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AGM 2022 and 2023

James Cowling

AGM November 2023

The 2023 AGM was held on Tuesday November 28th at the Winkfield Centre. A summary report was presented in the January/February 2024 newsletter. If you would like more details please e-mail us at info@ho50s.org.uk. We continue to need new people to come forward as volunteers to help with organising meetings, keeping publicity and the website up to date, producing newsletters. If you would be willing to help us run the Forum in any of these ways, please email info@ho50s.org.uk and we can arrange to have a chat with you about what is involved.

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AGM November 2022

Here is a brief summary of what happened. If you would like to see full reports and accounts, please e-mail info@ho50s.org.uk to ask us.

We chose a new committee. James Cowling and Anne Gray will be co-secretaries, Joyce Sullivan Chair, Juliet Williams treasurer. For a full list of committee members, see the Committee Members section of this web site – it’s one of the banners you click along the top of the screen. This will be updated in the course of the year if there are any changes.

We changed the subscription system. Subscriptions at £8 per year, £40 for life will now run with the calendar year. People should renew in January or February, although they can still join at any time of year. People who paid for part of 2023 already will pay less than the full year’s subscription for 2023. That is, they will get a credit for the months they already paid for.

We celebrated the achievements of the last year. For example:

  • We had an Awards for All grant for the newsletter (and to pay Saskia to compile and edit it) up to July. Then we had 6 months’ grant from the Mayor of London to follow on. This was great because it enabled us to expand the newsletter from 4 pages to 8 and send everyone a paper copy. (Update added April 2023; we didn’t so far succeed in getting any more grant funding. So we can’t afford to send paper copies to everyone for the time being, only to those we know can’t use e-mail. If you can, it helps us a lot. You can also always read the latest issue on this web site)
  • At the time of the AGM we knew we were finalists in a competition to win some money. (Update: In December, we actually won an award for ‘peer support’ from the Marsh Trust, a charity that works with MIND. That was a welcome £500).
  • We had lots of successful meetings at the Winkfield Centre and at the Wood Green Library. Up to 30 people have attended meetings. We’re getting into a pattern of having talks most months – topics have included energy saving and help with energy costs, personal safety and crime prevention (with the police), fire safety, and social care in Haringey. At the AGM the talk was from a local solicitor about wills and probate.
  • Thanks to John Miles we are involved with a toilet campaign which has widened out to include Age UK London taking charge. Gordon Peters, our former chair, is also active in it. We’re lobbying the council, the GLA and private businesses for more and better public toilets as so many older people need them frequently.
  • We’re working together more now with the other two pensioners’ groups in the borough. We’re planning a special newsletter jointly with them for the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the former Haringey Forum for Older People, in autumn 2023.
  • We’re also working at London level with the Greater London Forum, which brings together the Forums of several different boroughs. Zara Ghodz who works for them as a development officer has been amazing source of reference for us.
  • We’ve been trying to help members with problems they have with the council. For example with home repairs and renovations, and issues about parking. We also encouraged Haringey Learns to set up a computer course for older people and several members joined this.
  • During the COVID pandemic volunteers from amongst our membership divided up the membership list and tried to phone as many people as possible to make sure they were ok and see if they needed help of any kind or just a friendly chat. We’ve stopped doing this now because people can go out and there is less need. (Update April 2023: But we are finding some members are not coming to meetings and we have discovered a few who are housebound. We’re going to look into the question of what support we can offer them)
  • We have an outing to the Sky Garden in the City coming shortly. We hope this will be the first of many outings and look forward to members’ suggestions about where to go.