You will receive the Friends rates for Ice Fees and other purchases in the Ice Centre, and your chosen sport can apply for support based on membership. Full benefits are listed in the Friends Details.

It is a fund set up using some of the money raised from the Friends scheme to develop ice sport in Inverness.

There are two new Inverness Ice Centre limited bank accounts

• Friends of Inverness Ice Centre Limited
• Ice Sport Development Fund

Your payments will be paid to the Friends of Inverness Ice Centre Ltd. Monthly 20% of the payments received for the preceding month, less bank charges, will be transferred to the Ice Sport Development Fund.

The clubs and sports can apply to the Ice Centre for Sport/Club Development funding in support of your development activities.

The funds allocated will be on a pro rata basis to the funds collected from the respective sports. It is therefore important when completing your Friends application form that you tick the appropriate box/es to advise which sport/s you are involved with.

In these most challenging of times, it is a priority of the Ice Centre to explore all avenues to raise funds. The Friend Scheme is designed to strike the right balance between providing individual value, helping to grow the sports and participation whilst providing much needed revenue for the future of the Rink.  The revenue from the Friends scheme is vital to the future of Inverness Ice Centre.

After funds are transferred to the Ice Sport Development Fund (as noted above), the remainder will be made available for the Ice Centre to support the ongoing viability and sustainability of the Centre.

Pre-registration for the start of the scheme will be open from November 11^th 2021. After the start date of the scheme (January 10^th 2022), you can join anytime.

Just go to the Friends page on the Inverness Ice Centre website at https://inverness-ice-centre/friends/ and follow the links for your chosen Friend package

We have explored a variety of application and payment options and have found that GoCardless best serves our purposes in terms of simplicity and cost. It is providing us with a platform that is simple for you to complete and straightforward for the Centre to administer. It works well and is an ideal process for launching the scheme.

Once you’ve set up your Membership, the payment comes to the Ice Centre automatically, and you don’t need to worry about your membership expiring. The GoCardless system we’re using provides the best balance between convenience and reliability. In due course we’ll investigate setting up alternative payment methods, but initially the online option is the only one available.

Broadly speaking, prices for non-Friends will increase by about 20% in January 2022

Some more specific examples of the new prices can be seen here

Family membership is limited to four children. If you have more children under 18 who wish to become Friends, please consider a combination of Family and Individual memberships.

As a Friend of Inverness Ice Centre, you will be provided with a membership card. The card will have your membership number. When presented the card will prove your eligibility for the relevant Friends prices. Where no card is presented then the higher prices will apply.

Friends on-line payment options will be available.

The benefits for a Junior are the same as these. A Junior will be provided with a different style of card.

No. Friends of Inverness Ice Centre scheme is open to anyone to join. That means, as well as our regular Ice Centre visitors, the public are invited to join the Friend Scheme also and will be made very welcome at the Ice Centre and to enjoy the benefits.

Email friends@inverness-ice-centre.co.uk, and we’ll get you set up.

When accompanied by a carer, the carer is entitled to use the Friend’s card.

To differentiate a junior for charging purposes, as well as providing a means of identification and control for café and bar staff.

Inverness Ice Centre will contact you in advance of your 18^th birthday to present options.

The costs to administer a monthly option is proportionally too high.

Nothing changes until the 10^th of January to give everyone time to prepare. The on-line payment system where the skip pays for the team on-line and the players then pay the skip will continue unaltered. There will be options within the payment system to input the Friend of Inverness Ice Centre card number to receive the Friend price. For non-Friends the higher charge will apply.

The main aims of the Friend Scheme are to encourage and reward participation and for individuals and the clubs to benefit from the scheme.

Skating and Hockey Clubs will be received Friends Ice Fees on being able to demonstrate that 51% or more of their members have joined the Friends scheme.

Where you are a “Friend” (adult or junior) and are a member of more than 1 club, you are eligible to be included in the Friend numbers for each of the clubs towards their 51% threshold.

This means that the Skating and Ice Hockey clubs provide a full list of their member names to the Ice Centre and notate the Friendship card numbers beside the names and the Friend price will apply on meeting the threshold

Although it is preferred that on-line or contactless is used cash payment is still an option. The prices for all ice sports are rounded to make it easier to give change where cash is exchanged.

Please contact your respective clubs regarding any fees you may have already paid this year to them.

As explained in the EGM in August, moving forward there are fresh opportunities to support the Ice Centre to replace any previous arrangements.

• Constitutional Membership
• Friends of Inverness Ice Centre Scheme

You can choose to become a Constitutional member. You can choose to become a Friend of Inverness. You can choose to be both OR you can choose to be neither. All options are voluntary.

All options are voluntary.

A Constitutional Member can attend an AGM or EGM and will have voting rights and, on the winding, up of Inverness Ice Centre Limited would be liable for £1. There is no fee nor subscription to be a Constitutional Member.

