The wife of one of "The Forum" founders ran a B&B without special interference from officialdom for 12 years. The accommodation was offered in a ground-floor single storey building comprising double bedroom, kitchen, living room with space for extra 2 beds, bathroom and dining room. It was capable of taking only one booking at a time and therefore barely profitable but worthwhile as a "spare-time" activity.

Then the European Union presented The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, an ill-worded and vague piece of legislation that gave governments and fire services little practical guidance on how to implement it. Some countries ignored it but not UK. The UK fire services took different implementation stances from "belt-and-braces" in the town of "The Forum" founders to "put a leaflet in the bedrooms" in the town a few miles away in the same county. Faced with a fire service implementation order to implement expensive and ruinous "improvements" to a property that had 3 ground floor escape doors and 3 ground floor windows (and did not need "improving") the B&B accepted the fire service's closure order a year later.

During the one year of notice there was no advice or help available from local authorities, VisitBritain the supposed guardian of the industry, accommodation organisations, lawyers (there was no case law) or the fire service which was now in the role of enforcer and no longer adviser. Other family members who were by now operating an Internet business for the benefit of accommodation-providers therefore launched an Internet forum on 2nd April 2007 for those accommodation-providers who felt similarly isolated and beleaguered to get together and share experiences. Today "The Forum" has over 1000 members UK-wide who have discussed hundreds of different topics in 50,000 message posts.

During this time "The Forum" members began to relate to one another and organise themselves to get more benefits. These are some of the milestones:

• the establishment of a brand name - BedPosts - a pun on the fact that members with bedposts also post messages
• move of the BedPosts Forum to its own dedicated website - www.BedPosts.org.uk
• forum members' advertising for free on the website
• first get-together of BedPosts forum members at training conference in Oxford in January 2012
• second get-together of BedPosts forum members at training conference in Stratford-upon-Avon in February 2013

At the 2013 conference participants voted for the establishment of the BedPosts Business Club an independent organisation with its own executive and committee to offer superior services. A dozen participants thrust £50 cheques and IOUs into the hands of the visibly-shocked BedPosts Chair and Vice-Chair, Roy McGregor and Carol Starkey.

And so it came to pass that the BedPosts Business Club, pioneered by an active forum member Sylvia Neal, will launch on 7th October 2013. It will have an exciting agenda to further the business interests of its subscribers, initially to counter the growing dominance of online travel agents, reviews websites and price comparison websites. Join and help take your business, and ultimately your industry, on an alternative path.

Establishment	Website	Location
Greenacres	greenacres-lindale.co.uk	Lindale, Cumbria
Firs Cottage	web.onetel.com/~marrow/	Llanrwst, Conwy
Bowers Hill Farm	bowershillfarm.com	Broadway, Worcestershire
Manor Farm	manorfarmbnb.demon.co.uk	Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire
Windrush	windrushhouse.com	Broadway, Worcestershire
Clopton Orchard Farm	cloptonorchardfarm.co.uk	Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
Brymbo	brymbo.com	Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire
Bran Mill Cottage	branmillcottage.co.uk	Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire
Bull Lodge	bulllodge.co.uk	York, North Yorkshire
9 Green Lane	9greenlane.co.uk	Buxton, Derbyshire
Swiss Cottage	swisscottagemarlow.co.uk	Marlow, Buckinghamshire
Ridgeway Lodge	bedbreakfast-ridgewaylodge.co.uk	Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire