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MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE CARAVAN CLUB, CHESHIRE CENTRE, HELD AT WHITLEY VILLAGE HALL, WHITLEY ON SATURDAY 14TH SEPTEMBER 2024

Secretary:

Good afternoon, ladies and Gentlemen, providing that there are no objections; we will remain seated throughout the meeting. Just a little house keeping before we start, just to remind everyone, there is no smoking in the hall today and that includes E cigarettes of all kinds.  The emergency exits are facing me at the back of the hall, where you came in and to my left.  Please can I ask that you either put your phone on silent or turn it off; thank you.

No voting slips have been handed out for the committee positions as we once again have more positions than nominations for the committee 2024/2025. (43 Members are in attendance)

However, a motion has been received and you will find a voting slip for this item, along with the documents that were handed to you on arrival.

Only those in the physical room may speak today, if you wish to speak at today’s meeting your name will have to be on the nominal role proof which was at the door when you came into the hall, if your name is not on the proof you are welcome to stay and observe the

meeting but of course cannot speak, if you wish to speak please indentify yourself clearly for the minutes.

Item 1:

We welcome you to Whitley Village Hall in Whitley today Saturday 14th September 2024. The Notice Convening the Meeting, together with the agenda can be found on page 36 of our Centre Rally Handbook.”

Chairman: “May we take the notice convening the meeting as read, if I could have a show of hands from those present”

Those in favour: all

Those against: none

Item 2: Chairman’s Welcome

Chairman:

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. May I extend to you all a warm welcome to the 2024 Annual General Meeting of the Cheshire Centre of The Caravan and Motorhome Club?  It is good to see you are all interested in the running and future wellbeing of the Centre.

Unfortunately, not all of our friends and fellow ralliers can be with us today. We have lost over the past 12 months many friends. As a mark of respect, I would like to take a moment of reflection if I could ask those able to stand for a minutes silence with me. Thank You.

May I remind you that only Centre Members, Family Members and Joint Members whose centre registration has been confirmed with the secretary in accordance with guidance from the CAMC can and are entitled to speak. Can I ask that those wishing to speak announce your name clearly before making your point. We will have an opportunity towards the end of the meeting for questions from the floor.

Item 3: Apologies for Absence

Apologies for absence have been received from:-

Trish and Jimmy Shaw

Andrea and Martin Kay

Paula and Rob Daniels

Kayt and Paul Clarke

Julie and Nigel Houghton

Sandra and Paul Bowler

Jane Poyner

Val Morris

Joan and Steve Benson

Sue and Nigel Bayley

Gill and Mike Meehan

Val and John Whittaker

Kath and Rick Johnson

Louise and Frazer Jeff

Barbara and Alan Beard

Elaine and Alex Highton

Claire and Steve James

Sue and Derek Martin

Sue and Brian Hale

Nicola Shaw

Ang and Kev Patterson

Item 4: Minutes of the Last Annual General Meeting

Acting Chairman:

“The Minutes of the last Annual General Meeting for 2023 have been emailed to all registered members on Sunday 8th September 2024 for all to read. Also, a copy was made available here today. Can I ask for a Proposer and a Seconder that the Minutes be accepted as a true record?”

Proposer: Martyn Shaw

Seconder: Colin Day

Can I have a show of hands that the membership is in agreement?”

Those in favour: All

Those against: None

Item 5: Matters Arising

Chairman: “There were some questions raised in any other business from the 2023 AGM.  The following was discussed at committee level and agreed as follows:

Children’s Fund for extra activities/for activities, are we going to continue with this?

The committee agreed to continue with this for 2023/24

Blank Weekends, will the current process continue for the coming year?

The committee agreed to continue with this for 2023/24

Item 6: Acting Chairman’s Report

As our chairman for 2023/2024 has had to stand down, I as your Vice Chairman and Acting Chairman will present to the floor a report for the period 2023 – 2024.

Good afternoon.

I would now like to report as acting chairman on the centre year 2023-2024. My report follows the same format as previous years as I work my way through the period from our last AGM.

Our first meeting in September welcomed our returning and new committee members and we addressed issues raised from the floor during the AGM. We reviewed the committee roles and responsibilities and confirmed the positions for the next 12 months. We also agreed to continue to utilise the assistance of Andy Gibbs as our centre webmaster and I thank him for his continued support to the centre during this last year. Andy does a great job and the website is always kept up to date with the latest centre news. He receives no reimbursement for his time however, we do provide chocolate from time to time to keep him going.

