AGM Notice Under Bye-law 99: Why '14 Clear Days' Excludes the Day of Dispatch and the Meeting Day

A notice goes out on the 1st for a meeting on the 15th, and the secretary is sure that's 14 days

The society's AGM is due before 30 September. The secretary dates the notice 1 September, has it delivered by hand on the same day, and fixes the meeting for 15 September. Fourteen days apart on the calendar — he checks it twice. A member who has read bye-law 99 disagrees at the meeting itself, before a single item on the agenda is taken up: the notice does not give "14 clear days," and everything the meeting does today is open to challenge.

He is right, and the arithmetic is the whole point. Bye-law 99 requires "14 clear day's Notice" for the Annual General Body Meeting and "5 clear day's notice" for a Special General Body Meeting. "Clear days" is not the same as "14 days before the meeting." A clear day is a full day that falls entirely between the day the notice is given and the day of the meeting — which means both of those two days themselves are left out of the count.

Run the count on the secretary's dates. Notice given 1 September. Meeting fixed 15 September. The days in between are 2 to 14 September — thirteen days, not fourteen. He is one clear day short. To get a genuine 14 clear days, the meeting would need to fall no earlier than 16 September (2–15 September, fourteen days, with 1 and 16 September themselves excluded). A single day's miscount is enough to put every resolution passed at that AGM on shaky ground — including, if it is on the agenda, the appointment of the year's auditor under bye-law 95(f).

What "clear" excludes, concretely

Two days never count toward the 14 (or the 5, for a Special General Body Meeting):

• •The day the notice is given or dispatched. Whether it goes by hand delivery, registered post, or email under bye-law 162, day zero is not day one.
• •The day of the meeting itself. The meeting is the deadline the notice is running toward, not a day of notice.

Bye-law 99 does not spell out this computation in so many words — it simply says "14 clear day's" — but that phrase is doing real work by using "clear" at all instead of just "14 days' notice." The safer and more defensible practice for any secretary is to always count both ends out, and if the arithmetic is close, add a buffer day rather than relying on a same-day dispatch.

What bye-law 99 also requires, beyond the count

The 14-day (or 5-day) clock is not the only condition in bye-law 99:

1. 1Every Member gets it, sent under bye-law 162 — hand delivery, post (registered or otherwise), or email, to the member's last known address.
2. 2A copy goes to the Federation and to the Registering Authority at the same time the notice is issued — "under intimation," in the bye-law's words.
3. 3A shorter Special General Body Meeting notice is possible only in a genuine emergency, and only if the Committee unanimously decides to shorten it. Even then, the agenda and the reason for the emergency must go to every Member in writing, and the decisions taken at that meeting must be communicated in writing to every Member within two days.
4. 4There is no equivalent shortcut for the Annual General Body Meeting. Bye-law 99 gives the Committee no power to compress the 14-day AGM notice, unanimous or otherwise.

Bye-law 162 adds a practical safeguard: the notice must also be displayed on the society's notice board, and once it is, the notice is deemed duly given — a member's complaint that it never personally reached them does not by itself invalidate the meeting. That protects a properly-dated, properly-posted notice from being undone by one lost letter. It does nothing for a notice that was short by a day to begin with.

What your committee should do

1. 1Fix the AGM date first, then count backward. Once the date is chosen, the notice must go out at least 15 days before it — that is, on a date leaving 14 whole days between the day of dispatch and the day of the meeting — and build in a one- or two-day margin rather than dispatching on the exact boundary.
2. 2Record the date of dispatch in the minute book or an office note, not just the date printed on the notice — if the printed date and the actual delivery date diverge, the delivery date controls the count.
3. 3Copy the Federation and the Registering Authority on the same day the notice goes to members, and keep proof of that intimation.
4. 4Put a copy on the notice board on the day of dispatch, and keep a dated photograph or the board register entry — this is the fallback that protects the meeting if an individual member later claims non-receipt.
5. 5Never compress the 14-day AGM notice period. If the calendar will not allow 14 clear days before 30 September, that is a reason to call the meeting earlier in the cycle next year, not a reason to shorten this year's notice.
6. 6For a Special General Body Meeting only, if a genuine emergency requires less than 5 clear days, get the Committee's unanimous decision recorded first, and send the agenda and the reason for urgency in writing to every member — then send the decision taken, in writing, within two days of the meeting.