Chairman's Report 2019 (given at the AGM on 21st March 2019)

This is the Chairman’s Report of the activities and decisions of the SCVA Committee for the last twelve months.

We had 55 in attendance at our AGM last year, including our County Councillor, David Goodwin, and Borough Councillors Caroline Reeves and Alex Chesterfield. We also were joined by Borough Council Deputy Leader, Councillor Matt Furniss.

I’m delighted to have our three Borough Councillors, Alexandra Chesterfield, Angela Goodwin and Caroline Reeves with us again this evening, and our County Councillor David Goodwin. Councillor Paul Spooner, Leader of the Council is also with us although he has another meeting to attend later. They will all be addressing us after this Business section of the meeting and I would urge you to seize this opportunity to raise the questions regarding our Borough which have been niggling you in recent months. These are the people with the answers. I would just remind you that this is a local AGM and not a Planning meeting, and we have only booked the hall until midnight, but we do hope to finish by 9:30.

Also, we have Fiona Davidson with us who is one of the many candidates for Friary and St Nicolas in the Guildford Borough Council elections on the 2nd of May. She’s particularly representing Residents for Guildford and Villages (R4GV). Friary & St Nicholas appears to be a quite popular ward. I would like to emphasise though, that this is a local association AGM and is not a platform for any electioneering. However, Fiona and our other councillors will be available to answer any questions you may have after the meeting.

This Association has 11 committee meetings each year, generally on the first Monday of each month except for August. We meet in Ye Olde Ship Inn, solely to support our village hostelry, except for two meetings when we are in the committee room of this village hall – just in case people think we are indulging ourselves too much at The Ship. This is primarily to retain our connection as an Association with the Village Hall. However, we consider our support of The Ship Inn to be an overriding factor for our normal meeting venue.

We ask Caroline Reeves to attend the beginning of our meeting three times a year to ensure we remain reasonably up-to-speed with activity in this town.

On to Social Events, which is the main subject of my report. We put on five events last year, although we intended it to be six. Looking at the calendar year of 2018, we had the Winter Party in this hall in January with an attendance of 90; the AGM was in March when 55 of you joined us; a new departure in talks was a flying presentation attended by 47; in May we held the St Catherine’s Past & Present Exhibition over three days in this hall; there were 267 visitors and I would like to record my appreciation to David Calow for the vast amount of work he put in to preparing and running the Exhibition so successfully.

The premier event of the year, the Summer Lunch, held in Piccards Manor courtesy of Marc & Nicole Clancy, was in June with lots of sunshine and an attendance of around 100. It was as successful and enjoyable as ever.

Also in June was a new event, Open Gardens, when 7 residents opened their gardens to visitors. This was a fascinating opportunity to see what other people’s gardens looked like, but attendance wasn’t as high as we’d hoped. Enquiries have been made over the past several months to see who would like to participate this year but only two people expressed an interest so we’ve decided to skip one year and have another one in 2020.

In October, Robin Stannard gave us a second presentation, this time on the Architecture and History of the High Street. This was very popular and exceedingly informative. We intend to invite Robin back for a 3rd time depending on what local talks he has available.

In 2017 we decided not to hold a Quiz Night due to our need to cancel it in 2016 because of lack of interest. We had booked John Wells for another try last November, but guess what? Hardly any tickets sold so we have decided to leave Quiz Nights to our local pubs in the future.

Whew! So what do we have planned for you this year?

We have a comprehensive programme of six events so far, all listed on the ‘What’s On’ page of our website, St Catherine’s village.org. We started with an outstandingly enjoyable Winter Party here in the hall last month. We had a different herring-bone table layout resulting in a slightly reduced maximum number of guests of 72 which resulted in a sell-out again. Food was fantastic as always, we ran out of red wine (we promise this will never happen again) and the GSA Singers provided a stunning performance which was their best ever. They are becoming increasingly sought after so you might be relieved to know that they are already booked for Friday 7th February 2020. It’s good to know that they love this event almost as much as we enjoy having them.

The next event is this evening’s AGM. Many organisations hold a very short AGM, accompanied by some entertainment. As a committee, we believe that this is wrong. We have an important annual opportunity to let you know what your committee has done for you during the year; how we justify your swingeing membership fee of £2 / head; and an important chance for you to hear from your Councillors and for you to question them too. There has always been a reasonable demonstration of interest in local affairs in the St Catherine’s area and we wish to facilitate and promote that.

Our next event is here in the Village Hall, entitled History of St Catherine’s Chapel. This richly illustrated presentation is on Friday 26th April and is presented by our own David Calow who is probably the most knowledgeable person on this special subject in the whole of Surrey. It won’t be recorded so if you would like to learn virtually all there is to know about The Chapel and its history, you need to be here on Friday 26th April.

