Tonight fifty one team members, including 36x Full Team Call Out list members, 2x Reserve Call Out list members, 1x Trainee Team member, 6x Probationary Team members, and 6x members of our Support Group, jointly attended our Annual General Meeting and our Election of Council Officers held this evening at our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ.

Proceedings were opened by our Chairman Craig Lamb, who had previously presented to the membership a written Chairman’s Report, at the conclusion of this his second year in office as Chairman.

This report was followed by our Team Leader, Garry Rhodes MBE Annual Report ‘speech,’ 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, focusing on the theme of ‘Changes.’

The final report presented was made by our outgoing Treasurer Johanne Lamb, 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.

She also thanked Team Vice President for Life, Tony McNally for his help dealing with covenanted payments in the team.

Our election of Officers followed which saw very experienced team member Craig Lamb aged 54, a Financial Consultant from Swinton, elected for his third term of office as Chairman. (Craig has been a previous Team Training Officer) Our Team Leader, Garry Rhodes MBE aged 55, from Tyldesley, celebrating thirty three years membership in the team this month, was re-elected to the Team Leader post for the 25th consecutive year, with a similar re-election of Geoff Seddon aged 62, (Forty four years service as a team member) as Deputy Team Leader, a post he has held for the last 21 years (with previous service to the team as Team Leader).

Support Group member Gillian Gregory (Secretary) was re-elected to her post on the Team Council.

Newly voted into Team Council positions this year, for his first year in office, was Dave Marsh, aged 62, a former SARDA (England) Dog Handler and currently training Sasha, as a Drowned Victim Search Dog as our Training Officer, Martin Banks (Our Incident Control Vehicle Project Manager) who was newly elected as our Treasurer, Nigel Booth, aged 47, who was newly elected as our Equipment Officer (Medical) and Michael O’Brien who was newly elected as our Equipment Officer (Base / HQ and Catering).

Steve Fletcher aged 31 became our Equipment Officer (Communications and Lighting) for his third year in post, along with re-elected to post Nick Berry (Equipment Officer Ropes and Stretchers) and Chris Greenhalgh (Equipment Officer,Vehicles)

John Fletcher, our Equipment Officer (Water) was elected in to his first full year term of office, having been initially elected in to Office at an SGM last year.

All the Elected Officer posts 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.

Our subscription amount was set at £35.00 for 2013 – 2014 for all operational Call Out list members.

The meeting, which opened at 20:00, was officially closed by our Chairman Craig Lamb.