Deal and Dover Duplicate Bridge Club

AGM 12th April 2023 Minutes

23 members were present.

Apologies were received from Val Thompson

Andrew Gregory introduced himself as our co-opted chair, having been asked by Frank to step in. He paid tribute to Frank Wright who sadly died on 12^th March 2023. Frank had been our chair and scorer for over 5 years and scorer for 3 different clubs, Dover, Canterbury and Ashford. He had contributed greatly to bridge in East Kent and will be much missed.

Andrew also said that in the past year Deal had joined the EBU and merged with Dover Bridge Club.

The minutes of the 2022 AGM were adopted with no objections.

Terry Carroll (treasurer) presented the accounts for 2022-2023. The club had been dormant because of Covid and restarted 0n 6^th April 2022. Terry thanked Doug Smith for persevering  with HSBC to arrange for the transfer of funds from the Dover Club. He also thanked Graham Pearce for auditing the accounts. Expenditure had been heavier than usual because of the cost of affiliating with the EBU and the need to purchase computer equipment. The current balance at the AGM  (12^th April) is 6266.30 at Lloyds bank. Terry said that the healthy balance reflected the sum of 2852.76  from the result of the merger with Dover Bridge Club. We had to change banks during the year because Nationwide are no longer doing club accounts.

The table fees and annual membership will remain the same as last year although the Downs Sailing Club could well want to increase the rent due to the increase in energy costs.

Chris Rutherford is resigning from the committee today and Christine Symons has already announced that she is stepping down as secretary. Since the AGM notice was produced Terry Carroll has announced his intention to leave.

Bill Dix has been co-opted to the committee. A new treasurer and secretary are needed plus more to learn to score.  

Andrew appealed for volunteers for the committee with no response.

Committee: Andrew Gregory, Pat Welsh, Paul Rutherford, Bill Dix, Christine Symons, Anne Housego.

The new constitution for the club was presented to the members and adopted with no objections. The change was required following the vote at last year’s AGM to join the EBU.

Competitions: Andrew has entered the club for the EBED Pairs on 10^th May plus club competitions would restart. The current club rules state that a minimum of 7 tables are required to count in the competitions. Bill Gardner suggested that we change the minimum number of tables to 5. This was passed with no objections.