On Tuesday 7th May we have a very special presentation. We have managed to coax our local resident Charles Funke out of semi-retirement to give us a presentation here in the hall in which he will share just a tiny sample of his enormous expertise on garden design. It is entitled “The Landscape of Man; St Catherine’s, from chalk to golden sand”. You can whet your appetites by having a look at his website CharlesFunke.com. I have to say, I’m a little uncomfortable about this particular evening, because Charles has so much to share that I can see us still being here at midnight. He is booked to speak to us from 7:30 until 9:00pm. This will be a ticketed event with prior booking required so we have some idea of numbers. It will be £5 including a free glass of wine. Advertising and ticket sales will be available from next month. Just one word of caution: Charles is anxious that this remains a local event, so please do not invite your gardening aficionados from Wisley and further afield, or none of us may get a seat. Well, I will, but some of you might not. That’s Tuesday 7th May.

Our premier event of the year is the Summer Lunch (unless Charles’ presentation takes that title). You will remember that this takes place in the most enchanting surroundings to be found in this area, namely Piccards Manor and is only possible due to the kind, and very enthusiastic permission of Marc and Nicole Clancy. This is on the first Sunday in July, Sunday 7th July.

There will be a bar where we will be assisted by Jeremy Kingcome from The Ship Inn; a home-cooked three-course meal; music provided once again by the trio Tête-a-Tête, and entertainment as a result entirely of your own conversation. You just need to be sure to arrange your summer holiday for before or after Sunday 7th July. This is the epitome of summer village entertainment and really should not be missed.

I would like to emphasise that our main reason as a committee for putting on our social events each year is to give members of this community the opportunity to meet, chat, and get to know each other. This last Summer Lunch was no exception and the general hubbub of conversation was great to see and hear. Photographs of the event are still on the website stcatherinesvillage.org under Past Events.

The last event planned for this year is on Friday 27th September when your own Lorimer Burn will give another presentation on flying, this time entitled “A Calamity & a Triumph”. This feature-rich PowerPoint presentation, with photos, videos and audio, looks at two famous crashes. Firstly, the dreadful loss of Air France 447 in the Atlantic in 2009 – a catalogue of mistakes, inadequate training and lack of responsibility. I will be contrasting this with the poetic demonstration of skill and crew co-operation by Captain Sullenberger and his SFO Geoff Styles by gliding their stricken Airbus A320 onto the New York Hudson River after a massive bird strike shortly after take-off. These are two powerful stories. That’s Friday 27th September.

We have room for one or two more events in October or November. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

That’s enough of Events.

We produced two Newsletters in these last 12 months. A great deal of time and effort goes into producing this publication. We deliver it to 520 households. We do hope you find it useful and I am always delighted to receive any suggestions for additional articles. Feedback on the Newsletter is always welcome. You might like to know that the compiler and editor is changing and will be the fearsomely efficient Michiel Dominicus for future issues. So I leave you to spot the difference!

I’ve referred several times to our online presence. We, as your committee, are anxious to be able to communicate with you. Once you’re a member of our facebook page you not only receive an email alert to all the posts as they’re posted, but you may also post your own. But I’m the Moderator, so please always think before posting – would Lorimer like this? If I don’t, I’ll remove it.

You access us from your own facebook page, just look for St Catherines village association. Note: There’s a St Catherine’s Village in Madison, Mississippi, but that’s a Retirement and Care home. We now have a 117 Facebook Group members, so if you do participate in the digital community, please do speak to me or make a request online to join – the more the better. I know some of you still write letters and own parker pens. I have one somewhere although I fear the ink may have dried out. We do try to communicate with those amongst you who are allergic to the digital age, via posters and through events such as this and the Newsletters.

If you’re among those who are horrified by the thought of facebook, do remember that there is our website, stcatherinesvillage.org where you can check on future events, past events and have the excitement of reading previous committee minutes. There was a Blog page too, but since no-one from our community left a comment over the last three years, we’ve dropped it. There were six comments though, the two most suitable for sharing before the 9:00 pm watershed were one from a writer in Agra describing me as being “utterly fantastic”, and another who volunteered to write my essay for me!

It is also very helpful for us to have your email address. This means that we can send you group emails. There are all sorts of safeguards regarding how we look after any information we hold about you so you should not worry. There is a page on our website entitled ‘Legal Stuff’ which lays out in considerable detail how seriously we take the subject of GDPR. Michiel joined the committee after the last AGM and thanks to his background as a solicitor and his possession of an exceedingly pickety mind, he has frankly, been gold dust in ensuring that the SCVA is completely compliant with all personal data and privacy legal requirements.

