TEWIN TENNIS CLUB – MINUTES OF 45thANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Held at Tewin Pavilion, Upper Green, Friday 11 March 2016at 8.00pm.
Committee Memberspresent: David RoomChairman
Philip RaineTreasurer
Val WinfieldMembership Secretary
Ann ConnollyLTA Rep
Peter BurgessPublicity Officer
Tim BellCommittee Member
David welcomed everyone to the AGM. He said the committee had survived another year without a club secretary. He thanked Linda Read for volunteering to take the minutes of this AGM.
1 / 1. Apologies:Mari Barton Jones, Nick Whiting, Neil Whiskin, Jo Swift, Helen Gouldstone, Sue Whitbourn, Jude O’Sullivan, Steve Adamthwaite, Bert and Cheryl Robinson, Di Bradley, Ruth Thomas, Mike Brady.
2. Attendees:
Linda Read, Joanne & Malcolm Allen, Kevin Doyle, Keith Duerden, Martin Gouldstone, Helen & Gerry Smith, Roe Hill, Jane Room, Jane Raine, Gerry Murphy, Jane Lockwood-Taylor, Karen Shaw, Deirdre Hatt.
2 / 3. Minutes of Last AGM and Matters Arising
There were no issues with these so it was agreed that they would be signed off: proposer Jane Room, seconded by Ann Connolly.
3 / 4. Chairman’s Report
David prior to his re-election last year had warned that he would be out of the country for about one third of the year and reported that as predicted some of his responses on various matters had not been as prompt as he would have liked. In addition unfortunately he had not been on court all year due to chronic tennis elbow. He then gave a resumé of playing and other matters as follows:
Leagues
Datchworth Summer League
Tewin 1 – 3rd in Division 2
Tewin 2 – 5th in Division 6B New captain Martin Gouldstone
Tewin 3 –3rd in Division 7A Captain Alan Grimmond
Tewin 4 – 6th in Division 7B Captain Keith Duerden
All details are available on the noticeboard and at For report on plans for the 2016 season, please see Paragraph 8. .
Ladies Summer Orchard League
Jo Swift reports that newly promoted Tewin B found the competition tougher in Division5. They had some close matches but may be demoted.
No report from Tewin A.
Mens’ Summer Hot Rackets
Competition in the higher division following was also challenging and Tim also struggled to field teams, with the teenagers being particularly difficult to pin down. We have decided not to re-enter for the coming season.
Datchworth Autumn League – Tim continued management of our Autumn League team – 5th in Division 8, only three games behind Letchworth 5, but we are at risk of relegation.
Club Tournament Results
Mixed Doubles: Eileen Doyle & Martin Gouldstone
Ladies’ Doubles: Eileen Doyle & Roe Hill
Men’s Doubles: Keith Duerden & Steve Adamthwaite
Ladies’ Singles: Angie Watson
Men’s Singles: Jack Goode
Boys’ Double: Adam Bolton and Daniel Porter
We do not have any girls under 21 interested in playing tournaments at the present time.
The number of entrants, particular for the adult singles was disappointing. Our new coach Mark will not have as much time to devote to club events as his predecessor and therefore I am looking for a volunteer tournament officer.
The ABC League – was won by Team B captained by Joanne Allen and Peter Burgess. They were ably abetted by Di Bradley, Jane Lockwood-Taylor, Karen Shaw, Ruth Thomas, Roger Clarke, Duncan Jones, Simon Poole and Nick Toombs. Thanks also to Gerry and Rupert for organising and they are happy to continue in 2016. We have asked them to plan to extend the fun into the middle of July.
We started the season with Adults Club sessions on Tuesday evenings but these fizzled out after a while as before.
Social Events
We did run a Family Fun Day on 21 June, complete with dragon bouncy castle, which attracted a handful of new families from the village and was judged a success.
Off-Court Affairs
Coach
Many will know that Steve Hunt took early retirement during the summer on medical advice to protect his knees. With Keith’s considerable help we interviewed some of the likelier candidates and appointed an enthusiastic Scottish lady. Unfortunately Alison had to return to Scotland before October half –term and therefore Keith and I were headhunting again. Eventually through local contact we found Mark Roskilly through Welwyn Club.He is taking the Tewin Thursday evening boys squad to Knebworth under floodlights until we have daylight after Easter. He will be offering adult sessions including some cardio tennis as well as more for the juniors. Please support him.
The CIC – the pavilion management committee, gave us a grant last year of £300 to buy the screening which was erected and Friends of Tewin recently awarded us £400 from their Classic Car Show receipts, to replace the bench at the car park end of the courts.
We changed to combination locks last year and these appear to be working. A new cipher will be devised for the 2016 season.