We once again started our regular face to face monthly meetings in October and ratified the Rally Programme for 2024, with 80 rallies being agreed. We also extended the previous year’s agreement regarding allowing new rally submissions on blank weekends. Our rally

secretary, Barry Chesterson, and his team assembled the rally book which was published online and printed copies were made available to ralliers on the rally field and via post if requested.

We have completed the trial of the new online booking process which I feel has been a great success. I thank the Rally Officers and ralliers for trying this new way of booking and hope you have found it useful, but I do reassure everyone here that the traditional booking slip and cheque option is not being removed for the foreseeable future. Our aim for this system was to try and create more options for people to book and attend rallies in an ever-changing digital age. I particularly thank our treasurer and our webmaster for their help in making this possible.

The Children’s Christmas Party was a great success in early December it attracted over 20 children and a visit from Santa Claus himself. We continued with the same system as previous years requiring 5 rallies to be attended throughout the year to ensure all rallying children could attend free of charge. We ended the 2023 rally year with two fantastic New Year Rallies which rounded up a year where we had run 71 rallies.

Our secretary, Glenis Chesterson, has continued to do a lot of work behind the scenes, creating agendas and taking minutes at meetings and dealing with a lot of clerical work that perhaps isn’t seen by most ralliers. She has also emailed about 20 new centre members per week to ensure they have the information they need to hopefully become active ralliers. We have had a number of new ralliers over the last year and we welcome you all to the Cheshire Centre.

Our Treasurer, Dave Dale, presented the accounts ending December 31st, 2023, to our auditors in February and received confirmation of them being approved in April with notification of the centre grant from CAMC.

It was great to see a full list of children’s sports events for 2024 with 7 events taking place from Easter to July. Thank you to our rally officers for allowing these events to take place on their rallies. Trophies were presented to the winners and runners up in various age

categories and 2 of our centre children, Jessie Upton and Aiden Greenfield, were presented with Sports Officers awards for their excellent attitude and determination throughout the sporting year. The Junior of the year trophy was also presented and this went to Annie Dale for her help and support to the Cheshire Juniors and rallying children as a whole.

During the past year we have purchased more centre equipment with the addition of various indoor and outdoor lights, warning beacons and some new and much more dependable marquee heaters. I urge rally officers to check out the website to see the range of equipment that is available completely free of charge to help run your rally.

Our IT group, and I have continued to update our members with centre news via the various media outlets we have, those being the website, Facebook and through the weekly updates which have continued to be sent out each week. I do hope everyone has found these information outlets useful throughout the past year.

Our golf society has been able to run 5 successful events so far in 2024. Their final event of the year will be held alongside their Annual Presentation evening at Onneley Golf Club in 2 weeks. I hope they have a wonderful evening and I thank Martin Kay for representing the chairman at this event.

I am so pleased to see that our Cheshire Juniors are continuing to go from strength to strength. Only a few years ago we had no Junior committee at all, but now they have grown to a group of 11 young ralliers who support the centre and other rallying children and I am so

proud of the work they do. This year saw the return of the Junior rally which was well supported and an amazing success. The tuck shop has become a staple on many rallies and enjoyed by lots of children. They have been led excellently by their chairman, Alex Cook who is continuing in this role for 2024-2025. I hope that you will all support them in their 2025 rally if you are able. I look forward to seeing what plans they have for next year as this year’s School theme was an amazing success.

I want to thank all our rally officers for their dedication to the centre in running rallies despite so many challenges. Without our rally officers putting in hours of planning then these rallies simply wouldn’t happen and we would not be able to do what we all love of a weekend. The huge range of rallies available from free and easy, to family rallies to dancing rallies shows the ability of all of our rally officers to put on events that attract a large range of different people.

I would like to thank the committee for their continued support and dedication to ensure the centre continues in a positive manner. Being on the committee is not for everyone and not every decision we make will be positively received, but I assure you all that we make the decisions we make, based on what we believe is the best for the centre and our members as a whole. I hope the membership will continue to respect the decisions made by the committee and appreciate the time they put in on your behalf. If you raise a matter with the committee and our response is not to your liking then please do not raise this individually with committee members when they are on a rally trying to enjoy themselves. This is not fair on the individual committee members and has had a detrimental effect on those standing for re-election this year.

