MINUTES OF THE S.H.A.G.S. COMMITTEE
Meeting held on 12 February 2020 in the Ted Allen Room
In attendance: Mike Cobley (MC)(Chair); Carole Pamphlett (CP)(Treasurer); Peter Hicks (PDH) (Secretary); Roger Glanville (RMG)(Dep. Chair); Chris Overton (CO); Jim Machin (JM); Rod Cooley (RC); Dominic Houlihan (DH); Fraser Gordon (FG) and Geoff Bateman (GB)
Apologies: Irene Boogerman, Jane Keech, Linda Gahagan, Roger Gillett, Chris Wilson, Hazel Upton, Jenny Stevenson, John Myres, Keith Davison, Marcia Dorey, Roger White and Tom Chichester-Miles
Review of minutes from January
The minutes were approved, as were those from November and December.
1.2 Action Points from January meeting:
Three action points are outstanding, all of which remain awaiting a response from HTC: Hawthorn cuttings left lying on the Churchfield plot, the poor quality of the hedge-cutting at Sibley Avenue, and the movement of the barrier that currently prevents vehicular access to the Cross Lane site.
MC said that if HTC don’t respond before 25th February, the matters will be raised at the Allotments Working Party Meeting that evening.
2. Finance
CP circulated the year-end shop accounts, which reflect on a very good year. CP clarified that the £500 that the shop gives the Society annually should be classified as running costs rather than a donation. The Society pays for the electricity, insurance, and other costs across the year so the £500 can be considered a weekly amount of £9.62 to cover these costs.
The committee approved the Shop accounts.
MC confirmed that there was damage to the shop’s felt roofing during Storm Ciara at the weekend, with one piece removed altogether and a bigger piece flapping from the roof. There was some discussion about how to pay for repairs and CP confirmed she would check to see if our insurance would cover the repairs to the roof.
ACTION: CP to confirm if storm damage is covered by our insurance.
CP told the meeting that JM had worked hard to reduce the number of paper renewals to under fifty tenants. It is important that site reps should ensure that Jim is told if any tenants say they are planning to give up their plot. This reduced occurrences when renewals are sent out to tenants who complain they have told their site rep they weren’t renewing.
3. Site Matters
See Reports circulated.
MC reported a lot of damage at Aldwickbury during the weekend’s storm, but nothing serious. Most of the damage was on the bridle path that runs along the boundary so MC has informed the council of the damage.
MC said that Health & Safety Inspections need to be completed by the end of 31st March. Some sites are still missing a report form from 2019. The form was included in the pre-meeting paperwork distribution, and MC will send another e-mail to all site reps reminding them of the need to complete an H&S Inspection.
There will be a Site Reps meeting this year, provisionally scheduled for Saturday 25th April.
4. Lettings
JM reported that he had sent the latest letting summary to the council showing an impressive 98.6% occupancy. However that level has since decreased with a current occupancy of 97.7% and JM warned that the figure is likely to fall further once the renewals are calculated at the end of March.
JM raised the topic of wayleaves and a pending application from a plot-holder who is a tenant at the property adjoining the allotment site so there is some doubt if the landlord would agree to a gate in the property boundary.
There a number of gates into properties that are no longer used, and there was some discussion about what action to take with lapsed wayleave access gates. JM has asked the council if it were possible for the Society to block off unused access gates, but the council replied that we might be liable to criminal damage if we nailed a gate shut, and blocking a gate might also prevent escape by the householder in the event of an emergency.
It was established that the current and old wayleave agreement both contain a clause requiring the wayleave-holder to re-instate the previous boundary at their cost on conclusion of the wayleave agreement. The council have asked if there are any unused gates leading onto our sites. MC pointed out that site reps were asked to count any unused wayleave gates last year so we should have the figures to give to the council
5. Machinery
CO told the meeting that 16 out of 21 machines have now been serviced. Four are broken and need repair: three from Aldwickbury and the other from Oakley Road. The fifth machine is at Harpenden Rise, locked in a shed with a new padlock that CO was unable to open. The strimmers don’t need servicing, as all that would entail is the cleaning of the spark plug.
