Minutes of the User Forum meeting held on Thursday, 27th
October 2011-10-28
Present: Alan McKee, Dennis Davies, Geoff Hodges, Ken
England, Rita Bayliss (in the chair) Teresa McCarlie and Tony
Hodgeson
1. There were no apologies.
2. The minutes were taken as read.
3. Matters Arising: Geoff asked if anything had been done
about the letter to the bank about the problem of
getting cheques written.
4. Feedback on electronic voting system: It was felt that
the electronic voting system was well explained and
generally worked well.
5. Feedback on the Annual General Meeting: Ken said that
any vacancies on the Board should be notified to the
membership prior to the meeting.
It was noted that there had been some grumbles from
the floor when Geoff asked his questions and the feeling
was expressed that this was out of order as this was the
proper time for such questions to be asked and it was to
a great extent the purpose of the annual general
meeting.
The opinion was expressed that the Trustees should be
able to answer the questions posed and not refer back
to the Chief Executive to answer for them.
Whilst the talk was of interest to most, there was a
feeling that talks would be better held as a separate
event and the annual general meeting kept as a
business meeting only.
6. Chair of the user forum: Rita explained that she did
not feel it was right for her to be chair of the user forum
whilst she is chair of trustees. This was accepted. Ken
offered to chair the meetings on a temporary basis until
someone could be found to take over the role of chair.
This offer was accepted, effective immediately. Ken
asked that if anyone had anything they wanted put on
the agenda for the next meeting, they should let him
know.
7.
Geoff suggested that the forum would work better if it
was led by a facilitator. This was considered a good
idea, but concern was expressed about the cost. Rita
knows someone who works as a facilitator and would
find out some information. There was some
discussion about the presence of a member of staff at
the forum meetings. The overall feeling was that it
was useful to have a member of staff present for
immediate feedback.
Dennis and Tony mentioned the difficulty in using the
computer and that the screen reader software was out
of licence and so basically unusable. Rita said she
would find out where Sheila had got to with this.
Teresa told the meeting about the arrangements for the
next two friendship lunches and explained that Rita
would be co-ordinating them. Teresa explained that she
will be flying back to the States on 5th November and
will not be returning. The meeting was very sorry to
hear this news. Rita confirmed that she was dealing
with the November and December lunches but would
like someone else to pick the job up from January.
The meeting closed at 12.15.