Annual General Meeting 2015 – Biggest yet

On Saturday the Trust held its twenty-seventh AGM at the Memorial Hall in Royal Wootton Bassett.  And it has to have been the biggest yet.  In the morning Members had the chance to visit the local work sites at Templars Firs, Chaddington, and Studley Grange.  The general reaction was delight at the progress being made in these areas.  In particular there was a surprised sense of how big the project at Studley Grange is – this is real engineering on a real canal!

When it came to the meeting itself, the hall was packed.  We had 162 members signed in, plus guests.  When you think that last year we had 123, it makes you realise how much support the members want to give, and how much interest they are showing in what is happening.

The Mayor and Mayoress of Royal Wootton Bassett were kind enough to visit us for the start of the meeting, and the mayor made some very encouraging remarks, recognising the canal as a great example of community involvement.

We then had most interesting presentations from our new Chairman, Roderick Bluh, and new Chief Executive, Jonathan Till.  Both recognised the scale of the task facing us, but set out how they intended to go about moving the project forward.  After a brief summary of the principles behind the proposed re-organisation of the Trust from me, Ken Oliver introduced the revised Restoration Strategy that the Trust has adopted.  He emphasised that it should become the essential guide to what we are doing and how we do it, but also that it has to be a living document, changing to take account of changing circumstances.  Finally Jock MacKenzie gave us an update on his overall progress in Masterplanning the canal, with particular reference to the very substantial progress on the Melksham Link.  He also gave some hints of some very exciting new projects in the pipeline.

With those talks done, we moved on to the formal business of the meeting.  Apart from the routine business of approving accounts etc, the meeting was asked to approve some changes in the Memorandum and Articles.  Some were ‘housekeeping’, but a number were necessary to enable the planned re-organisation to go ahead; members listened carefully to the explanation of the reasons behind this.  We moved on to the elections, and while the votes were being counted members had an opportunity in ‘Open Forum’ to ask any questions they liked, about the Trust and the canal.

Those directors retiring in rotation, and co-opted during the year, were all re-elected with substantial majorities.  Similarly the changes to the Articles were all accepted with large majorities.  That enables us to go ahead with the necessary changes, but we did emphasise that having accepted the principle of the re-organisation, there is still a great deal of detail to be worked out.  For that reason we are planning to hold another General Meeting some time early in the new year at which further changes to the Articles will be made if necessary, and members will have the chance to endorse overall the final shape of the re-organised Trust.

A large selection of Trust merchandise was on sale at the venue including new Christmas cards and calendars and a total of £907 was taken on the day. For anyone else wishing to buy cards and calendars contact Diana Hunter on diana.hunter@wbct.org.uk  or see details in Dragonfly magazine.  

The winning tickets for the Restoration Draw were drawn by our Chairman Roderick Bluh and all winners will be notified this week.

I would particularly like to thank Jenny Stratton and the members of the Wootton Basset branch for hosting the event, and for the smooth organisation of the day, as well as the Administration team who worked hard in the background.

In the meantime of course the business of the Trust continues, and good progress has been made in a number of areas in the recent past, but I will leave it to next week’s blogger to bring you updates.

Chris Coyle