British Scoliosis Society
Annual General Meeting
12.10.2012, Chilworth Manor, Southampton
1
Minutes of last meeting
The minutes of the last meeting on 13 May 2011 were accepted as a true record.
2
Accounts
The accounts were complete for year ending 31 December 2010 have been completed but the
annual return for year ending December 2011 is still to be prepared; the same applies to the report
for the Charity Commission. Once the mandate for the BSS bank account has been transferred to
Peter Millner and Ian Nelson, the accounts will be submitted to Brian Baggaley at Hardings,
Accountants, for completion.
BritSpine 2012 balance approx. £212K
3
Future meetings were announced:
BSS 2013
Stoke April/May (El Nasri Ahmed et al)
BritSpine 2014
Warwick, 2-4.4.2014
BSS 2014 (one day)
Bristol?
BSS 2015 (full meeting)
Sheffield?
BritSpine 2016
suggestions to UKSSB please
4
Membership and executive
Ian Nelson takes over as President from Mike Gibson, who remains as a member of the committee.
The current executive committee is:
Ian Nelson (President 2012-2014)
Peter Millner (Secretary 2012-2015)
El-Nasri Ahmed (Membership)
Alex Gibson (Web/Newsletter)
Alistair Stirling
Mike Gibson
Ashley Cole (Web)
John Hutchinson (Education)
Evan Davies (2012 host)
Jeremy Fairbank (UKSSB)
A new membership subscription rate was agreed by vote:
Consultant surgeon members = £100 pa
Non-consultant surgeons = £30 pa
It was agreed that given the likely inaccuracy of the list of current members and fee-payers, there
would be an amnesty for any subscription arrears. El-Nasri Ahmed has collated a list of members
and this database will be sent to Julia Bloomfield at UKSSB. The plan will be to contact all members
listed and set up a new standing order for the membership subscription of all those who wish to
remain as members.
The following new members were proposed, seconded and accepted:
Andrew Clarke, Exeter
Michael Hutton, Exeter
Shahid Khan, Exeter
Steven Morris, Bristol
Michael McCarthy, Cardiff
Jeremy Reynolds, Oxford
Prof Nachi Chocklingham, Staffordshire University
Iona Collins, Swansea (confirmation of membership since 2010)
5
ACCEA support for members
The BSS is a recognised specialist society for the purposes of nominating members for Clinical
Excellence Awards. Nominations will be considered by a four-person committee consisting of the
following:
Non-consultant member
Immediate past President
Current President
Current Secretary
Dr Stephanie Clark
Mr Michael Gibson
Mr Ian Nelson
Mr Peter Millner
6
Survey and web link requests
The membership voted to allow e-mail and web-based surveys by academic and commercial
agencies on a selective basis as a fee-based service, via the BSS website; members will be allowed
to take part in surveys on a purely voluntary basis and the BSS will receive a fee for this service.
Academic institutions, conducting surveys for research purposes, will be charged £1,000.
Commercial and industrial agencies, conducting surveys for market research and similar purposes,
will be charged £10,000.
No guarantee will be given to any agency paying the BSS (for a membership survey) about the
response rate of the membership to such surveys.
The Executive Committee reserves the right to poll members directly over matters of relevance to
the Society; the Executive Committee will exercise its discretion in such matters.
7
Research
Ashley Cole informed the members that research funding is available from Arthritis Research UK
and the HTA have expressed an interest in the treatment of degenerative scoliosis.
8
Audit
The Executive Committee had voted to inform individual Trusts of any non-compliance with data
submission to the BSS Annual Audit. Irfan Siddique, who has conducted the annual audit in recent
years, pointed out that data submission is anonymous but he will contact all scoliosis centres and
ask them to confirm that they have submitted their scoliosis data. Five year results will be
published when this data has been collated.
9
British Spinal Registry: funding
The BSS Executive Committee have agreed to a request from BASS and BSR to give financial support
to the Registry, to the tune of an initial payment of £4,000 followed byan annual fee of £1,500.
10
SAUK patient information leaflets
In recognition of the important role played by SAUK in educating and supporting scoliosis patients
and their families, the BSS has donated £2,500 to SAUL to help with the costs of producing patient
information leaflets. Dr Stephanie Clark, on behalf of SAUK, thanked the BSS for this generous
sponsorship.
11
AOB
Peter Millner proposed a vote of thanks to James Wilson-Macdonald for his hard work and sterling
service as Secretary over the past three years. The vote was heartily supported by the audience.
12
Date of next meeting
BSS 2013, Stoke, 13 September 2013