Peak & Northern Footpaths Society (est.1894)

Chairman's piece

This article is from Signpost, Autumn 2013

In the Summer Newsletter I said “I firmly believe we need to increase our membership numbers”. I am delighted to tell you that we have been very successful at doing this, particularly at the country shows we have attended. YTD more than 230 new members have joined us with 165 being recruited at shows. Many thanks to all the hard working volunteers who have helped us achieve these results.

Paul Easthope looks on as a new member signs up at the Hodder Valley show

In addition to increasing new membership numbers I believe our priorities should be:-

Identifying and resolving more footpath faults
and
Becoming more efficient in our operations.

Footpath Faults – Inspectors are the life blood of PNFS and it is my intention to have more Inspectors walking more footpaths. To achieve this I believe we require a new volunteer role to help me with the recruitment, induction, training, and development of Inspectors together with ongoing communication and general assistance in resolving faults.

Becoming more efficient - We have teams looking at our processes and systems for membership, faults, accounting and planning. In addition the time has come to update some of our IT, particularly as Microsoft will cease to support our existing Windows XP systems next year. This will obviously require substantial capital expenditure and an IT team, with the trustees approval, is looking at how we can obtain the “kit” that will meet our requirements most effectively. We will be able to provide more details to you when final decisions have been made.

More assistance is needed at Taylor House. In particular I need help in dealing with a lot of the admin aspects of my role. If anyone feels they would like to give me assistance in this respect I would be delighted to hear from them. PC and data inputting skills would be an advantage.

The new roles of Inspector Development and Admin Assistant will be of enormous help to the team in moving PNFS forward. Will any members interested in these roles please contact me.

I am pleased to say we have had considerable success with our Silverdale 14 appeal to the Secretary of State's Inspector. Our Silverdale Update article gives detailed information.

A number of our longer term foot bridge projects are now beginning to progress satisfactorily and I am hopeful I will have more details for you in the next newsletter.

Your team of volunteers are working hard in your interests and I am convinced that we can move the Society forward in the coming months and years. We do however need more volunteers and I would be delighted to hear from anyone who feels they can contribute in any way.

Finally, the new Constitution will no longer be printed each year in the Annual Report, but is available for download from this site.

John Broadbent

Next: Signpost report

Page title:Chairman's piece
Address:https://pnfs.org.uk/newsletter/1309-chairman.htm
Message:
If you'd like a reply, please include your contact details.
 
Your message is being sent.
Your message has been sent. Thank you.
Message sending failed - sorry. As an alternative you might like to try the Contact the webmaster form.