We invite you to attend our AGM which will be held on Thursday 20th July at 3pm in Church Hall, Market Street, Okehampton.
AGENDA
- Welcome, Introductions and Apologies for Absence.
- Agree Minutes of The AGM 2022.
- Matters Arising from those Minutes.
- Chairmans Report
Treasurers Report
Managers Report
- Adoption of Reports.
- Election of Committee Members including position of Vice-Chair
- Election of Officers, Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary.
- Any Other Business, provided notice has previously been given to the Chairman or Secretary.
- Date of Next AGM.
Followed by a Management Meeting
Okehampton District Community Transport Group
Ring & Ride And Community Car Service. Charity No. 1024617
Minutes Of The 32nd Annual General Meeting Held On
THURSDAY 21ST JULY 2022 At 3 pm
CHURCH HALL, MARKET STREET, OKEHAMPTON
Present: Tony Leech (Chairman), S. Wonnacott (Manager), Lyn Evans (Trustee), Brian Wood (Trustee), ,Karen Percival (OUC), Ann Wood(Volunteer Driver), Michael Bennett (Volunteer Driver), Val Thunem, Florence Glover
Apologies: Amanda Jones (Trustee), Graham Harding (Treasurer), Karen Rose (DCC), Pat Sawyer (Trustee), Cllr Julie Yelland, Lisa Smith (Assistant Manager), Liz Westlake, Jan Goffey
Tony Leech opened the meeting by welcoming all those present. He asked whether anyone had any comments on the Minutes of the last Annual general Meeting. It was proposed by Michael Bennett and seconded by Brian Wood that the minutes be adopted. All in agreement.
Matters Arising: No progress on the possibility of an electrical charge point at the business centre.
Chairmans Report: Tony added that he wished to thank Sue for the extra work during the last couple of weeks due to Lisa being absent with Covid.
Treasurers Report: Sue added we had another invoice for HV16NXU for fault with throttle pedal and o/s/r wheel sensor. WA70SJO is going into Mercedes in Exeter under warranty for a new NOX sensor.
Managers Report: Lisa has been away with a bad case of Covid, we wish her a speedy recovery.
Adoption of Reports: Proposed by Lyn Evans and seconded by Brian Wood that all reports should be adopted. All in agreement.
Election of Officers: It was proposed by Brian Wood and seconded by Ann Wood that Tony Leech should continue as Chair. Graham will continue as Treasurer, proposed by Brian, seconded by Ann. It was proposed by Val Thunem and seconded by Karen that Sue Wonnacott become the new Secretary. It was proposed by Ann Wood that Lyn Evans become the new Vice Chair, seconded by Brian Wood. All in agreement.
Adoption of the new Constitution: Proposed by Ann Wood and seconded by Brian Wood that it be adopted. All in favour.
Any Other Business: None
Date of Next AGM: Thursday 20th July 2023 3pm
Community Transport AGM Report 2023
Another very eventful year, and I would like to thank Sue for keeping the whole show on the road, especially after Liz left, and the training of new people did last a lot longer than anticipated. Many thanks to Sarah for all she has done since joining our little band and for how well she has settled into what is, a one-off complicated system that we have in place today.
As I have said on more than one occasion, nothing would be possible if it were not for all the volunteers, past and present, who are often the unsung heroes and heroines of our communities, so I would like to thank them too. We do however need more volunteers to come forward as the amount of people requiring our services has risen considerably, which often means that we end up having to disappoint several would-be clients.
I would also like to welcome Tony, who is our newest Trustee and to say thank you to Mr Brian Wood, for his input while he was a Trustee. I must also thank Graham for continuing to be our treasurer, and although he emigrated back to the east of the country, he has always been ready to help when required.
Funding is still one of our main problems. We did get a two-year grant deal from West Devon, but our rent went up as anticipated and with the cost of everything else going up, we end up financially going backwards instead of forwards. Fundraising has to be our priority going forward.
The cost-of-living crisis that we all find ourselves in is not going away any time soon, and with prices rising still, it is making it very difficult for us to keep our prices down, and even more difficult for our volunteer drivers to keep running their vehicles. We must also not forget that our passengers may be put in the position of not having enough money to be able to travel to their appointments etc. Government has made a lot out of asking our communities to do more and more volunteering, but they still do not understand or recognise the fact that this still needs core funding. I guess the next two years will be the time to press our local MPs to do something about it. A good start would be for them to provide funding to the NHS to pass onto us, as most of our trips are for medical reasons.
Now that it has been confirmed that money is available for the creation of a Transport Hub in Okehampton, we will have the second station built within the next two years and there will be money to develop alternative forms of transport, so I am hoping in the year ahead that we can be included in the decision making, as, unless general public transport improves, we will be needed more than ever. To be able to do this properly, we will need to look at how we operate now and make changes that will require more funding. Let’s hope that we can get hold of some of any leftover Transport Hub funding to help our overall situation.
Tony Leech
Chairman of the Okehampton and District Community Transport Group.
ODCTG—TREASURERS REPORT FOR THE AGM on 20th July 2023
The accounts to 31st March 2023 show a deficit for the year of £14150, which is in line with the forecast that I made at this time last year. Despite this loss our reserves were a healthy £50122 at the end of the year.
Expenditure was higher with increased vehicle maintenance costs, particularly for the second Mercedes minibus tail lift, and staff costs as a result of the changes in the office. There was little time available to make funding applications and this is reflected in our reduced income.
