MINUTES OF STEERING GROUP MEETING 3.10.12
Present: Chris Cant; Nigel Jenkins; Geoff Rockcliffe-King; Peter Clarke; Maureen Ward.
Apologies: Peter Dicken; Peter Ward; John Bodger.
FINANCES
Chris Cant gave an update on the financial position. PACT has received £11,300 from Eden District Council for the Greening Project and £1,050 from CAfS for work that Peter Ward has done over the last few months. The agreement is that £700 of this is returned to CAfS as a donation. Nigel Jenkins queried whether the job of keeping the finances in order was still manageable for Chris as more money passes through PACT's books, and Chris confirmed that at the moment it is manageable. Projects such as the Greening manage their own budgets.
INCORPORATION
Chris Cant, Peter Ward and Peter Clarke met with Howard Long (recommended by Viv Lewis as Howard has recent experience of this) to discuss options for PACT. They came to the conclusion that the best way forward was to form an Industrial Provident Society. (IPS) There are two kinds of IPS - one operates for the benefit of the members (eg. A Co-op) and the other, which would be the better fit for an organisation like PACT, operates for the benefit of the community an IPS BenCom (eg.SLACC, Carlisle) It would cost about £700 to incorporate, but the Co-op provides a website with various models for setting up an IPS and if we go via the Co-operative Enterprise Hub and choose one of these models it is possible that the Co-op will pay the fee if we go through them. If PACT went down this route it would wind up and transfer to an IPS BenCom. There was some discussion around these practicalities and it was unanimously agreed to go ahead with this change in order to protect the members of the Steering Group from personal liability as we accept the challenge of larger projects involving significant amounts of money. It was further agreed to delegate all work on this to Peter Ward, Peter Clarke and Chris Cant who will contact the Co-operative Enterprise Hub for advice. One question is whether we have to change our name.
GREENING PROJECT
It was agreed to donate £1000 to the Greening Project and Peter Ward is to clarify when this is needed. The SG would prefer to wait until the £8,000 has come in from CAfS for PACT's operating costs. There was discussion about the parcels of land that the council are willing to hand over to community use. It was noted that the Food Group are going to discuss this on Friday and may take forward a plan to use one of the areas. Nigel Jenkins requested that a copy of the council document is sent to him.Peter Clarke reported that he, Peter Ward, Maureen Ward and Peter Dicken had attended a presentation by the children of North Lakes School on bees. The children had researched the subject and invited parents, local Councillors and other interested parties to their presentation which included song,dance and poetry. A member of the local Beekeeping group had worked with children over a period of 6 weeks and it is hoped that the school may be interested in planting flowers for bees. Peter and Maureen Ward will be in contact with Margaret Riches who organised the project to see if this is a possibility.
NEW TOWN WEBSITE
Chris Cant has been employed by the Penrith Partnership to create a new town website. See www.penrithtown.co.uk
CAfS PROJECTS
There will be a meeting of those involved in the new "Story Giants" project on 16th October 7pm at Applegarth. This is a support group rather than a "steering group" for the project. Dawn Hurton will be leading and the project will continue under its own steam once the parameters have been agreed. There was discussion about the suitability of Dawn's initial ideas for the project which envisioned using the new Wainwright material recently acquired by Cumbria Archives. It was felt that these may not provide the best link to sustainability and climate change and we must make sure that the project addresses these specific issues in order to comply with the conditions of the grant. Using material on the use of land for food growing (eg archive material on land girls) was mentioned and the Food Group will look at this.
There was discussion about having a social event to inform people about the new projects (Story Giants, ESCo, and Whipcar - we could also include the Freegle project in this) and November 8th was agreed. It was also agreed to have discussions and organise this by email over the next few weeks.
Chris Cant flagged up the Freegle Open Day at Alston on Sat 6th October where surplus food and seeds can be exchanged.
APPLE DAY
PACT will have an informational stand at Acorn Bank for Apple Day on 14th October
PAYMENT FOR CHRIS CANT
Maureen Ward raised this under AOB and asked that the SG considered paying Chris a more realistic fee for the huge amount of work he puts into the website. Now that we have more operating funds from the Lottery funding, she suggested £500 per year. This was unanimously agreed with the proviso that this is reviewed each year and monitored in relation to funds available with the aim to continue to pay him at this rate. It was further agreed that this amount would be payable at the time of the 2013 AGM.
Date of next SG meeting Wed 7th November 2012 7pm at Applegarth