Tonight forty three team members, including 35x Full Team Call Out list members, 3x Reserve Call Out list members, and 5x members of our Support Group, including new Support Group members Amanda Strickleton and Sarah Hindle attending this their first team AGM, 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 first 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, plus an outline of the 74x separate operational incidents attended in 2011 and the twenty three attended so far this year.

Our Training Officer Elaine Gilliland also presented a written report to the membership present.

The final report presented was made by our 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.

Finally our Treasurer Johanne Lamb stressed the importance of Gift Aid being applied within the team with regards to external donations and membership donations (although this entails a lot of hard work and paper chasing, the end results bring a large financial boost to the team). 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 53, a Financial Consultant from Swinton, elected for his second term of office as Chairman. (Craig has been a previous Team Training Officer) Our Team Leader, Garry Rhodes MBE aged 54, from Tyldesley, celebrating thirty two years membership in the team, was re-elected to the Team Leader post for the 24th consecutive year, with a similar re-election of Geoff Seddon aged 61, (Forty three years service as a team member) as Deputy Team Leader, a post he has held for the last 20 years (with previous service to the team as Team Leader).

Elaine Gilliland aged 44, was elected for her third year of office as our Training Officer.

Both Support Group members Gillian Gregory (Secretary) and Johanne Lamb (Treasurer) were re-elected to their posts on the Team Council.

Newly voted into Team Council position this year, for her first year in office, was Naomi Horan, aged 25 of Horwich, (An Intensive Care Nurse by profession) who became our new Equipment Officer (Medical)

Steve Fletcher aged 30 became our Equipment Officer (Communications and Lighting) for his second year in post, along with re-elected to post Nick Berry (Equipment Officer Ropes and Stretchers), Chris Tennant (Base / HQ, and Catering Officer) and Chris Greenhalgh (Equipment Officer,Vehicles)

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.

The meeting, which opened at 20:00, was officially closed at 22:15hrs.