Minutes of the Annual General Meeting of the Arun-Adur Group of the Ramblers Association
Saturday 8th November 2025 - Ferring Village Hall, Ferring Street, Ferring – 2.30pm to 4.30pm
23 members and seven officeholders were present. Stuart Clarkson, the Chair, welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked them for their attendance.
Minutes of last AGM, held on 9th of November 2024.
These had been available to members on the website. They were agreed to be an accurate record of proceedings and were formally adopted.
There were no Matters Arising.
Chairman’s Annual Report
Stuart’s report had previously been published and was available on our website. He briefly summarised its contents.
He referred to the ongoing shortage of members willing to lead walks, which, of course, put an added strain on those who were so willing. He assured anyone volunteering to lead that they would receive every support and, where necessary, training for the role.
Nevertheless, we continued to offer our usual twice weekly programme of shorter midweek and longer weekend walks. Most walkers were drawn from a group of 50 or so active members. Stuart observed that, over the year, perhaps 80-100 members had joined at least one walk. The group continuing to have approximately 400 members. He warmly thanked Kate Melville-Brown for the hard work and enthusiasm she puts into organising the Walks Programme.
He then thanked Min Morgan, the Social Secretary, for her work in organising social events during the year. These included the annual Christmas dinner, a quiz night, a trip on the Bluebell Railway, a theatre trip, a summer picnic, an archaeology walk, a butterfly walk and a shuffleboard evening.
He also thanked Neil Clark, the Secretary, for organising the 4-day walking holiday that 35 members enjoyed in Weymouth during October.
He then paid tribute to the entire committee, paying particular respect to Neil Clark, our Secretary, who was standing down after nearly eight years of serving Arun Adur
Ramblers and Min Morgan who would also be standing down as Social Secretary at the end of the year.
He thanked Karyn Prowen who would move from being an ex officio member of the committee to take over from Neil as Secretary .He sought nominations from the floor for a volunteer to fill the now vacant Social Secretary role.
There were no queries from the floor about the Chair’s report.
Treasurer’s Report and adoption of accounts for year ended 30th September 2024
Tim Baldwin’s report had been previously published and was available on the website as was the financial statement. Hard copies were available to the members in attendance.
Tim summarised the principal items of income and expenditure on the Main Account, on which there was a balance of £544.60. The Social account had had lots of activity and a balance of £1289.74 . The group thus has total cash assets of £1834.34.
Tim reported that the accounts had been independently reviewed and audited, up to
30th of September, 2025. There were no questions to Tim from the floor. The motion to adopt the financial statement was proposed by Mike Charman and seconded by Joanne Clarkson. There were no objections.
Appointment of Committee Members
The secretary confirmed that a proposer and seconder for all of the committee members had been received for the forthcoming year. There were no objections from the floor and the following were duly re-elected to serve until November 2026.
Chair – Stuart Clarkson
Secretary – Karyn Prowen
Treasurer – Tim Baldwin
Webmaster – Andy Fort
Membership Secretary – Lesley Johnson
Membership Secretary – Kate Melville Brown
Ex Officio – John Barnes
Ex Officio – Kevin Jephson
Any other business
Nothing was raised from the floor
Stuart advised everyone that the date of next years AGM was the 7th November 2026
The meeting then concluded and, after refreshments which were then served, rather than a presentation from a guest speaker a walks leader training session was held.