We think that the care of machinery could be improved if machinery sheds were kept clean and if instructions/checklists were clearly displayed in all machinery sheds. It is important for tenants to notify site reps if any machinery breaks. There was much discussion on how to keep machinery sheds tidy, with no clear conclusion.
There was a suggestion that the machinery budget should be split across sites so that each site would have a fixed budget to cover repairs/new machines and any site that overspent its budget would be penalised by not having broken machines repaired.
MC pointed out that the major issue with the mowers was that almost all the machines had chunks taken out of their blade due to stones. This can be partly attributed to a tendency for tenants to use the mower on their plots, contrary to the rules of the Society: this needs to be reported by Site Reps when known.
MC said he would add machinery to the agenda of the Site Reps meeting in April.
6. Projects/New Developments
RMG reported on some meetings of the Southdown Festival steering committee that he had attended. The dates of the festival have been confirmed as from Friday 11th September to Sunday 13th September. Planned events include an after-school children’s trail, a comedy night, music night, beer festival and Songs of Praise evening.
The main event that would interest us would be the Fete at Grove School, planned for Saturday. The suggestion is that we could have a stall at the fete to publicise what we can offer to new tenants. Options could be to display photographs of plots or vegetables grown by plot-holders, tours around Piggotshill and/or Aldwickbury sites, and an open day.
RC was involved with the fete late year and said that the day was well-attended with families, and would be an ideal opportunity for us to attract new tenants of all ages.
The committee expressed an interest in taking part and would decide exactly what form this would take in the coming months.
7. Shop
FG reported on a busy day at the Shop last Sunday with it being the first day seed potatoes were on sale, with one customer buying 14kg of potatoes! Takings were over £300.
FG also talked about the benefits of the marketing e-mails that are sent out which noticeably increase footfall at the shop.
FG also praised the bean-poles provided by the Aldwickbury coppice: he said that demand is outstripping supply with some members putting in advance orders for poles.
8. Communications
RC told the meeting that a new e-mail address had been set up for submission of the photo competition entries: [email protected].
Committee contact details have been updated on the website.
Various e-mail ha been sent out to carious members.
Peter Loveland’s annual seed potato descriptions have been updated on the website. FG reported that the pages were certainly beneficial as some of the shop customers had printed the potato pages and circled the variety they wanted to buy.
9. Newsletter
CP said that she had spoken to Irene who promised to forward CP a version once completed so that copies could be printed for collection at the first rent renewal date on 1st March.
10. A.O.B.
10.1 Grove Infant School Request:
There has been a request made by the Grove Infants School, through Hazel Upton, to use a plot at Aldwickbury. The plot in question is currently rented by one of the parents of a child at the school. At the moment, we aren’t certain if the school wants to rent the plot or send a small group of children as visitors of the parent.
RC told the meeting that one of his grandchildren was at the school and regularly goes to Greenway Spinney for Forest School lessons as part of organised groups, although the spinney is a managed project and therefore does not represent an accurate comparison to an allotment.
CO said that the school had been offered a plot a few years ago, and the offer was declined.
We need to ensure the safety regulations are strictly adhered to so it was agreed that PH would approach Hazel Upton to ascertain exactly what is being requested with a view to meeting with the school to establish the goals of this request, and how the plot would be managed, especially during school holidays.
ACTION: PH to contact Hazel Upton to clarify the details of the request.
10.2 2020 AGM:
PH announced that the 2020 Annual General Meeting would be held on Wednesday 20th May, starting at 20:00.
MC said that we were having trouble attracting more people to help with the responsibilities of managing the allotments with most sites looking for more Site Reps to help the existing reps.
JM suggested sending an e-mail to all members asking for volunteers to help run the Society.
Meeting closed at 20:56.
Date of Next Committee Meeting: 11th March 2020 at 19:15 in the Ted Allen Room