It is unusual for a Centre Vice Chair to complete this report, but our Centre Chair, Sue Williams has unfortunately had to resign to due understandable personal reasons just a few weeks ago. I would like to thank Sue for her commitment during the year, in difficult

circumstances. Sue stood forward to take on the role when there was no one else and has done her upmost to keep the centre running. Thank you, Sue. *** Present Gift ***

As we look forward to a new rallying year, with a new Chairman, I hope that you will all continue to enjoy your rallying. We are entering a Celebration year, 55 years since the creation of the Cheshire Centre. We will become the first centre in history of the Caravan and

Motorhome Club to run 7000 rallies and I hope you will all support us on this rally over the weekend of 2-5 May 2025. We have already begun much of the planning for this event which will include live entertainment, arena events and a tea dance. If you feel you would be able to assist in the running of this rally, please speak to me directly, we are especially looking for block marshals.

Thank you for listening and I hope to see you on a rally field soon.

This concludes my report.

Proposer: Chris Haig

Seconder: Wendy Windsor

Secretary: “Are there any questions regarding the Acting Chairman’s Report?”

Eileen Bedworth thanked the Vice Chairman for stepping in as Acting Chairman.

Acting Chairman:

“May I now have a show of hands from the floor on the adoption of my Report?”

Those in favour: All

Those against: None

Item 7: Treasurers Report

“Good afternoon, Ladies & Gentlemen.

In my report, I will present the Centres accounts for the year ending 31st December 2023.  Copies of the accounts were made available as you entered the hall, I hope you have all have a copy. The Accounts have been drawn up in the same format as previous years which are those laid down by the Caravan & Motorhome Club.  Just the accounts pages are numbered. Pages 1 and 2 show the balance sheet and pages 3 and 4 show the income and expenditure account of the Senior section for the year. Page 5

shows the Junior’s accounts, and a Charity statement.

Please turn to page 3 of those accounts.

You can see that the Net Surplus of £2,566 in 2022 is only £103 in 2023. This is largely due to rallies donating surplus funds to the Centre charity, The Joshua Tree.

Please turn to page 4 of the accounts

Overall, our total expenditure was £2,967, down by £400, due particularly to reduced depreciation of assets. This gave us a nett surplus of £1,092, which compares to £2,428 last year. The major contributor to this reduction is the contribution from rallies being diverted to

the Charity fund, as explained earlier.

We should bear in mind that these accounts are lower than the true cost of running the centre, because your committee have not claimed back any of the expenses that they personally incur, this is the reason it is important to make at least the minimum contribution.

Page 5 shows the Juniors results for 2023.The new Junior committee worked hard during the year, particularly in assisting with the Charity rally. The Junior Treasurer gave an account of their finances at the Junior AGM meeting earlier today. They donated £119.00 to the Centre charity, which was greatly appreciated.

At the bottom of page 5, you can see that we had income of £5661 for charities. When added to the £502 from the previous year, and a top up from Centre funds of £336 we made a grand total of £6,500 for the Joshua Tree, which was presented to them at the 2023 AGM.

Please turn to page 2.

This section of the balance sheet shows purchases of £1373. This includes various rally equipment, plus laptop computers for the Treasurer, Secretary and Rally Secretary.  The results of the senior and junior sections are added to the net assets of the centre and

this is reflected in our balance sheet, which is shown page 2, the total assets are £35,975. £3,250 of this belongs to our Junior section.

This now concludes my report on the Centre accounts for 2023.  Finally, my thanks go to my wife Jane. She has been my right-hand woman throughout the last two years, and we have become an efficient team when processing the Centre accounts.”

Acting Chairman:

“Please may I have somebody to move the adoption of the accounts:

Proposer: Martyn Shaw

Seconder: Bill Taylor

Acting Chairman:

“Are there now any questions on the Treasurers Report?”

Acting Chairman:

“May I now have a show of hands from the floor on the adoption of this Report?”

Those in favour: All

Those against: None

Secretary:

I would now like to ask the Acting Chairman to present our retiring 2023/2024 Officers and committee with their year plaques, but first I would like to present the Acting Chairman with his Vice Chairman plaque.

Can I ask now for the Acting Chairman to present the following plaques.

