Download Report

CENTRAL STERILISING CLUB
Annual General Meeting
Forest of Arden Marriott Hotel, Meriden, Birmingham
16:45h Monday 7th April 2014
Minutes of the 2014 CSC AGM
Present: Present: Wayne Spencer (Chair), Jimmy Walker (sec), Jim Reid (Treasurer),
Rose Gallagher (web master), Paul Jenkins, Paul McAdams, Sarah Whitehead, Gill
Ellis-Pow, John Prendergast, Tina Bradley, Gillian Sills, Bob Kingston, Les Kingston,
Richard Bancroft, Phil Harding, Karen Tweed, Caroline Robinson, John Straiton, Andrew
Smith, Olga Sleigh, Karen Staniforth, Barbara Casey, Ronan Mackey, Moya Alexander,
Stuart Line, Dale Kryuoblocki, Becky Lacey, John Prendergast, Malcolm Card, Robert
Spencer, John Hill, Graham Stanton, Simon Richards, Andrew Birch, Craig Mackintosh,
Terry Easy.
1. Apologies for absence
No apologies received by the committee.
2. Minutes of the AGM held at Marriott Hotel, Bristol, April 15th 2014
The minutes of the 2014 CSC AGM were agreed by those present.
Proposed by GEP and seconded by Bob Kingston.
3. Matters arising
All matters arising from the 2013 CSC AGM had previously been dealt with.
WS informed the members that Rosemary Simpson’s inquest was reported in the
Evening standard recently as an accidental death – this was particularly upsetting as the
driver had gone through the pedestrian crossing on an amber light.
4. Chairman’s report
See attached for the full report.
In his third and final report as CSC Chairman, WS discussed that the CSC is a useful
format for making friends and networking - much better than social networking such as
Facebook and Twitter. The new CSC website has been up and running since the
autumn study day in 2013 and gives the Club a fresh new look. Study day feedback was
positive and we would like to ask you to suggest what you, the members, would like to
hear at CSC study day in the autumn of 2015. The CSC Chair attended IPS and IDSc
meetings and was grateful to be invited and pleased with the continued collaboration
with those organisations. CSC consulted on a number of guidelines through the year.
The chair of the IDSc had started a decontamination forum known as the Professional
Experts Communication Forum (PECF) and CSC have contributed to the two meetings
that have taken place (minutes will appear on the CSC website member’s area in due
course). A joint letter with PECF was also published. WS will continue to attend BSI
meetings (as CSC representative) and will provide feedback to CSC and the new CSC
Chair will also attend BSI meetings (in a different capacity). WS also attended the BSI
meeting in Sydney, Australia and at that meeting reflected the views of Gillian Sills who
was unable to attend.
Following the annual scientific meeting in 2013 there had been a number of complaints
from members that a number of the scientific presentations were too commercially
biased. As a result of this, the CSC committee wrote a Terms of Agreement for invited
speakers that is now sent to all invited scientific speakers to ensure that their talks are
not commercially biased.
WS explained that he was very saddened that this was his last AGM as Chairman and
the only upside is being able to hand over the archive (5 boxes) to the new Chair as he
really needed the space back.
WS then took great pleasure in announcing that Tina Bradley will be the next and first
female chair of the CSC. He expressed a huge thanks to the other officers of the
committee including Rose Gallagher, Jim Reid, Jimmy Walker and Paul McAdams as
well as to the other committee members who were immensely supportive to him during
his three years.
The Chair’s last announcement was that of three new honorary members. The first has
served a number of committee positions over a long period of time including Chairman
and the Chair took the opportunity to congratulate Dr Robert Spencer. The second
distinguished appointment was that of Craig MacKintosh who served a 10 year period
on committee including that of secretary. The third Honorary Membership goes to our
South African member who first spoke at CSC in 1994. Her ceaseless promotion of
decontamination standards through the WHO had carried the aims of the club to a much
wider audience and WS proudly announced the award to Dr. Shaheen Mehtar –
Shaheen was very proud to receive this award as she has many fond memories of the
club and was saddened that she was not able to be here today to receive the award as
she already had prior commitments.
