Welcome everybody and thank you for attending the 2024 AGM. The agenda for our AGM is very straightforward, I will be asking shortly if there are any comments on the minutes from last year, I will then ask the officers on the committee to present, followed by the discipline leads with a “short” overview of the year. We then move to electing the officers and members for next year’s committee, before any changes to membership fees or constitutional changes. We will have an AOB where people can raise questions to the committee. After this point, we will break to enjoy the culinary delights of Aaron Healey’s cooking (many thanks Araon for volunteering to prepare the food) and we will resume fully energised to the fun part of the evening – the allocation of trophies.
The minutes have been circulated from the last AGM, are we happy to accept them? I will then move on, take the lead with the Chair report overview.
Our club continues to offer varied paddling opportunities to the population of Bristol and surrounding areas (per the constitution) across four main disciplines racing, white water, canoe polo and what I refer to as General Paddling e.g. sea & surf canoeing, open boat canoeing, slalom (?) and social paddling.
I do want to emphasise that as both a club and a committee, we are fully supportive of all these disciplines (RACING, WW, POLO and GENERAL), and we want to encourage participation at all levels whether it is in competition, training, coaching, trying different ability levels such WW Grade 1 to 5, or simply socialising. I think it is therefore fair to say that as a Club we can offer a more varied participation in the distinct types of canoeing, kayaking and paddling for our members than most other clubs, in the wider Bristol area.
We also offer several structured beginners’ courses, which help attract people who are completely new to paddling and I would like to thank those members who have helped our coaches in those sessions during the year.
I am also thrilled to see how Racing has developed over the Year with regular training sessions, taster sessions, the demo event at the Bristol Harbour festival and our first Racing regatta last weekend. We on the committee want to support the growth of Racing, along with the other disciplines and it has been great having Mark Heeley voicing the needs of Racing on the Committee, which has been underrepresented in previous years. I want to particularly thank Mark Heelly for organising this regatta which I know was very challenging for a range of reasons – mainly outside of our control. I do hope this sets a new standard of achievement for the racing discipline, we secondly, that we have additional members of the Racing Discipline participating on the Committee next year, to work with Mark and help drive this discipline forward further.
This year the Committee welcomed several new members who had not sat on the committee before, and I would like to thank both them and the rest of the committee for their participation and forthright views that were expressed during the committee meetings. We record the Committee minutes and if any member wants to see them, please contact the secretary. I should add we are looking at publishing the minutes on our website for members, but this requires some changes to our website. Some of the highlights from our meeting are as follows:
We introduced a formal budgeting process this year where all discipline leads where invited to prepare their budget requirements. Naturally, this assimilated into the need for a humongous amount of money, but it focused our minds on what was needed and what might be nice to have! I think we bought a canoe trolley!!!!
We reviewed our electronic systems where we have a variety of disconnected systems such as Website, Web Collect, Zettle, Facebook, Groups.IO and WhatsApp. One option is to modernise and introduce a single management package such as Spond and JUSTGO, but this requires further evaluation.
We introduced a training bursary for people wanting to do paddle-based training courses that can be of value to the rest of the club. The bursary provides a mechanism to reimburse a 1/3 of the training fees per year over a 3-year period. This policy is published on our website, along with all our operating procedures so if you are interested, please apply.
I am sure you have all feverishly been reading my “Letter from the Chair”, which gives an outline of what we have been discussing on the committee. I hope this provides useful updates and please contact me if you have any feedback.
Impressively, Keats has taken us into the Fashion Business with newly branded hoodies, rash vests and T shirts with our new logo. I am sure Keats will advertise these further later on.
We have also been discussing the Club’s role in the Harbour Shaping Strategy and Western Harbour masterplan. Representatives from the committee have attended a club forum called the “Baltic Wharf Working Group”. I have emailed members these documents, and encourage you all to review and respond individually, as both canoeists and citizens of Bristol.
Back in the summer, we made the weighty decision to move our pool night to Mondays, which seems to have worked while saving us 18% in pool fees each week.
Both Dave Brain and Colin Chudley have completed a massive amount of work rationalising our equipment and reorganising our storage facilities at the Baltic Wharf and the Pool. This last subject regarding Storage has been a very controversial subject on the Committee this year. Racing have been particularly vociferous about this, but I want to say strongly to all members, we as a committee must balance the offering of easy access to our club assets against the obvious issue of security and safety – for both our equipment and members. Yes, it would be great to give every member free access to the cage, so they can use boats whenever they want. We absolutely want to see more members using canoes, especially on the docks, demonstrating the benefits and enjoyment we all share in canoeing to the many people who walk besides the harbour. However, we do not have unlimited storage space, though we have recently made great strides to open more space up, but its primarily there for club boats suitable for members to try out different forms of paddling and get into the sport or a new discipline. With the remaining space, we offer personal storage to members wanting to use their boats at the docks or have difficulties storing equipment at home. We have space and application forms for storage are on the website.
I am proposing a simplified process for boat storage application at the next committee meeting, and we will also review the gatekeeper policy for members wanting to access the Cage. However, let’s be clear, we need some rules (I’m happy to debate this offline the pros and cons), but suffice to say, we need to consider the risks of members taking boats down from our racks, security of club and indeed personal boats, the equipment’s proper maintenance prior to usage, as well as ensuring that paddlers going off, even on the docks, know the risks and dangers – especially when paddling alone.
On the subject of procedures, it is very important that as a Club we continually improve our policies and operating procedures, in the face of current trends for risk aversion, safeguarding, litigation etc. Paddle UK offer a baselining process as part of their Quality Club accreditation, which may be beneficial for us attracting new members. However, the accreditation’s real value to us is comparing our current governance, affiliation, safeguarding, operating policies & risk assessment against best practise and indeed other clubs. Some of it is particularly challenging, such as youth safeguarding, which is aimed at clubs with a large youth group and is a demographic we do not attract currently. So this baseline process will allow us to satisfy ourselves that as a committee, and indeed the officers – who are liable, have put in place appropriate policies should something untoward happens in the future.
Lastly, I want to thank the committee for their time and contribution throughout the year and both Dave and Colin for all their work tidying up the cage’s storage at the pool while also helping to maintain the boats. I would also like to thank the many other members have also assisted in the organising, teaching and leading socials/trips/activities/competitions. This community spirit of investing things back to the club, is basis of this Club’s success in the future.
Finally, I would like to encourage you all to communicate your opinions on the Club to your discipline leads, members of the committee you know and/or me (if I continue as Chair). We on the Committee really want to hear if you have criticisms and suggestions, to improve the Club. You are also very welcome to join the Committee, we have an election next, so either stand and help us build a better club or simply attend a meeting – they are all published on the website.
So, in conclusion it has been an interesting year for the Committee, and we have much work to do in the future. Thank you everyone and I’ll pass over to the Secretary.
Mark Gillett, Chairman