Annual General Meeting of the Hayling Island Gorron Twinning Association
14 March 2025
Attended by 21 Members.
1. Welcome to Members: The Chairman welcomed and thanked all the members attending the meeting. Apologies from Dave Collins, Moira Ratcliffe and Lynda Dabinett.
2. President’s Address:
“I would like to commend the amazing work and commitment the committee has achieved over this year and the commitment and hard work and subsequent success since the beginning of our wonderful twinning.
Tony – you have been and continue to be a fantastic chairman. It’s an absolute pleasure to be in this twinning with you, and long may it continue. Thank you for everything you bring to this association.
To all of the other committee members, without you this association would fall apart. We have a unique twinning, and we have built a very special relationship between our two communities. It is with gratitude, and heartfelt thanks to all of you for your hard work, that we are still enjoying this experience together as a long-standing team. Personally, I am very proud of our association and what we have achieved – thank you for being here and keeping this a very active twinning association.
Since 1998 we have built and maintained friendship, not only within our own twinning but also with our French friends and I am positive we will continue to grow our friendships and relationships with a new generation of members across both sides of la Manche! So may I raise a toast all of you for everything we have achieved as a team and friends!”
3. Adoption of Previous Year’s Minutes: Proposed by Rosy Raines and seconded by Maggie Bridgman, the previous minutes were duly adopted.
4. Chairman’s Report: See below
5. Treasurer’s Report: See below
6. Membership Secretary’s Report: We currently have 81 members.
7. Ale-Ing Festival Report: See below.
8. Proposals Raised for Consideration: None.
9 Committee Members:
Chairman: Tony George
Secretary: Vi Sykes
Treasurer: Stacey Carter
Committee: Allen Fischer; Kathy Fischer; Rosy Raines; Graham Raines; Sue Loveridge; Dave Collins; Dudley Clarke-Jervoise
Proposed by Peter Loveridge, seconded by Maggie Bridgman and agreed
by all.
10. Any Other Business: None
Chairmans report to the AGM 2025
Since inheriting the mantle of chair at last years agm it has been my pleasure to help steer the association along.
Firstly, a quick summary of the year.
It was our turn to visit Gorron in 2024 and it was great fun. We could not justify the cost of a coach this year but fortunately had enough drivers to cover most of our trippers but a few made it along as foot passengers relying on getting lifts from and to the ferry on each side of the channel.
Sue and Peter hosted the summer BBQ and we are eternally grateful for the use of their garden for this event. Good food and company.
October once again saw the Ale-Fest running at the Community Centre. This is always our biggest event and fundraiser but this year was more difficult. It was still successful however and thanks go out to all that made it so.
This was followed by a curry night at the Yew Tree which was well attended but unfortunately, I was double booked and couldn’t attend.
We rounded off 2024 with the quiz night and thanks to Allan and Kathy for putting this together. Sadly, they could not make the event itself and everyone had to put up with me as substitute quizmaster.
The first event of 2025 was our dinner at the West Town Inn. This received a mixed review as it was general felt that it was not as good as last year and some dishes were better than others. Maybe time for a rethink in the future.
Changes & the future
There is now a WhatsApp group that has been set up to streamline the communications between our committee and our counterparts in Gorron. Thanks must go to Laura Huard for initiating this.
On our side we are starting a refresh of our website and other media platforms to update them and hopefully make them more user friendly and visually pleasing. Many thanks to Brian for his involvement with this.
Our monthly committee meetings go on as usual and from April onwards we will once again open these up into a social get together and invite members to come and joins us for a drink and a natter. These were no so well attended last but invites will go out via email and it would be great to see more members there for a bit of social interaction.
We are now rushing towards hosting our counterparts from Gorron with much still to do, but I am sure we will have a great time.
Thanks for your support.
Tony.
Treasurer’s Report AGM 14.03.2025
The opening bank balance of the Twinning Account on 1st January 2024 was £5,487.93.
We received a total income of £1,638.00 from the year’s social events. Membership fees totalled £290.00. We also received £5,000.00 from the Ale-ing Fest 2023 at last year’s AGM.
Event expenses for the year totalled £4,800.72 with the majority of this, £2,760.00, due to subsidies for the exchange visit in May 2024. We gave donations of £500.00 each to the RNLI and Heart of Hayling Boxing. The other expenses paid in this financial year were for our public liability insurance £224.92, rent and a plinth for our library display £75.00, and the website hosting £72.00.
To summarise, our total income for the year was £6,928.00 and expenses were £6,172.64 resulting in a credit for the year of £755.36. The closing balance of the account at 31 December 2024 was £6,243.29.
The Ale-ing Fest opening bank balance at the beginning of 2024 was £6,129.94. The total income received into the account was £14,588.30.
Expenditure from the account totalled £13,662.51 which included the £5,000.00 presented at last year’s AGM. The Ale-ing Fest 2024 made a profit of just over £6,000.00. The closing balance for 2024 was £7,055.73.
Ale-ing Fest – a brief summary
I will not say too much about this event as much has already been reported, however here is a quick update.
Once again the Ale-ing Fest was successful, and many happy people came along over the 2 days of the event.
This was despite the problems we encountered regarding late delivery and touch and go H&S issues with the venue. These were thankfully overcome and huge thanks to all that helped make the event run as well as it did.
However after thinking long and hard the committee has decided not to proceed with an event in 2025, allowing a ‘fallow’ year for recovery and a rethink but we will be back in 2026 and probably thereafter every 2 years instead of every year.
Thanks once again to all the put their all into the Fest.
Tony.