A Friend of Inverness Ice Centre will be provided with a membership card. The card will have your membership number. When presented the card will prove your eligibility for the relevant Friends prices. Friends on-line payment options will be available.

If you don’t join the Friend Scheme you will not be eligible for the Friend benefits and will pay higher prices.

The difference is explained above.  Unlike the previous membership and membership fees, the Constitutional Member and Friends of Inverness Ice Centre are completely separate from each other and are in no way connected.

Please contact the Ice Centre by emailing friends@inverness-ice-centre.co.uk

No, we’re not able to refund any unused portion of a membership. If you choose to cancel, your membership will end on the day you’ve paid up to.

The overarching aim for all the sports and clubs is to see greater participation. By providing more funds and resource for Curling Development will bring more Curlers into the sport and in time new recruits for our Curling Clubs to grow numbers.

Separate bank accounts were opened to provide transparency. To easily track the movement of funds for independent audit.  Inverness Ice Centre has a Three Tier approach to oversight. To explain. First tier … transactions are completed by the bookkeeper or staff member. Second Tier … these are overviewed by the CEO with Board supervision/input. Third Tier … is an external overview from our Accountant.

Over and above these three tiers, independent of our Accountant, Inverness Ice Centre Ltd have had the Year End Accounts professionally audited, in recent years.

In this unlikely event, the Ice Sport Development Fund money will be shared with the sports/clubs pro-rata to the levels of income gathered from the sports/clubs

The skip is not expected to hold all the Friends membership numbers for all possible players – they only need the number when a paying member of their team is a Friend so they can benefit from the Friends’ price.

There’s no requirement for a skip to hold onto Friends Membership numbers. A player who wishes to benefit from Friends prices has to tell whoever is paying what their membership is to show their eligibility. The Ice Centre will only use the details provided when registering to administer the scheme, in line with our GDPR statement

The Friend scheme can be joined at any point during the year. Please see our website for details inverness-ice-centre. The Friend Scheme is being introduced with three key aims in mind. Firstly, something in it for the regular participant. This is clearly important however, as well as the personal benefits, the Friend scheme is also designed to support the development of ice sports and to provide much needed funding coming out of Covid for the on-going viability of the Ice Centre.

The Friend scheme is a 12 month rolling contract from the date of joining. The Terms and Conditions section of our website for the Cancellations and Amendments advises that  “If you cancel your direct debit instruction, you will enjoy the benefits of being a Friend until the expiry date, which is the day before your next payment is due. No refunds will therefore be payable”. As it’s a 12 month rolling contract, the expectation is that a monthly payment will run for a minimum of 12 months (with the option to renew or otherwise). As the payment collection is an automated system without the flexibility to set up a minimum number of payments, the monthly payment can however be cancelled at any time within that 12 month cycle. Where the monthly payments are being cancelled after a short time frame, which is not in the spirit of the friend scheme, on applying to re-join the Scheme you will be asked to pay the annual equivalent of the monthly payment in advance. Where there are extenuating circumstances for the need to cancel the monthly payment and wish to re-join please advise the office.

Ultimately, if you curl 20 times a year the annual Friends scheme will be worth the money on Ice Fees alone.

The main aims of the Friend Scheme are to encourage and reward participation and for individuals and the clubs to benefit from the scheme. With this aim very much in mind we wish to keep things as easy and informal for the clubs as possible.

To calculate the 51%+ threshold. Total number of Friends divided by the total number attending your sessions on a regular basis. We are working with Skating and Synchro to prepare a template that can work for each sport.

Allowance will be given to Try Hockey/Learn to Skate for those trying the sports for the first time and will not be counted as regular attendees until they complete these respective programmes. If the new entrant is a Friend naturally they can be counted within the clubs numbers.

Where you are a “Friend” (adult or junior) and are a member of more than 1 club, you are eligible to be included in the Friend numbers for each of the clubs towards their 51% threshold.

The Ice Centre welcome regular and ongoing dialogue to ensure the Friend scheme goes smoothly and works for the clubs and the club members.

Please provide you club information by 17^th January which provides time to collect the information after the launch on the 10^th of January. This condition applies to all Skate and Ice Hockey clubs. The Ice Centre will then request your Friend/Club Member numbers information and ask to confirm ice requirements on a rolling 8 week cycle.

Providing your  Skating or Hockey club with your name and Friend number is for Club and Ice Centre use only, for the sole purpose of providing your club/s with Friend beneficial ice rates. The Friend number is just a number and will not be used to disclose any other personal data.

 To provide additional comfort, membership of the Friend scheme falls within the Inverness Ice Centre’s GDPR statement which is posted on the website advising that any data relating to your Friend membership is held for Inverness Ice Centre use only.

No. This would put a burden on clubs to gather data and payments from members which would then have to be shared with the Ice Centre. The joining process is simple, and can be accomplished with a few mouse clicks. Inverness Ice Centre have put in place a process that keeps payment and membership details secure, removing that risk from clubs.