Outgoing President’s report to 2024 AGM

Another year has flown by, and, as the Club’s activity has returned to pre-pandemic levels, this has been a busy year for the Committee, on two broad main fronts:-

Firstly, as you will have seen from the Club’s programme of activities for the coming year, we have continued to attempt to offer opportunities for both retired and currently employed Members to meet with former and current colleagues, to reinforce existing friendships, and make some new ones.  

You will have noticed that we have continued to modify the programme to include trips that are hopefully more attractive and conveniently timed for currently employed Members and their families, whilst still being of interest to our retired Members.  This is proving quite a difficult balance to achieve, and will require more effort to get it right.  Get it right we must, because the number of “active” retired Members (currently less than 100) is decreasing, and unless the activity of the currently employed Members is significantly increased, our current programme of events will cease to be viable.

The attracting of more long-serving current employees into Membership continues to be seen as an essential action to ensure the Club’s longer term survival.  We have had 2 recruitment events in Frank’s this year, and have ongoing quarterly recruitment events planned.  As you heard from our Membership Secretary Anna, we now have 90+ currently employed Members, but as a result of the sad loss of some retired Members, and some Members leaving the Company during the recent “slimming down”, our membership has fallen during the first quarter to 482.

Secondly, the project which was set up, under the Leadership of Bill Guest in 2023, to identify what needed to be done to ensure the longer term survival of the Club, is becoming more important and essential.  The sub-teams that have been set up to look in detail at the main subject areas are now meeting, analysing the subject areas, and developing and implementing detailed action plans.  I will leave Bill to tell you about the progress so far, later in this meeting.

One of the areas that will certainly change in the near future will be how we communicate with our Members.  I know that electronic mail and payment systems are sometimes difficult to people of my generation, but as I said in the letter in our Programme Booklet, the required speed of response, and the rising cost of postal and printing charges, are driving us in that direction.  Our website, superbly maintained by our Webmaster, David Foster, is very user friendly, and I would urge Members to use it to their full advantage.

As I step down as President, I would like to thank the hard working Committee Members for all their help, advice, and support that they have given me over my term in office.

I hope that the Committee can count on your continuing support in our work to keep the Long Service Club thriving, and fulfilling its objectives, for many years to come.

Thank you.

Garth Perry