Retired Chairman: Sue Williams

Secretary:

Glenis Chesterson

Treasurer:

Dale Dale

Rally Secretary:

Barry Chesterson

Committee:

Martyn Shaw

Colin Day

Martin Kay

Paul Aubert

William Taylor

Judith Williams

Sarah Upton

Item 8: Elections

Secretary:

There have been enough nominations to fill all the positions on the committee this year, so there is no need for a vote for committee positions.

Secretary:

8 (a) Chairman.

I have received 1 nomination for the position of Chairman, that being Chris Haig, therefore I declare him duly elected.

Can I ask our Acting Chairman Tom Dale to present Chris Haig with his Badge, Plaque and Chain of Office and Angela Haig with her chain of office.

Secretary:

8 (b) Vice Chairman.

I have received 1 nomination for the position of Vice Chairman, that being Tom Dale, therefore I duly declare Tom elected.

Chairman:

8 (c) Retiring Secretary – I have received 1 nomination for the position of Secretary, that being Deborah Rose, therefore I declare her duly elected.

Retiring Secretary:

8 (d) Treasurer – I have received 1 nomination for the position of Treasurer, that being Dave Dale, who is duly elected.

Retiring Rally Secretary:

8 (e) Retiring Secretary – I have received 1 nomination for the position of Rally Secretary that being Martyn Shaw therefore I declare him duly elected.

Retiring Secretary:

8 (f) I have received 5 nominations for Centre Committee therefore it is not necessary to have an election.

I declare the following 4 people, are elected as the Committee for 2024/25. As I call out your name, please will you make your way forward to the stage so that the meeting may identify you and to receive your committee plaques and badges from the Chairman.

William Taylor

Martin Kay

Joy Littler

Trevor Little

Acting Chairman:

I would now like to ask the new Junior Chairman Alex Cook to the front to introduce his new Junior committee for 2024/2025

Secretary:

Aidan Greenfield

Treasurer:

Harry Dale

Committee:

Jasmine Aubert, Jake Aubert, Jessica Lesley, Annie Dale, Gregory Dale, Patrick Dale, Joseph Rhodes, Molly Johnson

Item 9: Approval of Auditors

Treasurer:

“My recommendation to the Committee will be SMH BullockWoodburn.”

Proposer: Angela Haig

Seconded: Paul Bedworth

Acting Chairman:

All in favour

Those in favour: All

Those against: None

Item 10: Motions Received:

Secretary

I have received one motion this year, that being from Tom Dale, seconded by Dave Dale. Before we vote on this, I would like to ask Tom Dale and Dave Dale to step forward and explain their reasons for submitting this motion.

This motion is for the membership to agree to the removal of rule 3. iii. "The candidates seeking office or committee membership will publish a resume of their abilities, which would enable them to carry out the duties imposed on them by this position."

Andy Gibbs asked if two members are going for a position, how can you decide who to choose. The resume gives you an idea of their ability.

Barry Chesterson stated, that if more than one person is going for a position, I proposed that these members should provide a resume.

Martyn Shaw asked what if someone puts their nomination in close to the deadline, this does not give the first person opportunity to provide a resume.

Paul Bedworth stated that you have two weeks to submit a resume, before the meeting.

Judith Williams asked, can you change a motion at the AGM when it has already been submitted?

It was agreed by a show of hands from the floor to change the motion to the following:

“The candidates seeking office or committee membership will publish a resume of their abilities, which would enable them to carry out the duties imposed on them by this position, should there be a vote required for this position”

All in favour

Hand vote:

Those in favour: Majority

Those against: None

ADOPTION OF AMENDED MOTION:

All in favour

Hand vote:

Those in favour: Majority

Those against: None

Angela Haig emphasised that everyone could have a go, you do not necessary need the experience to carry out a position, just have a go and nobody should be put off by.

Item 11: Any Other Business

Peter Beeston asked why the Chairman should be limited to three years. At this point the New Chairman stood and spoke to the room.

Barry Chesterson confirmed that the CAMC says there is no limit, however, this is listed as a Cheshire Centre rule in the Rally handbook. For this to be changed, a motion will need to be brought to the floor at the AGM, by a member, in 2025.

Acting Chairman thankyou to everyone who has contributed to the meeting.

The Acting Chairman announced the meeting closed at: 2.55 PM