Minutes of the Cumberland & Westmorland County Committee meeting

13 October 2018 – Penrith RBL Clubhouse

10.45am Meeting opened by TC

Addressed that two MSO’s were present and if anyone is making a contribution to the meeting then please state who you are and where you are from before we start.

10.46am Exhortation and Kohima

KK read out apologies for absence as above

Minutes of the previous meeting held on 14 July, TC asked if everyone has read them and whether any matters arising. Proposed by MW. Seconded by IF. Matters arising nil. TC signed the previous minutes.

CORRESPONDENCE

MSO KK advised all emails answered and up to date

CHAIRMANS REPORT

Some of us here attended the Fundraising Event in Southport

Some here also attended the GP90 Event in Belgium. Absolutely fantastic event

TREASURER’S REPORT

The Treasurer updated everyone on the allocation of budget from Head Office which is zero pounds on every single account.

The Treasurer advised there is not a lot of money in the kitty for shows, training, etc for next year and there is no way we would be able to afford to have a Standard Bearers course. A lot of money was spent, but the Treasurer was off at the time so did not know about it. It took over £860.00 from the training fund for the Standard Bearers course.

JB advised that these courses are mandatory for GP90 Event so that was a one off. Unfortunately no Branch in Cumbria has their own Standard Bearer trainers like in other areas. Treasurer said if mandatory then it should have been funded by Head Office.

Small amount of money in the BFI to call on should we need it. Also from the Welfare fund we have paid for the support of the Festival of Remembrance because it is for the good & benefit of our beneficiaries.

MSO’s REPORT

MSO KK updated all that Clive is on sick leave, his operation went well and he is recovering. Jo Tull will be covering Cumbria side on a temp basis with KK supporting her as much as he can. Both work in the Newcastle office. Jo will be in the Penrith office on average once a week so if anyone has any issues please pop in.

KK advised that most of the accounts have been submitted, and uploaded on the system. Any issues with them we will contact / chase the branches asap.

AREA MANAGER UPDATE

NM informed everyone that new starter Andrew McKenna has now started in the Pop In Newcastle as Advice and Information Officer replacing Andy Bradley who has gone to Age UK.

Welfare team update:

Currently have 420 open cases across the Northern Area - the busiest the team has ever been.

Nearly 500 incidents on Right Now, never gone over 500. So a lot of pressure on our Case workers and Advice and Information officers at the moment

There is Caseworker training next week (Tuesday and Wednesday) being run in Newcastle by Carole Knowles. Hopefully in the new year we can run the same training in Penrith or Carlisle. If anyone is interested then please let NM know.

New school packs have just come out in relation to the Thank you Events.

Everyone remembered, the Legion hit its target. NM thanked everyone in the room who contributed to that. Lots of Events happening for ‘Thank you’ and Poppy Appeal.

BCS is now out of project and is now classed as ‘business as usual’.

IF raised a concern that the system takes too long once a case has started. Beneficiaries are waiting too long for help. NM is looking at this nationally. NM informed everyone that Case Officers are now meeting every 2 weeks to specifically look at why cases are taking so long and if any cases have gone over 12 weeks, they want to know why and now they can fix this. If any cases that you know of that are taking a lot longer then please feed it back to NM.

JB suggested setting targets so the beneficiaries are aware of when they should expect their goods etc providing they have completed the relevant forms and provided relevant documents / ID etc.

We do have a Service Promise at the Contact Centre where we have 2 days to respond to a beneficiary and our team are meeting that by 88.6%. A few cases where we failed was due to the Case Officer contacting them but being on annual leave over the summer period.

FUNDRAISING

JR informed everyone that Poppy Appeal end of 2017/18 across the County has] raised a record breaking figure of £536,652.70 Including the Isle of Man we have raised a record breaking total of £687,355.89 which has smashed our record and is 7% up on the total from last year. JR thanked everyone for their help supporting the poppy appeal whichever way you have and lets hope we break the target this year.

The Thank You Campaign response across the region has been really over whelming. The ‘Leg It for the Legion’ in the Carlisle Poppy Challenge a 5k walk / run & 10k run on Sunday 8^th July raised in excess of £8,000 even though it clashed with the Standard Bearers competition!

Other activities across the Region involved Southport Seminar at Byng House in July which was well attended and received, following that JR completed seminars in the Isle of Man, Distington, Ulverston & Penrith during September.

Strong presence at County Events throughout the summer, thank you to Mike who booked us in for those amazing events including the Cumberland Show, Grasmere Show, Westmorland Show and the Kendal Torchlight Procession. Thank you to Ray and Roger who organised people on the streets for that Event. Wasn’t a massive fundraiser but the profile of getting into that procession was really special

Orders for poppy appeal to be placed by 1^st September. 2,000 orders were put in after 1 Sept which has messed up the system.

Cannot guarantee wreaths at this point. Any queries ask JR

30% more stock has been sent out for the Country.

Launch of the Poppy Appeal is Thursday 25^th October, we don’t know what the theme is as yet. Due to be announced soon.

County Launch is in Keswick at St Johns Church on Friday 26^th October where we will unveil 13.5k knitted poppies weeping windows.

Another key event is working with Virgin Trains who have been very supportive. This is a “Cumbria says thank you” day which will involve two WW1 soldiers walking down the train then a few mins later the Reserves onboard collecting. This is taking place on Thursday 1^st November at Carlise, Oxen and Penrith stations where there will be tables & merchandise.

JR said thank you for allowing her to go along to GP90, she found is very overwhelming, once in a lifetime trip.

JB raised the issue that if County are funding Events then the County should benefit from this, not fundraising. JB will get confirmation of this and send an email

Mike advised everyone that Margaret Wadsworth has been nominated as Border Television Fundraiser of the Year for 2018 and is going to London’s Pride of Britain at the end of this month.

Mike also advised that we need to push for a Treasurer.

TC thanked everyone for their attendance and advised everyone that if there is ‘any other business’ (AOB) it should be informed to the MSO 7 days prior to the meeting to enable time for research etc.

JB mentioned that herself, Nicola and Judith should be added to the Agenda in future.

11.55 TC closed the meeting