The Fosse Way

An update from Foxes Trust Reform…

Today marks the first day of a new Foxes Trust.

It was confirmed at the Trust AGM that Chris Rice, Jack Munton, Andrew Smith and Steve Potter have all been elected to the board – giving us a majority on the board with seven out of the eleven board members coming from our campaign (after Becky Taylor, Harry Gregory and Jamie Barnard joined the board a year ago).

Getting to this point has been a journey.

It was in March 2024 that a few of us attended a Union FS Fans’ Forum at Duffy’s Bar and heard about the struggles they faced engaging with the Club. One of the key realisations on the night was that, because Union FS didn’t have official Supporters Trust status, it was quite easy for the Club to dismiss them. Attention turned to the Foxes Trust: they did have this, so how were they using it to represent the issues most important to Leicester City fans?

We’d heard about the list of questions they’d submitted to the Club following our relegation from the Premier League in the 2022/23 season, but they wouldn’t share what those questions were and the Club appeared to bat them away. At the same time, the role of Supporters Trusts was becoming increasingly important with changing government legislation.

The management of our Club, on and off the field, was (and still is) inadequate – alleged PSR breaches, player trading issues, poor managerial decisions, questionable sponsorships and woeful fan engagement. We needed a Supporters Trust that could challenge the club and hold it to account.

Was our Trust fit for purpose?

Scrutiny of the Trust was beginning to build online too and the Trust was seen by many fans as a joke.

So we got people together, attended the upcoming Trust AGM and found that the Trust was too cosy, too tired and too timid. We could see it needed reform. And that for people to join it – and give it real weight with the Club – people needed to feel it was a Trust worthwhile joining.

A couple of hundred people gathered in the Press Suite at Seagrave with the Club at the back of the room and Ricardo rolled out for a Q&A, during which he was asked questions like whether he’d been for a walk at Foxton Locks and whether he’d tried Indian cuisine. When the floor was opened to questions from Trust members, they centred on things like toilet signage at the stadium rather than what the Trust was doing to hold the club to account.

Things had to change. We drew together a few areas where we felt the Trust could do better. Things like building a bigger and more diverse membership by having a better online presence, moving the considerable funds that were sat in the Trust bank account earning miniscule interest to an account that would generate more funds that could be used for the benefit of members and LCFC fans, improve partnership with other fan groups and re-evaluate focus areas to do something on issues like safe-standing.

Following the home match with West Bromwich Albion on 20th April, Harry Gregory and Jamie Barnard met with Trust board members Lynn Wyeth and Ian Bason to share our vision for where the Trust could improve and, with three spaces open on the board, asked them to co-opt us on (having completed a Skills Assessment we were asked to complete) so that we could help. The board discussed, and refused. We were offered the opportunity to join working groups that worked on things before they were passed up to board where all major decisions were taken.

We declined, as we knew the only way we could truly transform the Trust was at board level – however some members of our campaign did join the working groups to start trying to have an impact. Feedback we gathered from them painted a frustrating picture where the board made all the decisions and hampered progress.

Simon Grindrod from our campaign met with Ian Bason to discuss the proposed structure for the Fan Engagement Framework and Fan Advisory Board. We felt it allowed the Club too much control and would deliver very little in its proposed format. People in our campaign with professional experience in football shared the same opinion: the Trust should not sign up to it and instead refuse to go along with what the Club wanted. This was ignored.

Perhaps the existing board members didn’t realise we weren’t scary or unreasonable people and that we just wanted better for the Trust and, by extension, Leicester City fans? We offered to speak with every board member directly to get to know each other better. Some agreed, some declined. Still no offer to fill vacant board positions, however.

The next AGM rolled around and we managed to fill the three board positions via an uncontested election which saw Becky, Harry and Jamie join the board. At the same time, we proposed a motion to change the rules of the Trust – there was no mechanism outside of a disciplinary procedure to remove an ineffective or largely inactive board member.

