Minutes of GREN board meeting 10 October 2012
GREN Board Members: Michele Atkins (Chair), Paul Harper (Secretary), Oonagh Kelleher(Treasurer).
GREN members in attendance: Tony Cowling, Rachel Miller.
Apologies received: John Booth, Ornella Trevisan & Beth Scott.
- Minutes of previous meeting
Minutes of the meeting held on 25 July 2012 were agreed.
- Matters arising from minutes of meeting held on 1 May
(i)Minute 2 (iv)– letter to TVP had not been done; agreed to leave now as too long had passed since attendance at Cycle Liaison Group.
(ii)Minute 5 – Member Survey – had not been put on the agenda due to time constraints. However, we noted that action had been taken in relation to the issue that members flagged up as the highest priority – ‘participation’ events i.e. through the networking event. Also that other aspects of what we had done during the past year were consistent with member wishes e.g. ‘lobbying the council’ – see GREN member survey results on web site.
(iii)Minute 6 (b) – New High Speed Trains – Michele had spoken to somebody who had confirmed that the new trains for the Great Western line would only have 3 cycle spaces per train instead of the present 6. We need to get a letter done a.s.a.p. to local MPs to make representations on behalf of cyclists. ACTION: PH/MA
(iv)Minute 6(d) – PH said that since Cllr Gittings’ email (included in minutes of last meeting) any commitment to extending 20mph across Reading urban area appeared to have disappeared completely from the Transport chapter of the RCCP Climate Change Strategy.ACTION: MA to raise this at the Cycle Liaison Group next week.
- GREN funds and fundraising
Oonagh reported that GREN had £18.90 in the bank after paying the half-year web hosting and maintenance bill. Another £72 for October to April was due about now. The RISC room hire credit remained at £52-50p (MA to check with RISC that the RBC payment for the GREN Climate Change Strategy event had been paid by them as agreed and not deducted from our credit).
Oonagh had emailed John Lewis about their Community Matters fund (subsequent reply says this is for projects and events only, not running costs).
ACTIONS:
MA has still to contact Berkshire Community Foundation.
OK – Cooperative Bank customers fund still to be followed up
PH has not yet asked Loud’n’Clear what would be involved in getting a ‘donate’ button on the GREN web site.
ALL – need to ensure that donations are sought at the GREN AGM meeting.
- GREN AGM and committee elections
- AGM: - we discussed options for dates and format for the AGM. Rachel Miller offered to explore the possibility of combining this with a training event for GREN member groups (and others) around Marketing and Publicity, which are issues flagged up by members at the networking event.
RM is meeting with the potential trainer for this on Friday and will check out his views and availability in relation to the dates MA has identified as being available at RISC at the end of November (Wed 21 and Thurs 22).
ACTION: MA & RM to liaise on this and fix date.
We discussed possible back-up arrangements if the above does not come to fruition; possible presentation(s) from GREN members – groups and/or Tony Cowling on Air Quality.
- GREN committee member elections
John Hoggett had resigned as a GREN committee member and Paul Harper had previously indicated that he did not intend to stand for election. We therefore need to proactively work to identify potential committee members.
PH has flagged up the need for committee members in an all member email. MA has spoken to John Booth who is considering this and to Tony Cowling, who has agreed to be put forward. ACTION: MA/PH/OK to review member list to identify any further candidates
- GREN Annual Report – MA to prepare with assistance from other committee members for circulation in advance of AGM.
- GREN Facebook group
We noted that since JH had resigned the only other administrator for this was Summreen Sheikh.
We agreed that a committee member needs to have an overview of what is going on there and have the necessary admin rights.
We agreed that a Facebook ID would be created in the name of GREN chair, with the relevant email address, so that this could be transferred from chair to chair as they changed.
ACTION: MA to speak to set up the necessary ID and speak to JH about transferring the admin rights. Also, to thank JH for his work in setting this up.
- Reports from Forums and Partnerships
(i)Cycle Liaison Group meeting – no meeting since last GREN board. MA will attend next meeting on 24 October and will ask members in advance if there are any specific issues they want raised. Will raise the 20mph issue as discussed above.
(ii)Labour Party Policy Forum – PH had attended the last meeting and circulated the notes from that. Ornella Trevisan had attended in response to the GREN request for somebody to take up the ‘Localism’ theme. RCC had submitted a paper on transport/cycling issues and PH needed to produce a final proposal on the Decentralised Energy theme for GREN in conjunction with John Booth and Rayner Mayer at UoR – Tony Cowling offered to assist with this. ACTION: PH to do this.
(iii)Reading Climate Change Partnership –no RCCP meeting had taken place – due next week. PH reported that as lead author for the Localism and Community Chapter, he had found it very difficult to reconcile the some views about this coming out of RBC in relation to the issues that he and Joanna Laynesmith had originally been given from the workshops held in January and had crafted into a draft chapter between them. His view was that the final draft chapter was a fair representation of these and the views expressed in the GREN and RBC workshops and from other inputs. Despite this, PH reported that the final draft chapter had subsequently been significantly altered by RBC officers (beyond the process of editing for consistency they were tasked with). PH is considering his position in relation to this but it is likely he will ask that his name be removed from the document. He did not propose to discuss the contested changes at the RCCP board as suggested, since it was not an appropriate forum for this.
(iv)PH flagged up that the formal public consultation on the draft CC strategy would run from 1 November to mid-December and GREN will need to consider if and how it might make a response to this. We discussed the possibility of the AGM, but in reality a group meeting would probably need a half-day (given our experience of the meeting in June). Needs some further thought as to what could happen.
The meeting closed at 7.50pm (next meeting will be the AGM).