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!