I attended the only meeting of the CIC last year held on a date when I was in the UK. Peter Burgess has subsequently volunteered to attend the meetings when available as the TC rep. The CIC accounts are in good health and consequently they no longer require annual contributions from the Sports Clubs.
The new management are however now taking more bookings, in addition to the regular pilates and daytime classes and more weekend private parties means less easy access for us unless we book in advance. The CIC have spent some of their surplus funds on a defibrillator, the grant mentioned above and money to the cricket club towards their ground improvements last year. They are now concentrating on plans to extend the changing rooms at the cricketers’ request.
I would also thank Peter for launching our new website which is a definite upgrade. Online court booking and subscription payment facilities may have to wait for younger generation input. Peter has also been writing the short pieces appearing regularly in Tewin News. Given the limited response from the younger market, maybe he needs to look at twitter next year.
The rate appeal which has been reported on before, failed as the Tribunal decided that the Tennis Club were in paramount control of and thus the rateable occupier of the tennis courts. The Rateable Value of £1,200 was confirmed which would lead to a bill for the 12 months from 1 April of £580.80. The Chancellor has extended temporary small business rate relief for another year, so we qualify for a 100% allowance and have nothing to pay at least until 1 April 2017. Our Treasurer has on his ‘to do’ list to apply for Community Amateur Sports Club status which would give us rights to ongoing permanent relief.
4 / 5. Treasurer’s Report – copy of accounts attached
Phil Raine reported that we had a healthy balance at the moment primarily from subscriptions. Other sources of income were match fees, ball receipts and interest.
Actual expenditure last year was low at under £700 with the largest item being LTA affiliation. Repairs and maintenance will be considerably higher in 2016.The courts have recently been cleaned and are scheduled to be re-painted at the beginning of the season. The most significant expenses this coming season will be the re-fencing.
Debtors and pre-payments are up mainly due to late payments of subscriptions after accounts closed. Excess of income over expenditure was£3,000+ and there is a balance of £28, General Fund held at the Building Society.
Philprepared the accounts for Tewin Tennis Club and these had been audited by Tony Haggar. Once again we would like to thank Tony for completing this.
Phil asked for the accounts to be adopted. Martin Gouldstone was the proposer and Jane Raine the seconder.
David thanked Phil for the accounts.
5 / 6. Election of Officers, Committee and Honorary Auditor
David pointed out that the “anti-dictator prevention measures which govern the maximum term in office for the chairman will bring an automatic guillotine on my appointment this time next year at the latest”. He stressed that this would provide an equal opportunities opportunity!
David thanked Val and Phil for their long service and that he is very glad that they have not abandoned him this year and that they too are willing to continue. David reported that due to absences from committee meetings they did not always have a quorum fully compliant with the club constitution. He requested volunteers for Secretary, social events, pavilion bookings liaison,catering for one tournament day, and a Tournament Officer to come forward.
Election of Officers – Chairman, David Room, Treasurer Phil Raine and Membership Secretary Val Winfield.
Election of Committee - Ann Connolly, Peter Burgess, Tim Bell, Martin Goulstone.
Proposed by Keith Duerden and seconded by Joanne Allen. Elected en bloc unanimously.
Election of Honorary Auditor – Tony Haggar – proposed by Linda Read and seconded by Val Winfield.
6 / 7. Fencing and Floodlighting
David reported on the fencing saga of the past 12 months. After taking further advice on the fencing and obtaining 3 quotes, the Parish Council procured for us the new fencing along the Carrington Grange boundary, but there was no space for bracing. We opted for tubular poles with top and bottom rails in place of the conventional angle iron because we were advised that this was stronger and more robust. The Parish Council opted for the cheapest quote about £5,500 from Steelway, who had previously erected the screening to the playground. The price paid by the PC included the taller 3.6 metre fencing for the back boundary. We were told that the bottom rails should replace the need for kicker boards, which would have cost another £1,000. We had to show that we had made applications for grants to East Herts towards the cost, before the PC would confirm their funding. When we were unsuccessful with East Herts some members of the PC applied pressure for a contribution from the Club but this was agreed to be unnecessary with support from other members of the Council. The fencing was put up at the end of July.
When the screen erecting work party turned up they found that the two bundles of privacy screen were of different specification and shades of green. They decided to only hang the length of what they thought was the more tasteful darker green along the back boundary. Nearly all comments were positive, with the screen seen as improving playing conditions, giving a much better defined background, particularly to see service balls.
