Tonight 40 team members, including 37 full team members & trainees and 4 members of our Support Group attended our AGM and our election of council officers held this evening at our Ladybridge Hall Base/HQ. Proceedings were opened by our Chairman Ken Oakes, who presented his annual report.

This report was followed by our Team Leader, Garry Rhodes’ annual report which reflected on all the happenings in the Team of the previous 12 months and the many successes in the Team that have characterised the previous year, plus an outline of some of our more outstanding incidents.

The final report presented was made by our Treasurer Joanne Stones, who happily reported on the continuing very healthy state of our finances, which go from strength to strength thanks to the many small and large donations, grants and bequests received this year.

Joanne reported on a healthy bank balance with an income in 2008 of circa £21,000.

Our expenditure over 2008 approximated to £38,500, which is more by a large margin than our usual annual expenditure. This is due to some major purchases including our brand new catering trailer, the waxoiling of our four Landrovers and catering trailer, and the purchase of casualty simulation kits and the payment of a large outstanding E-ON bill (not our fault!).

Our fuel costs for our team vehicles over 2008 was reported as £4,500, again more than usual reflecting the operation over a period of essentially a fifth team vehicle in the guise of the Mountain Rescue Hummer (this increased fuel cost, due to the Hummer, was more than offset by the extensive publicity gained by its operation within the team for two months in late 2008.

Finally our treasurer Joanne Stones stressed the importance of Gift Aid being applied within the team with regards to external donations and membership subscriptions (although this entails a lot of hard work and paper chasing, the end results bring a large financial boost to the team).

Our election of Officers followed which saw the very experienced Ken Oakes re-elected for his fourth term of office as Chairman.

Our Team Leader, Garry Rhodes MBE aged 51, was re-elected to the Team Leader post for the 21st consecutive year, with a similar re-election of Geoff Seddon aged 21+, Garry’s deputy for the last 17 years (and a previous Team Leader). Team member of 9.5 years experience, Andy Ryding, aged 44, was elected to the post of Training Officer for his third term of office.

All the Officer posts elected this year can be viewed under the Membership area of the website.

Particular thanks were noted to our auditors Howard, Matthews, Lloyd of Bolton who, as ever, gave us tremendous support in auditing our Team accounts.

The meeting, which opened at 20:00, was officially closed at 23:00.