Object error when shifting sub from Form to Module

All,

I am pretty new to coding and I am sure this question has probably been answered a million times before and people think I am complete muppet (they are not wrong)
Anyway...

So I have an excel sheet with 4 userforms which are basically duplicates of each other except the last control button which does things slightly different. Therefore a value eg. LA.Value is used in all 4 userforms.

When I originally coded it I left all the code in all the userforms and a lot of it is duplicated and it worked (after a lot of trial and error). But trying to be smart I wanted to shift the duplicated subs to a module. When I try and to this I get object error.

I am sure the fix is really simple but my hours spent trawling here and google in general have turned up nothing. Help!

Code in Userform:

Private Sub AddRowButton_Click()

BlankCatcherShort 
'Sub in Module
If ExitAll = True Then
Exit Sub
End If

AddData 
'Sub in userform (but want to move to module)

End Sub

Sub in module:

Sub BlankCatcherShort()
ExitAll = False

If LA.Value = "" Then
    MsgBox "Local Authority not selected"
    ExitAll = True
    Exit Sub
End If
...
End Sub

I would guess LA is a control on a userform and so is not in scope in the module...

The simplest fix is to change the procedure declaration and pass the value from the calling sub

Private Sub AddRowButton_Click()

BlankCatcherShort la.value
'Sub in ...

Sub BlankCatcherShort(str as String)
ExitAll = False

If str = "" Then
    MsgBox "Local Authority not selected"
    ExitAll = True
    Exit Sub
End If
...
End Sub