Notes on the Formation meeting of the DVHA held at the Puddletown Village Hall on 12^th March 2005

We have lift off!!!

Thanks to the work of Lois Rose in getting an excellent turnout at the ‘Enhancing your chances’ day, we received a near unanimous vote to form the DVHA. 

Thank you to all who have offered to represent your Regions on the initial Committee.  We look forward to working together.

Thank you to Colin Rhymes, Stan Wood and Tina Jackson for coming to represent the Working Party on the day.

Objective

To discuss the proposed constitution

To approve the founding of the Association

To appoint Regional Representatives

Discussion & Minutes

Lois Rose

Lois gave a talk on the need for the DVHA as a grass-roots organisation providing representation on the National Village Halls Forum.  This is a group for lobbying the government on treating our village Halls as a National resource, and funding them accordingly.

Baird Oldrey

Baird welcomed people and introduced members of the Working Party present.

He then gave a talk on:

• What we will do to provide mutual benefit and national lobbying
• How we will do it with regional and central meetings
• The organisation, makeup of the Committee and the Constitution.

Question time

There were no queries on the Constitution, other than a suggestion that we should be aligning our regions with the District Councils in Dorset.  Perhaps we should discuss this at the first Committee meeting

As we are now in an increasingly electronic world, the suggestion was made that we should have our own Website, where we can publish our objectives and activities.  The Internet can also possibly be the medium for the DVHA members to have access to a ‘knowledge base’ of useful contacts for a number of areas of our operation.  I said that we will try and do most of our internal communication by e-mail, and that to this end, it may be useful to try and get e-mail addresses for contacting our members quickly and at minimum operational cost.  Stan Wood suggested that it might be possible to get funding for setting up this IT infrastructure.

We discussed likely costs of membership, and re-iterated that this would be free for the first year, while we establish the likely cost of operation, which we can then share in the coming years.

Lois reminded us that there is a ‘special offer’ for individual Halls to be members of the National village Halls Forum for £10 this year.

New Licencing Law

The original speaker was unable to attend, but the morning session was rescheduled to let Ryan Branson explain the situation.

Ryan covers this responsibility for West Dorset.  He is willing to take calls on when the next presentations are being held, and mentioned that there will be one at Weymouth/Portland in the near future.  He can be contacted on 01305 252214.

For those, like myself, who are uninformed in this area, the rule of thumb is that you need to have sorted out your situation and applications by August 6^th this year.

Next Meeting

We need to establish the best regular day of the week and time to have meetings to achieve the highest attendance.  I know that some of us work, and so Saturday mornings have been best.  I have Thursdays off from work, so can make that day, or could change it occasionally.

Could you please let me know your possible and best times so we can come up with a ‘best fit’.  If you can let me have responses by 5^th April, it will confirm that I have correct contact details, and can fix a date.

In my talk, I made great play of our holding our meetings in a pub, and would like to continue this.  I suggest we hold our first meeting in the Tolpuddle Martyr’s Inn, and if this shows itself to be unsuitable for the larger number, we can look for another with a conference/function room - again in the central area of the county.

Agenda

I think that the Agenda should be as follows, but would welcome contributions:

Introductions

Organisation

Alignment of regions with DCC Districts

Appointment of Officers – Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer

Publicity – Website, input to DCA bulletins etc.

Membership campaigns

County & National liaison & representation

Projects

The aim is to achieve some ‘quick benefits’:
          Hall facilities & charges census
          Combined buying – Insurance etc.
          Items for loan or hire – Staging, chairs, screens, sound, lighting & projection equipment etc.
          Gathering & publishing of ‘I know a man who does’ knowledge

Hallmark scheme

Website

Quarterly meetings

First suggestions

Next Committee meeting

All this suggests quite a full meeting, so we may have to think of having a second meeting shortly after the first to get things off to a really productive start.

I look forward to receiving your comments.

Baird Oldrey

Baird Oldrey: C:\Documents and Settings\Baird\My Documents\DVHA\DVHA 050312 Formation meeting.doc

DVHA Committee 2005/6