We purchased the new Citroen for £20720, and we sold the old one for £3800
We received £22494 from DCC for our school contract and grants of £16885 from DCC and £6533 from WDBC. £4645 was received from Okehampton Town Council, Okehampton Hamlets and our local Parish Councils.
The sale of goods and the 100 Club provided over £4000 of welcome funding.
We received £1000 from the Charities Trust and a Local Giving Magic Grant of £500.
Donations of £2000 and £1000 were received from two very generous supporters.
The current financial year is very difficult to assess. It has started very well with a grant from the Masonic Charitable Trust of £5000, with the same figure promised for the next two years. Another £2000 has been donated by our super supporter. Vehicle costs are under control with a change in garage and a scheduled tail lift maintenance programme.
However, we face increases in costs for staff, rent, and fuel during these difficult times and we will need to attract substantial additional funding to avoid another significant reduction in our reserves.
Graham Harding
Treasurer
23rd June 2023
OKEHAMPTON & DISTRICT COMMUNITY TRANSPORT GROUP
AGM – 20th JULY 2023
MANAGERS REPORT
We had more changes in the office as Lisa left after 8 months so I worked on my own for a while until we were able to welcome a new Assistant. Sarah Packer started with us in January 2023 and is now settled into the role.
We have continued to have a huge increase in the number of new clients registering for our services which in turn has increased the number of requests we are receiving. Unfortunately this has led to us having to decline some bookings as our volunteers can only do so much! This is very disappointing to us and we are doing our best to recruit more volunteers to enable us to cover as many as possible.
STATISTICS
Ring & Ride – The annual figures have started to return to normal with 889 passengers being taken shopping into Okehampton and 12719 miles covered from April 2022 to March 2023.
Lifestyle Trips – These trips have become popular with an increase in new clients and people wanting to take advantage of a day out now that restrictions have been removed, we have taken 603 passengers to various destinations, covering 5196 miles. Often we have had to put on an extra vehicle so that we don’t disappoint anyone.
We also had 30 private hires for our bus.
Volunteer Car & Wheelchair Accessible Scheme
April 2022 to March 2023
We carried 3130 passengers, 149 in wheelchairs on 5210 journeys. We received 642 cancellations and were unable to help 232 requests, mainly due to the extremely short notice provided but also the high demand on our volunteers. Our drivers covered 97658 miles and donated 8500 volunteer hours assisting our clients.
This scheme costs £26000 per year to run.
We were able to hold our Coffee Mornings in the Autumn and Spring and have sold many donated items on the local Facebook pages direct from our office and Liz and Tom have been attending car boot sales at weekends when the weather has permitted, which has brought in some much needed funds. We are so grateful to everyone for continuing to support us by offering us goods for sale. We are grateful to one of our volunteer drivers, Lindsey, for the use of his garage for storage.
We have welcomed several new drivers to our group (Val Barns, Sticklepath, Angus Farrelly, Okehampton, Richard Fuller, Okehampton, Lawrence Harris, Okehampton, Penny Meadows, Okehampton, Debbie Scott, Whiddon Down, Michael Scutt, Bridestowe and John Thorp, Sticklepath) which has been great as some of our regular drivers had to stand down for a while for their own health reasons. Sadly we lost three of our drivers, Alan Perrott, Chris Bloor and Scilla West, they are much missed by us all. We are still very keen to find volunteers in both the Chagford/Whiddon Down area and also Lewdown area as these are both on the edge of our area and with other schemes not currently running, we have had to send our volunteers long distances to cover requests which is not economically viable but we do not want to refuse any requests and have recently helped clients outside of our area as they had no alternative options.
We had a Christmas meal at The London Inn in December for our Volunteers, Trustees and Staff. We also held an Afternoon Tea on June 6th & 7th as part of Volunteers Week to thank our volunteers for their unstinting dedication to helping our clients despite the recent challenges and increased demand in requests.
I have continued to take part in meetings with both Devon Community Transport Network and Southern Area Car Forum, by Microsoft Teams to share information with my colleagues in other groups. The Car Forum produced a report to showcase our services and how they helped our communities during the last 2 years. They have recently started a campaign to encourage more volunteer drivers and have shared a new poster with us for distribution.
We attended the Rotary Fair as part of the Queens Platinum Jubilee Celebrations.
I attended a Coffee Morning at Belstone and a Community Links Coffee Morning at Refresh to share information about our services.
I would like to thank Simon Hill for all his help with our website. I would also like to thank Glyn Williams, our new Minibus driver who has been taking our clients on the Tuesday Lifestyle trips and also Michael Scutt who has taken some trips on a Saturday and other midweek trips when available and given us some new ideas for destinations.
I continue to apply for grants to enable our services to keep running, this is proving more difficult each year with more charities all applying for the same pots of money!
We are grateful to our local Parish Councils for their continued support.
Thank you to everyone who nominated us for a Movement for Good Award, we were lucky to be one of the 250 groups chosen to receive £1000. We used this to continue to subsidise our fares for our lifestyle trips.
We thank Lynn Lane and the Forget-me-not Café who disbanded recently and generously donated their remaining funds of £500 to us as many of their clients had used our services too.
We also thank Jane Taylor and The New Inn, Sampford Courtenay for fundraising for us. We really appreciate the support we receive from our community and clients.
I recently applied for a grant from the Masonic Charitable Foundation and was thrilled to receive the promise of £5000 per year for 3 years, this is a huge help to continue our core services. I was also asked to attend the Okehampton Lodge to receive a donation of £300.
Sue Wonnacott