5. Secretary’s report
I would like to thank the committee for their support during the last year for attending
and participating so enthusiastically in committee meetings. There have been face to
face committee meetings held in July, September and December at 5 St Philips Place,
Birmingham.
Teleconferences were held in June, August and September. There has been good
attendance from all the committee members at both types of meetings.
The committee met four times through the year in July, September, December and April
in Birmingham with teleconferences in June, August and March, all of which were well
attended. Minutes from the meetings will eventually be available via the members only
secure area of the website. Meetings in Birmingham resulted in reduced costs
compared to the committee meetings that were previously held in London. I would like
to thank all the speakers whom I have contacted in the last year for responding to
requests for information, titles of presentations, power-point files and biographies. The
secretary asked all those present to ensure that they had signed the AGM attendance
book which was handed round.
The secretary concluded his report for 2014.
6. Treasurer’s report
Mr Jim Reid provided his treasurers report for the year to date (see attached). The
financial year for CSC is January to December, whereas the membership year runs from
April to March.
Bank balance at end of December 2013 was £83K, up from £77K. Total funds were up
from £81K to £92K and over that period the club had paid the Marriott more money in
deposits than the previous year (£9,000 – compared to £4,642 in 2012). Overall, the
CSC has shown an increase of £11,025 over the year compared to 2013.
Membership income monies have reduced from £4725 (2012) to £2,044 (2013) and
whilst this is of concern, there was a push for historical outstanding monies in 2012
which gave an artificially inflated look to that years figures. The membership secretary
will provide more detail in his report. The treasurer requested that members please
make an effort to pay by standing order and discussed that one way of doing this was to
offer those members who pay by SO a reduced membership fee of £10 whilst the cost of
membership to those that pay by any other means would be £20.
Gillian Sills asked whether the CSC was able to coerce members in to this situation?
JR/WS responded by saying that the CSC is in fact offering a discount to our members
and that this proposal will be worded to that effect.
Caroline Robinson asked what is the true cost of chasing members.
JR responded that a considerable amount of time is spent chasing lapsed members and
then there is the cost for paper and postage
Stuart Line indicated support for this approach as this is something that Treasurer has to
do as collecting and chasing membership monies is very time consuming.
Bob Kingston asked what about members whose membership had lapsed beyond their
current time period and they had not paid?
WS explained that the committee has discussed a number of the concerns that
members were raising. The CSC has a number of options including charging a joining
fee or asking members to pay by direct debit (for which there is a fee), however the
committee favoured asking all new members to pay by SO (from next year). The
members were asked if they supported this approach which was suggested by SW as
the Scottish microbiology society currently takes this approach and it seems to have
been a success for them.
WS would like to propose that this proposal is put as a formal vote at the 2015 AGM.
Simon Richards asked how much money will this bring in? Or is it an administrative
issue?
WS/JR responded that this will be dealt with later in the discussion but this is not about
money as the membership income is a small part of the CSC’s overall finances.
Those present at the AGM indicated that the potential for charging membership at £10
for SO and £20 by other payment means will be proposed at the 2015 AGM.
Committee expenses have reduced over the year from £3.9K to £3.5K due to relocation
to Birmingham which is cheaper for most of the committee compared to London.
Postage has reduced (from £925 to £107) as more information is sent via electronic
means.
Computer costs have risen to £1684 as the website has been improved and web
designers contracted for this work.
Our main event of the annual scientific meeting in 2013 showed a surplus of £13K
despite putting in a small membership discount as we wanted to see the surplus
generated from the meeting going back to the members. Rooms were handed back in
Edinburgh and the hotel was able to sell on the rooms. Speakers expenses were also
less than the previous year particularly the costs for the Kelsey Speaker as Professor
Rutala had flown over from the USA the previous year.