The board (prior to Becky, Harry and Jamie joining) advised the membership to vote against this rule change. It won a majority vote in the ballot of members but not quite the 75% in favour required to pass – so board members who were doing very little had a free pass to continue doing so.

It would be the next AGM in early 2026 at which we’d really have the opportunity to get more people onto board so Becky, Harry and Jamie got to work on the inside of the Trust.

They managed to achieve a few good things (with the support of some great volunteers in the working groups):

• a restructure of the working groups meant that there was more accountability for work to happen and board members had to participate
• membership fees were (after some pushback) eventually reduced
• a charity initiative was launched
• Union FS collaborated with the Trust on a few things (such as the statement against the BC Game sponsorship)
• the tone and frequency of the Trust got stronger
• the End of Season Survey gathered 3,200+ responses and was covered by national media and shared directly with the Club

But we still faced challenges.

Board members who wanted to tone down the communications or have a say in every piece produced by the Communications working group, others who didn’t think there was much wrong with how the Club was operating, those heavily involved in the creation of the Fan Engagement Framework failing to see its flaws and minimal support with the End of Season Survey (with the exception of Matt Davis, Lynn Wyeth and Paul Rains). One board member started to bypass the Communications working group entirely.

So around came an opportunity to take full control of the Trust board as four vacant positions were available at this election. Legacy board members wanted to continue, again seemingly resistant to more from our campaign becoming involved at board level.

But the membership has spoken: all four Foxes Trust Reform candidates have been elected, and it wasn’t even close.

We now have a huge opportunity to push the Trust on and we will take it. There has been some scaremongering about our campaign by legacy board members desperately trying to cling onto their positions. That we’ll walk away from engaging with the Club, that we’ll make the Trust a protest group, that we have unscrupulous intentions with Trust funds. All complete nonsense.

But we do want to see the Fan Engagement Framework delivering more and will tell the Club this. We are aware that the Trust may need to be ready to play a role in fan action if the decline and mismanagement of our Club continues. And we will make sure that the membership fees people pay to the Trust are used to support our community, our fan base and our membership. Think about the progress we have made with three out of twelve on the board – and imagine what we can now do with seven out of eleven (Alan Digby has resigned from the board, leaving a vacancy).

We acknowledge the role that the likes of Ian Bason, Matt Davis, Sarah Hubbard and Alan Digby have played for many years in keeping the Trust running. It’s no stretch to say that, without people like them, we might not even have had a Trust to reform. So while we didn’t believe they were what the Trust needed right now, and they were in many ways resistant to our campaign, we do want to recognise the service they gave to the Trust and they are, even if they might not share the same concerned view on the current state of the Club, fellow Leicester City fans after all. Thank you to them all.

Hours of work has been poured into the last couple of years and we want to thank everyone who has supported us along the way. Those who signed up to the Trust when we first asked people to come and support our efforts and those who renewed their membership when we realised it would take more than a year to get to this point. There have also been platforms that have been incredibly supportive of us as well: The Fosse Way, the Big Strong Leicester Boys Podcast and Foxestalk forum. Thank you all.

Now, we need the support of every Leicester City fan. Like many of you, we have criticised the Trust in the past. Many of us had given up on it or thought it had become a bit of a laughing stock.

As of today, this is a new Trust, with new people in charge that are willing and able to get it where it needs to be. So please put to one side your preconceptions of the Trust, judge it on what it does from now onwards and not what it did or didn’t do in the past (or how the Club engaged with and responded to it), support us in whatever way you can.

This journey, and result, does also show what happens when fans come together and be the change they wish to see. One of the biggest challenges we see across the fan base right now is apathy, but if a few people who want better can organise and play their part in taking action, things can change.

We’ll be retiring our Foxes Trust Reform social media and message board accounts now. It’s full steam ahead with 100% focus and attention on the Trust.

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You can join the Foxes Trust for £5 a year for adults and £2.50 for seniors.