Notes from AGM 18th June 2024

Annual General Meeting of Transition Loughborough held on 18th June 2024 at John Storer House Forest Room. Meeting started at 7.30pm

Present: Jason, Janet, Nick, Ken, Martha, Sarah, Jon

Apologies: Emily, Suella, Mo, Emma, Julian

Last Meeting Minutes

Incredible Edible and Transition Loughborough had discussed a joint CIC, but this hasn’t happened and has been overtaken by the formation of the EcoHub CIC as an umbrella for eco-friendly organisations in the area. The rest of the minutes were accepted as an accurate record of the meeting.

Treasurer’s Report

Jason said that the building society account stands at £2955.25. Potato Day cash to bank after final query dealt with was £152.65, plus £81.40 paid directly into the account by Transition Chesterfield. The cashbox holds £165.22, out of which the room hire of £35.90 for this AGM will be taken. Cash was passed into the main account from the previous repair cafe and potato day cash takings in March 2024.

Main income over the last 15 months has been from Potato Day 2024, several apple pressings in Autumn 2023 and the Repair Cafes.

Main outgoings are allotment rent, bits for the allotment (eg water butts), room hire (meetings + repair cafe) and public liability insurance, which is due again now.

Expenditure already agreed : manual/electric pump for the allotment (£100-200) – this still has not happened.

Since the last AGM when the main account stood at £2696.05 we’ve had a positive gain of £259.20, which is roughly the amount that we’ll need to cover our public liability insurance, so we’re currently roughly on an equal expenditure vs income for the last 15 months at least.

We then discussed the public liability insurance. We probably need to up the cover to £5 million to satisfy the local council for events they run that we’re involved with. Jason will ask insurance brokers about this and if the cost increase is up to 20-30% will just pay it, otherwise he’ll ask on the Google group what we should do. Jason is also going to query Fearon Hall about the last repair cafe bill as it was higher than the previous one (by quite a bit) and we’d had a deal with Meg about cheaper rates for block booking a year in advance. If Fearon Hall gets too dear, we could look at John Storer House instead.

Potato Day

Janet reported that Potato Day 2024 was financially successful and up on last year. We had around 75 orders, which was 20 more than last year. Wilko closing down might have helped these numbers. We need to rethink the packing of the orders with the increasing volumes. We ordered the same amount of stock for on the day sales as the previous year, and that all sold out this year, which was ideal. Expenses for Potato Day are the room hire, paper bags and a little printing (the latter minimised thanks to Keith!).

Allotment

Martha reported that the community allotment is doing better this year than previous years, due to the support from local refugees, and Ken helping to sort out the composting system. Soil quality is thus improving a lot. Water situation has eased this year, partly due to the weather and partly thanks to Ken installing water butts. Talked about a pump for the site – Jon mentioned that there used to be a 12V caravan one stored with the hoses (pre-pandemic). There is a polytunnel on the site now which means tomatoes are doing well this year.

Martha said being able to make hot drinks means it is more enjoyable for the volunteers and they can now share drink and food as they do at LAGS. In Bloom will be coming to assess the plots at some point during the summer but we don’t know when yet. The community allotments have been covered in the Echo and the Good To Grow event in April was successful, with lots of people turning up on bikes! Martha said they might have a Harvest BBQ in the Autumn. Had a photo of the plot entrance in a calendar.

There is now a WhatsApp group to keep the volunteers informed and also allow Martha to collect a portfolio for the assessors. Over the summer the group meets 3pm-6pm on Wednesdays, and sporadically at weekends (coordinated by WhatsApp messages).

Apple Pressing

Janet said that in 2023 we had 5 apple pressing sessions, which raised £75. Janet and Nick stayed with the equipment for all of these to ensure it didn’t get broken, especially the power drill which might be tricky to replace – it needs someone competent to babysit it. Janet said they’ll be updating the manual for the equipment before the Autumn. We discussed the pricing for this year and it was agreed to increase it to £25 per event, to help cover any increased insurance costs. We’ll only be doing community events again – no private hires. Fruit Routes on campus will be mid-October – ideally need to avoid weekend of 19th October as Janet and Nick are already spoken for at a repair event then. Martha would like to get Greg Wallace along to the Fruit Routes event – he’s been working with the University recently.

Repair Cafes

We’re running four this year at Fearon Hall. We get around 28 people bring things in, with ~45 items to repair per event. We’re coordinating with other repair cafes in the area such as Mountsorrel and Woodhouse Eaves so that we don’t clash events. John from Mountsorrel is trying to “seed” more repair events in other villages. A lot of repairers at these events are older people, so John is also in touch with Loughborough College about getting some of their students involved.

We’ve been asked by Five Counties Groundworks if they can bring their “Green Doctor” to our next repair event – we’ve no objections! The University is also trying to run repair cafe type events on campus, one in each of the Autumn and Spring terms. Jon and Janet have met with Nick Hunt and his team about these. We were also offered items left by the students but as this is the last week of term and the shed that LAGS hoped to get hasn’t yet got a roof, we don’t have the storage logistics sorted out this year.

The next Transition Loughborough repair cafe at Fearon Hall will be in August.

Eco Hub

Sarah told the meeting that the contract for the use of a section of the 1st floor of the Sofa building on Nottingham Road has been signed, and they have a £10K grant from Intelligent Energy. They’re waiting on the result of a match funding grant from the council (expected in July) before commencing work on the project. They plan to have a tool library, scrap store and hack/maker space (need to decide on the name for the latter!) They’re currently surveying what tools people might want to borrow – currently ranging from an overlocking sewing machine to a hammer. They can’t (yet) accept tool donations though. They’ve had lots of visits to other scrap stores to see their offerings/pricing. There will be space for events and workshops, but they need to work out pricing for those too.

Ken asked about the relation to Men in Sheds. Sarah said they’ve been in contact and are planning to cooperate. For example the hack/maker space could be of interest to younger people who contact Men in Sheds but are too young to join there. Sarah said they’re in touch with lots of groups around the area, including Transition, so there’s lots of potential link ups in the future.

There is a Sustainability Fair being organised on 29th September, as well as a Green Gifting event on 3rd November. (and the council may give out free bare rooted trees at the latter for winter planting).

Events

We’re going to pay £20 for a stall at the Sustainability Fair in Queens Park in September. Discussed what the stall might hold. Growing/food is already well covered with Incredible Edible, LAGS and a vegan food stall already. We may focus on promoting our repair cafe and potato day. Janet said there were no takers for actually having repairs done last year, so probably just information, maybe highlighting what we’ve achieved over the last year in terms of items repaired, CO2 saved, etc.

Green Gifting event is also £20 for a stall and we might consider that for our green wrappings?

AOB

Jon asked if TL would be interested in taking part in Green Big Green Week next year, as he’d just been involved it the 2024 season last week. Sarah said it might be something the Eco Hub could organise as an umbrella over lots of other groups.

Date of Next Meeting

Martha had suggested the allotment harvest event as a meeting in September. Alternatively an eco-social at a local pub over the summer? Left with no fixed date but we’ll discuss on the Google group.

Meeting ended at 9pm.