Whilst away in New Zealand David was notified and sent photographs of the storm damage to the fencing which had first sagged inwards and then outwards with many of the tubular poles broken at the foot. Temporary props were kindly arranged by Adrian Hill and Keith St. Pier but these werethen stolen. The contractor refused to take any responsibility for the collapse stating that he was opposed to erect screening on his fence despite having sold us on the robustness of his tubular poles. Thicker grade poles are available and can be supplied by Steelway. The PC have declined to help with the cost of the repairs and replacement. The CIC will not offer any financial support. I made three begging applications to our LocalDistrict and County Councillors who I had been told had community funds available but it transpires that community budgets have been allocated for the year and no monies will be available until at least June or July (which is no help because we have to commit before then and retrospective applications are not admitted).
Prior to the storm damage, the committee had recognised that the pavilion and car park side fencing was now very tired and we had resolved to do replace it, having arranged a quotation. The Committee agreed early in January that if necessary we would meet the full cost of the repair and replacement but we needed to pin down the specification with Steelway. There was a considerable saving to be made if we commissioned the repair of the rear fence at the same time as the replacement of the other two sides. We agreed that 8 posts would be replaced with the new thicker wall spec and that they would be braced and that the remaining two sides would also be tubular but standard spec with new gates because we would not hang screening on them, but go for the higher 3.6m all the way round. The practice court would be excluded because the outside walls are not in a bad state, but the damaged fence on top of the practice wall would be repaired. The Steelway quote came in just under £11,000.
In the meantime, Colourcourt did a court wash and we discovered that they have extended their services to include full court works, including fencing. Their quote came in at 5pm this afternoon at £8,002.85. The Committee needs to confer and compare these two offers.
Colourcourt as well as cleaning the courts in February have dug out the roots in the top corner. We intend to re-fence before repainting and will proceed as soon as possible.
Last year Kevin Doyle volunteered to research Asda Chinese solar panels for the floodlighting project. Regrettably he discovered these are currently only suitable for car parks use. The Committee has subsequently made investigations into portable floodlights (which do not need planning permission)and found a tennis-oriented supplier, so we followed this up only to find that the company had gone bust. Peter will be making further enquiries.
8. Datchworth League – Reorganisation
Team 1. We have lost Steve Hunt and Mark Roskilly is not in a position to manage this on a regular basis. Jo Goode did not want to be captain. Toby did not continue his membershipand after consultation, we have decided that we do not have the playing strength to continue in Division 2, so we are withdrawing that team from the league. However, we think that we can still maintain four teams with a new Team 4 captained by Rupert Stanley entering at the bottom of the league. Keith has worked hard rallying support but we still need more commitment from the ladies to join the teams especially during late April, early May. Several players will likely be moving between teams and some may be needed to play a few games more.
9. 2016 Tournament Forms
Format to be similar to last year. Four Sundays in June have been provisionally booked:5, 12, 19 & 26 June with the view to running mens and ladies’ doubles and mixed doubles. Singles can play traditionally with finals on Friday evening in July, date depending on ABC league. But David noted that we still needed a tournament officer to coordinate all this.
9 / 10. Any Other Business
10 / Karen Shaw brought up the problem of members not having keys to access the pavilion during tennis play especially for the toilets. David explained that this issue had been extensively considered at AGMS in previous years: the CIC will not release any more keys due to insurance restrictions with the Parish Council.However, all captains and several committee members either have a pavilion key or access to the key-safe in the club storeroom, which contains a pavilion key. Members can make arrangements to borrow these keys but we could not provide all members individually with a store key (and the Keysafe code) but the Committee would review the situation again.
Deirdre Hatt brought up the lack of a social tennis evenings for people to just pitch up and play, especially beneficial for new members. It was noted that RATs had met for the men on a Saturday morning for many years but that a similar ladies group tried on Saturday mornings in recent years had folded through lack of support. The Friday evening ABC League was intended to be open to all. David sympathised and reported that he had tried to encourage the club night on Tuesday evenings and Steve Hunt had devoted a lot of time voluntarily but as noted earlier, this fizzled out through lack of member support. We had tried to launch a mixed doubles weekend ladder but this did not get off the ground. Many members appeared to be content that they played enough tennis through their existing private arrangements and it was a challenge to reinvigorate the club activity beyond the Datchworth League. David hoped that people would support the new coach’s sessions and this might help.
Gerry and Rupert will distribute leaflets advertising the ABC league. It was suggested that leaflets could also be distributed by other groups like Friends of Tewin. New coach could advertise it and people should always be encouraged to look on the website.
David thanked everyone for coming to the meeting. Ann Connolly then proceeded to do the Wimbledon ballot. She emphasised that this year people cannot be excluded by non-attendance or not having appointed a proxy at the AGM. 43 people had opted in for tickets. She would like as many members to opt in as tickets are allocated pro rata so this would raisethe total number of tickets allowed.
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