The study day was well attended again and although a discount had been offered, the
event was successful and a surplus of £2k income was generated. The members
discount worked well but members need to ensure that they can find their membership
number so that a discount can be given.
So in effect the club has generated a cash surplus again this year. To negate this yearon-year we are proposing to fund a free study for members next year for which
members would have to pay a returnable deposit to ensure that those applying will
attend.
Robert Spencer indicated that he thought that it was a good idea and that he supported
this approach.
There had been no applications for the Hurrell Simpson training award and we would
like to ask the members to think about applying for this money which could be used for
training course or conferences.
GS suggested asking GEP to put into the IDSc journal.
Action: GEP to place an article about the CSC Hurrell Simpson Training award
into the IDSc Journal.
Members were asked to agree the minutes.
Proposed by: Phil Harding
Seconded by: Gillian Sills
The treasurer concluded their report for 2014.
7. Membership Secretary’s report
Paul McAdams indicated that this new membership secretary’s role has required the
CSC to purchase new membership software to enable us to keep track of members and
their fees. However, he indicated that the collection of membership fees has been much
more difficult than he anticipated. Those members who are in payment arrears have
been contacted asking them to renew and as discussed above we wish to bring in the
discount for those members paying by SO. These new changes will be in place at the
2015 AGM and in the meantime he will concentrate on generating membership renewals
in the standard way using email and postage. A one-off membership card has reduced
the administrative burden and he will notify all members of their membership number in
due course.
WS indicated that there are very few members who come to the annual scientific
meeting who are not fully paid up members.
Karen Staniforth indicated that she was convinced that she was a member and was
shocked to hear that she was a lapsed member – her SO had not gone through but she
was not aware of that. She also queried whether the members area will only be
available to paid up members
WS indicated that yes the members area would only be available to paid up members.
The membership secretary concluded his report for 2014.
8. Editor /Webmaster report
Rose Gallagher reported that the newsletter was published twice in the last year.
Informal feedback on content and quality has been positive. CSC welcomes the input of
the members - after all this is your newsletter. Next newsletter will be in time for next
study day and will be placed on the CSC website and Facebook. When the newsletter
was published we got 3 times more hits on Facebook so people are interested in our
news and views. The newsletter is getting longer which is a worry, in terms of time
required but at the same time a healthy indicator. Rose said she would like to thank all
who contributed.
The new website was launched at the study day and new software is easier to use and
to update information. Member’s area will be developed in Summer 2014 and hopefully
launched at the next study day.
Richard Bancroft indicated that when you search in Google the first hit is on the old web
site.
WS indicated that CSC would have to pay Google to prioritise our site but the new one
should become the prioritised hit over time. RG encouraged all the members to click on
the proper www as that will then be favoured.
RG indicated that most of the hits on the website are associated with the newsletter
release.
Twitter is predominately used for the annual scientific conference and study day and the
CSC twitter account will not have a high profile outside of those events. There is a
statement on our twitter account that we do not endorse companies just because CSC
follows a company.
GEP asked whether we can use any of our surplus to pay for Google enhancement i.e.
prioritization of the CSC site?
WS indicated that this would be an expensive approach and the surplus could be better
used supporting other member activities.
The webmaster/editor concluded her report for the 2014 AGM.
9. Committee membership
Since the notifications of the AGM went out VOB has resigned due to relocation. WS
has discussed this with the committee and TB has agreed to run with 11 members until
next committee meeting and has the option of co-opting a member to the vacant position
until that position is filled at the next AGM
10. Conference date and venue 2015
St Pierre Hotel in Chepstow on the 13 and 14th April.
11. Any other business
Bob Spencer thanked WS for his three years’ service to CSC as Chair and all the work
that he put into the CSC during your term on the committee.
Gillian Sills thanked the committee for proper minutes that describe what was discussed,
for excellent accounts and for WS for his attendance at the meeting in Sydney,
Australia.
12. Date and venue of next AGM
13th April 2015 at 16.45h in the St Pierre Hotel in Chepstow.
Jimmy Walker
Secretary
Central Sterilising Club