AGM 2020 Minutes
Minutes of Annual General Meeting
Held on 2nd November 2020
Warwick Space, Coten End, Warwick CV34 4NU
Present:
Dot Holtom, Sarah Brook-Taylor, James Viggers, Ian Gibbins, David Marshall, Dave Compton, Ian Macafee, Mark Langstone
- Welcome and apologies for absence
Mark Langstone chaired the meeting. Apologies were received from Lindsay Rushton, Christine Johnstone, Mike Page, Mike Heath, Mark Bister, Graham Crump - Minutes of Meeting for the 2019 AGM
Approved. Proposed Sarah Brook-Taylor, seconded James Viggers - Matters arising from the Minutes
Nil - Amendments or adjustments to this agenda.
Nil - Chair’s report (Mark Langstone) – attached
- Secretary’s Report (Ian Macafee)
Newsletter issues during the year have been helpful in contacting and informing our Group membership. No less important now and we should issue the next during November and keep them in production. Secretary is very grateful to content providers and welcomes continued and further material.
The Restart plans and approach, although now disrupted again by Lockdown II, have shown us some real opportunities for remaining active, staying relevant, and being prepared for the resumption of driving. We may well seek to keep some online capability for delivering tutorials/debriefs etc and we should add video capability and enhance our ‘Teams’ or other group video access (ie buy a suitable license – ML action).
This also presents opportunities for delivering content that we would originally have planned as lectures in a booked meeting room. We could combine this with virtual group meetings and some social activity eg a Christmas Quiz (SBT happy to run this event). More details discussed in following Committee Meeting.
Replacement to ‘DTE’ database is current and hence we need to get access to the new system and become familiar with it. - Treasurer (Dot Holtom)
Report attached [not public].
Thanks to Christine Johnstone for reviewing the Annual Accounts. - Election of Group Officers
Chairman: Mark Langstone (nominated by Ian Macafee, seconded by James Viggers)
Treasurer: Dot Holtom (nominated by Ian Gibbins, seconded by Sarah Brooke-Taylor)
Secretary: Ian Macafee (nominated by James Viggers, Seconded by Dave Compton)
Committee: Retiring by rotation and standing for re-election: Ian Gibbins and Sarah Brooke-Taylor (nominated Dave Marshall, seconded Dot Holtom)
Committee members not retiring and confirmed in continued committee membership:
James Viggers, Graham Crump, David Marshall (nominated by Sarah Brooke-Taylor and seconded by Dot Holtom)
Committee member retiring and not standing for re-election: Colin Upchurch – and the meeting recorded their thanks to Colin for his 39 ½ years’ service to the Group. - Subscriptions
The meeting decided to leave current Group annual membership subscription at £10 and to give the Committee the authority to raise subscriptions during the following year if needed. - AOB
- We should make the 2021 AGM an online meeting.
Meeting ended at 20:25h
Registered Charity Number: 1016119
Group Secretary: Mr Ian D Macafee
c/o 4 Casita Grove, Kenilworth CV8 2QA
secretary@stratfordiam.org.uk, www.stratfordiam.org.uk
Chairman’s Report
Good evening everyone, I hope you are all well.
What an interesting year it has been. We were on week 6 of the spring course when COVID stopped us.
We have managed to restart driving in September and get some of the current associates finished and through to test.
We have been able to carry on Committee using virtual video calling which seems to be the way the world has gone these days, but we miss out on the social side and no biscuits!
We have used Teams to set up a virtual classroom and start our Autumn course which we currently have 2 associates on which is low but gives presenters time to get used to presenting this way. On the plus side this costs the group nothing and as we do the presentation on a Tuesday night there is no rush to get finished and leaves the observers free just to concentrate on the driving side at the weekends. So far so good with good feedback.
Surprisingly we have quite a few waiting to start the next course. Some of these are from the spring course that wanted to defer and others hoping for the classroom sessions to restart which I can’t see happening any time soon.
Warwick Sports hall still remains closed to outside organisations until next year.
On the subject of Warwick School, we moved from Myton School to Warwick Sports hall in January which was a much better facility and far cheaper as well.
So far, we haven’t paid anything yet as the group were given it FOC for the spring course as a thank you from the Ettington community First Responders.
So far this year we have managed to get 9 passes 4 with a First and no fails so 100% pass rate.
We have 1 new trainee Observer who is joined in with virtual classroom but is a challenge of how to get them in the car as well.
The bank is still in good shape and will start going up again as we don’t have many expenses at the minute and Sarah doing a fine job of getting the gift aid claims in.
We are getting less associates coming on to the course these days which seems to be a National trend.
There are not many groups running and we are getting enquiries from associates from other groups seeing if they can transfer to us. I am not sure how long we will stay open for with the way things are going, as from Thursday 5th November all driving will stop.
Our Observer numbers have dropped this year from 19 to 13 which is bit of a shame. On a positive note 7 of these are Masters.
Some of this is due to people moving away and others deciding its time to retire after giving numerous years of service so special thanks to Keith Madderson, Chris Pepper, Mark Bister, Phil Wragg, Allen Turner, Colin Upchurch. I thank all the observers past and present for all the time they give and without them the group couldn’t operate.
Some of the observers have also been busy having there 5 year retest for their National Observer status which seems to have come round very quickly.
Graham Crump and David Marshall have joined us on committee which is great news. Unfortunately, Colin Upchurch has decided to stand down from committee and as an observer after many years of service which I applaud him for.
Something I would like to concentrate on this year is more Peer to peer driving training for the observers
We decided to suspend the observer of the year award this year.
I did want to stand down this year as Chair of the group but I don’t think that’s going to happen. Having said that this will be my last year as Chair and I will stand down at the next AGM. I do hope someone comes forward to take over this role otherwise the future of the group is looking bleak.
There are some other options to investigate which we will discuss at Committee.
As always, I would like to thank the committee for there support over the last year and Christine for coordinating the course and doing the accounts for us.
Registered Charity Number: 1016119
Group Secretary: Mr Ian D Macafee
c/o 4 Casita Grove, Kenilworth CV8 2QA
secretary@stratfordiam.org.uk, www.stratfordiam.org.uk