Regarding the cost of membership of the Association, there are still some single and family members annually paying £1 and £2 respectively rather than £2 and £4 to which it was changed many years ago. I know that was a 100% increase, but I would suggest that shortage of funds should not be a barrier all the same.

Most of us live in a cul-de-sac. That includes the whole of Guildown, Woodcote, Beech Lane, Rivermount and six other roads. This means that we have the joy of no through-traffic but it also means that we need to be able to fend for ourselves in adverse conditions. That is why we have inaugurated an Emergency Help Team entitled Snow Team. It was used on one day in late January to clear snow at the bottom of Guildown Road, but is also available to be called on via a WhatsApp group if any other emergency should occur, such as a tree falling across one of our roads. There are thirteen members of the group at the moment but if you would like to be community-spirited and join, please just let me have your mobile number and you’re in. The more the better, because at any one time, many people are not available. Like insurance, I think a group like this is quite important as an emergency resource. To be honest, I’m quite proud that we have a group such as this up and running.

You’ll be delighted to know that I’m near the end. You will have no doubt noticed that I have a new Secretary seated next to me – Michiel Dominicus, who, as I’ve already said, joined the committee one year ago. We very quickly created a new post for him, that of Membership Secretary and Michiel agreed at our last committee meeting to replace Phillip as Secretary which you will be voting on shortly. Michiel will be presenting his Membership report in a few moments but I would like to take this opportunity to say that Michiel has quite simply wrought wonders in seeking to achieve order out of the elegant chaos which has existed for years regarding details of our membership. In many cases we had someone registered under a christian name (no surname), as an address but no name, paying the £2 membership monthly rather than annually, and any other awkward combination you might like to imagine. Michiel has literally walked miles, knocking on doors to discover the identity of a resident; consulting with the postman to discover how he gains access to properties through their locked gates, and much more. We’re not sorted yet, but we are a whole lot better than we were this time last year. Michiel has also set up our Privacy Policy which is a huge relief to me. We can today say that our procedures and safeguards stand with the best.

But Michiel’s presence at this table brings me to the fact that Phillip Mansley isn’t.

Phillip, having just celebrated his entry into his 80th year has retired from the committee and from his most recent rôle as Secretary. Phillip has held roles on the committee for some 16 years, generally alternating as Chairman and Secretary, and occasionally as a simple committee member. I’ve been Chairman now for a number of years but I need to say that my job has been made infinitely easier by having Phillip as my willing and efficient secretary. It always seemed ironic to me that a retired airline pilot should have an illustrious member of Her Majesty’s Foreign Service (also long retired) working for me, but Phillip did so without demur and always demonstrating the efficiency and courtesy which was so much the mark of the F.O. There is no parting gift which would be sufficient to properly or adequately express our appreciation for Phillip’s contributions over so many years. However, it is Phillip himself who has provided the solution. He expressed it to me in this email dated the 6th of February:

“As you know (and indeed announced to the General Public at the last AGM), I do not wish to put myself forward for re-election to the Committee in March. I shall be sorry to leave, but I have accumulated a number of other commitments and after about 16 years (net) on the SCVA Committee I would like to move on and diversify, hopefully rewarding other causes (especially the Surrey Care Trust) with the benefit of my time and questionable abilities.

I have already benefited from one very generous SCVA handshake and emphatically wish to have no more. The Minutes have been recording that charitable donations will be discussed at the March Committee meeting. If the SCVA felt it appropriate to make a valedictory gesture, a donation (£500 would do nicely) to the Surrey Care Trust would give me immense pleasure – and, hopefully, SCVA satisfaction in the knowledge that the funds are going to a very deserving and, more importantly, effectual charity. (We have recently received the Queens’s Award for Voluntary Service. My little badge is available for display on application).

With all good wishes

Phillip

As will be explained in the Treasurer’s Report, we’ve been delighted to accede to Phillip’s request.

Lastly, I need to say a really big Thank You to all those in our community and in particular in the SCVA committee who work so hard to enable us to put on our events, check the Planning Applications, run Neighbourhood Watch, and especially, participate in the planning of events and catering. We have eight committee members at the moment, but more are always welcome..

It won’t surprise you to know that there are never enough volunteers, so if you find you’ve suddenly got just a little more time on your hands, would like to know much more about what is happening in and around this area and would like to contribute to your community, please speak to me after this meeting has finished.

That’s the end of the Chairman’s Report. I regret that it took so long, but I don’t apologise because I want you to be aware of all that your committee stands for. Indeed, the separate committee reports are about to follow, but you’ll be relieved to know that they are far shorter than mine.

So… on to The Treasurer’s Report…

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March 2015 AGM Councillors' Reports Here

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September Councillors' Briefing Here

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