Athletics in the UK: The Rise and Fall of the BAF

43 The home straight? to reflect its new status as the (merged men and women’s) body for England only. To achieve this, an entirely new memorandum and articles were drafted to replace the existing ones. In addition to the company formalities, legal contracts were needed to transfer employment contracts and other rights from the BAAB and the AAA to the BAF and, last but by no means least, a contract between the BAF and the AAA of England was needed to define their respective ownership rights over events and championships such as the AAA championships and to address financial and other arrangements that would affect their future relationship. It was important that there should be no inconsistencies between these various documents and Charles Woodhouse played an important role in smoothing all these out. And, finally, in order to implement all this, formal meetings of the affected bodies would be needed and the proceedings of those meetings and the wording of necessary resolutions had to be scrupulously drafted. This was a lot of legal work and Farrer & Co, as a major London firm, were eye wateringly expensive. The legal costs alone for seeing this exercise through to its conclusion would amount to approximately £150,000. Because the re-organisation would involve the transfer of valuable commercial contracts and other rights from the names of the AAA and the BAAB into that of the BAF, it was essential to take care that this would not attract unwanted tax liabilities. Expert tax advice was taken and Farrer & Co, with the assistance of the auditors, Alliotts, and overseen by me as Honorary Treasurer, obtained the vital official clearances from the Inland Revenue, without which the establishment of the BAF could not have gone ahead in the form desired. As steady progress was now being made, a target date of 1 st April 1991 was set for the official start of the BAF and this now began to look as if it was achievable. It would mean that the formal enabling meetings would all have to be held and all contracts signed off a few days before. The whole debate had by now taken on a different tone; this time it was serious and all interested parties took a closer interest in what was being proposed.