Hoops

how will pro / rel affect winter season

Why?,
I am glad someone has nibbled on the worm.
Yes, clubs are a business. They provide leisure opportunities for players. As you said, basketball is just one leisure pursuit and so if clubs want to sell their product, they need to market themselves properly to attract customers.

There is nothing wrong with wanting the best kids at your club and being strong. However, the issue is concentrating kids at one or two clubs and creating a shortage of talent at other clubs. Some kids (parents) are happy to play 5 mins/game as a bench player for Div 1 at one club, rather than 30 mins/game as a starting 5 player at a different club. You cannot change human nature.

However, the issue is that of byes in Div 1. A club with 50 kids in one group means the top 8 players (16%) are usually pretty strong. For a club with 20 players in that same group, the top 8 players (40%) usually means only the top 4 are pretty strong. It gets back to depth.

Therefore, if we don't want a bye in the Div 1, then as a basketball community we probably need to look at how the "weaker" clubs can become more attractive to players and attract the players they deserve. The best competitions are those with close, hard fought wins, not boring, predictable results. I say work as a team to raise "weaker" clubs up, not pull stronger clubs down.

459,
It gets to the depth of the club, but you are bang on the money with that issue. I think you'll find those clubs affected are the smaller clubs who don't have the depth of other clubs. Now, success breeds success and so that is why some clubs tend to be stronger than others. Kids (and parents) tend to aspire to these clubs and so may bypass the nearest club to be at the stronger club.
My question for you to consider is this. Why do strong clubs continue to accept players from those areas covered by other, smaller clubs?

This whole pro/rel stuff is fraught with danger. At Div 1 and 2 level, the teams are pretty constant, but Div 3 are kids who usually come and go and so to use the results from one season to grade the next is risky in the case where teams can change substantially.

I think it might be better just to leave it to the clubs to nominate correctly.

I think there are stills some issues that need to be resolved