Tonight 33 team members, including Full Team members & Trainees and members of our Support Group attended our AGM this evening and our election of council officers. Proceedings were opened by our Chairman Ken Oakes, who presented his report.

Ken opened his report by presenting the team’s acknowledgement and congratulations to Team Leader Garry Rhodes for his an award of an MBE in this year’s New Years Honours for services to our team. In reply, all team members present displayed their acknowledgement with a round of applause. Ken also thanked Chris Tennant for his role as Equipment Officer (Catering & Base) upon standing down this year after many years in post.

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.

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.

Our election of Officers followed which saw Ken Oakes re-elected for his third term of office as Chairman.

Our Team Leader, Garry Rhodes aged 50, was re-elected to the Team Leader post for the 20th consecutive year, with a similar re-election of Geoff Seddon aged 21+, Garry’s deputy since 1992 (and a previous Team Leader.) Team memebr of 8 years experience, Andy Ryding, aged 43, was elected to the post of Training Officer for his second term of office.

One Officer was newly elected to the Council, Sue Purtill as Equipment Officer (HQ & Catering). 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 and to former Team Treasurer Dave Sawyer who also stood down from the post in December 2007.