2019 AGM
2019 Annual General Meeting held on 6th December. This meeting was held at Carrs Lane Church, Birmingham, following our 2019 conference.
PRESENT:
Helen Wilks, Jane Askey, Cliff Askey, Lisa Byrne, Andrew Preston, Mercy Nimako, Mark Tudor, Claire Robbins, Danny Morris, Naim Vali, Craig Hazlett, David Estabrook, James Pierce, Jay Cooper, Philippe Bonnett, Jamie Bridge, Nigel Brunsdon.
Welcome from Chair Philippe Bonnet
Philippe thanked everyone for coming and their help with the event organisation. He announced that he will be stepping down as NNEF chair.
NNEF Planning Group
Email list:
We need to review the Planning Group email list. Jamie will look to update this and review whether the Yahoo Group is still fit for purpose. Under new arrangements, Yahoo will be the group mail archive. Jamie asks for any planning group member who is not receiving the emails to contact Nigel Brunsdon via the NNEF website.
Planning group work:
Jamie has proposed in the absence of a volunteer to take on chair role, that the Planning Group could run as a collective chair.
Cliff Askey has agreed that he will be the representative to feed back to the NNEF from the Harm Reduction Group. Lisa Byrne has agreed to also do this with Cliff on an alternating basis.
Next event:
A suggestion that if the NNEF day event is in the summer (eg June) in between the DDN and HIT events (March and November respectively). Ideally a full meeting and a small meeting piggybacked onto another meeting, as per previous running would be ideal.
For an event we need people to do:
1) programme organiser (James Pierce and Mark Tutor have volunteered)
2) sponsorship management (Jamie Bridge has volunteered)
3) website/comms (Nigel Brunsdon has volunteered).
We need to consider an alternative venue for next event outside of Birmingham – meeting agreed this should be London, exact venue to be confirmed.
Nigel feels that to prevent lots of over-booking of the conference a small attendance donation be charged – such as £10. Concessions could be applied if necessary. This would cover refreshments costs. This can be done via Eventbrite. The meeting agreed this is a positive solution and Nigel will email the membership for a vote on their views on how to finance future events.
NNEF Executive Officers
Chair:
Philippe has announced he is stepping down as chair.
The forum needs an interim chair until a new chair can be elected.
The meeting noted that it would be ideal if there was a new chair who had recent or current experience of frontline needle exchange service delivery.
Treasurer:
Helen Wilks is happy to remain in this function.
Deputy Chair:
Nigel Brunsdon is continuing in this role.
Terms of Reference
No meeting discussion on these, they remain fit for purpose and should be formally reviewed at the next AGM.
Treasurer’s update
The accounts were displayed for the AGM members to view.
Helen advised that we are slowly spending the reserve in the bank account, we have lost a major sponsor (Daniels). The 2018 event run at a moderate loss, this year’s event will produce less of a loss, although this does depend on the number of speakers who subsequently claim travel. We have enough of a reserve to run one event with no sponsorship (although we are not planning to do so). The reserve enables us to fund planning group members to do other project work for NNEF. Jamie invited 20 sponsors however we had only 5. We need to increase the sponsorship fee slightly for future events.
Regional updates and AOB
- Jamie raised that this year it would be good to play a role in the mandation campaign, whatever this is shaped as after the upcoming general election.
- Nigel asked again for content for NNEF website – he did not receive any content for the website since the last AGM event. Jamie suggested this can be challenges being faced, good work being undertaken.
- Mystery Shopper project – Jamie stated there was a preliminary report of this on the limited data given, but there is some interest in this being re-developed. NNEF does need to complete this activity in partnership with another organisation – eg Exchange Supplies/Hep C Trust.
- We could use our NNEF Facebook page or the old needle exchange discussion group to network with members.
- Nigel – website needs rebuilding and updating which he will do at cost. AGM agreed for Nigel’s fee of £500 to complete this work for the forum.
- Dave Easterbrook requested a further harm reduction café. Nigel advises that the HR Café website does not exist at present but can be advertised on NNEF site. A venue and date will needs to be agreed.
- David Estabrook mentioned that the Sinclair method (Naltrexone for alcohol use) – would make an interesting session although some meeting members felt this stepped outside the core interests of NNEF.
Meeting closed at 17:00hrs