masters over 75s v Kent (League match)
Wednesday 28th Jan: Bognor Badminton Mixed 2 (League match)
Friday 30th Jan: Club Quiz night!
Friday 30th Jan: Bognor Badminton Mixed 1 (League match)
Our opening hours over the festive period are below:
Christmas Eve: Club closes at 5pm
Christmas Day: Closed
Boxing Day: Club open, office closed
New Year’s Eve: Club closes at 5pm
New Year’s Day: Club open, office closed
We look forward to seeing you at the above events! Make your new year's resolution to visit the club a little more? 😉