I am not sure if I am posting this under the right topic but hopefully someone can help me.
I have been involved with a local ladies club for 38 years club it was founded in 1956 when the estate of houses I live on was built.
We meet twice a month in the local community centre which is owned by our local council, as was formerley an annexe to the local school but leased to a group that was set up to run it. Which they have registered as a charity. The centre is quite large and has lots of various activities there each day and only one or two run by the centre the rest pay rent for the rooms they use.
We pay for the room we use and have to pay extra for any other facility the kitchen etc. as well as each of our members are asked to pay an annual subscription to the centre. Most of our members used to do this quite willingly over the years till this year when we found out that the two other women's groups that meet there as well one monthly and the other weekly don't pay this subscription. Our group has only approx 25 members nowdays whereas the others have over 40 and 70 on their books. We realise the centre needs all the money they can get to be able to keep going we certainly don't dispute that but by not getting subscriptions from the two groups I have mentioned they are losing over £1,000 a year.
The administrator told us over the phone that she required an up to date list all the name addresses and telephone number of all our members. They do have a very old list of some of our members. We have said no as under the Data Protection Act we are not obliged to pass this information on to a third party. A letter has now been received stating that members who have not paid will be barred (their words) from the centre and if we didn't like it we could find somewhere else to hold our meetings.
The chairman of our club and I are hopefully having a meeting with them this week so what I was hoping someone could tell me are we being discriminated against by being made to pay the subscription when quite a few other groups by making discrete enquiries we have found at least four others so six in total who don't? Also are we in the right about not giving them our members contact details as they don't think we are? Any advice would be very much appreciated.