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Attendees:

Graham Emmett, Matthew Waterhouse, Colin Heslop;, James Watt , Jeremy Rogers, William Edwards, Tony Bagley, Laurence Jones, Glyn Overy, Ron Hewitt, Duncan Saunders, Tony Fardoe, Lisa Wood, Norman King, Richard Long, Simon Pickford, Giles Usher, Robert Longstaff, Marcel Renshaw , Mark Kershaw

 

Ordinary Business

Welcome from the President

The President of the DLOC and the Chair of this meeting, Matthew Waterhouse introduced himself and invited each member of the board present to introduce themselves.

 

Introductions from the Board and Officials

Each member of the board gave a brief resume of their position.

 

Apologies for absence

Kevin Bennett; Mark Cuthbert-Brown, Brian Smith, George Zdanko, Mark Hooghiemstra, John Minchell

 

The minutes of the 45th meeting were adopted by the meeting

Proposed Laurence Jones, Seconded: Tony Fardoe.
In favour: 20 + 26 (proxy), Against: 0 + 0 (proxy)

 

Matters arising from previous minutes.​

None

 

Directors and officials reports

 

Graham Emmett, Chairman – “State of the Club”

It’s been a very busy year and with the help of other members of the management team, we’ve made some significant progress. Of course, much is still a work in progress but I feel we’re on the right road but on a long journey.

My objectives from the time I took on the role of Chairman were:

1. To secure the future of the club by holding up the membership numbers.

2. To get more involvement in the organisation from members.

3. Secure our heritage archive and increase the availability of what we hold to members.

4. Improve the service to members in terms of regional representation and model registrars.

5. Ensure a future continuity for our highly regarded magazine, the Driving Member.

 

Well, what has worked and what has not?

Holding up membership? We’ve been around 1500 members since 2020.
We’re currently: Total: 1491; UK: 1255; International: 250. This is some 40 ahead of where we were at this time last year.

We had a very successful recruitment at the NEC earlier this month and we recruited a lot of new members with newer Jaguar derived Daimlers, so we've really got to step up our support of those newer models.

Worryingly, analysis shows that since 2020, 40% of new members have already left the club. We must understand why they’ve left, is it a regional thing or is it models? Where is the dissatisfaction?  Our Company Secretary, James Watt, wrote to 119 members who did not renew in June to enquire why and received 19 responses, 8 of which then renewed but it was not possible to identify any common reason for non-renewal.

 

Getting more people involved. We have a new member of the management team this year that’s William Edwards who is taking on the advertising, which was previously shouldered by Jeremy Rogers, who also has the role of Events. William has been successful in bringing new ideas and energy to the role as you’ll see in his new features in the Driving Member.

The treasurer’s role remains with Colin Heslop. We thought we had found a replacement but unfortunately, family commitments didn't let that go forward. So Colin has found his own replacement which is his daughter-in-law who is a qualified bookkeeper and Colin will oversee the day-to-day work. This is a good stopgap solution but in future we do need someone with accounting qualifications to become our finance director.

We still need a merchandising champion, a website manager, a Facebook moderator and an IT Specialist to manage our ever-increasing reliance on it and we need someone to shadow Kevin. These are key appointments to ensure the long term sustainability of the club.

Please put your hand up if you can help.

 

The Archive. We are still struggling to get proper engagement with the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust to recover all the items lodged with them in the 1990s. Matthew Waterhouse is leading the negotiations and he will double down on his efforts to resolve the blocking issues.
We have an outline agreement to secure a physical home for all we currently hold and what we hope to gain in the future. This is with the Richard Roberts Archive (a trust and a registered charity) in Stockport. The DLOC will likely create our own Trust in order to hold the archive material we currently have and any future items that we are gifted or acquire. At present we have not negotiated the detail of our arrangements including any possible end date or what would happen in the events of the winding up of the organisation. It is proposed we will pay an annual fee on a prorated square footage basis of the total annual costs of the operation. The building is an industrial type unit and is owned by the Trust. Despite the outside industrial appearance, inside is a very comfortable reading room with kitchen and toilet facilities. It is accessible six days a week. We did investigate several alternatives but none ticked all our boxes for example being a Trust, a secured building, an experienced curator to help us and good access.
Stockport?! I hear you ask? Well it's on the main line from Euston, with a stop at Milton Keynes, Stafford and Stoke so it's easy to get to by rail and it's just off the Manchester ring road so easy by car. It's a lovely facility with a super reading room. We only have one thing stopping us - we need to build a mezzanine floor in their premises to hold our archive. We have a plan and we will be looking for a local contractor to build it soon. All these things take much longer than I'd ever anticipated but please bear with us if you're a builder then let me know.

Last January we had a very successful day and what was the coldest day of the year for what I called “the archive scramble”. 12 members sorted out and catalogued all the items that we currently hold and while we still have two large boxes of items to key into the spreadsheet there are currently over 250 items listed. One member took away all the wiring diagrams and compiled the complete list of them all and files them in order - a lovely job.

 

We have some thriving branches to hold up as examples – East Midlands, West Midlands, East Susses, West Country, Hertfordshire and the Essex SP group. These are all down to enthusiastic regional organisers.

There are new branches in the West Country, Oxford and North Mercia. The Yorkshire branch has been resurrected but has failed to gain much traction unfortunately. We're not well served by some branches and we need to ask those branch representatives if they really want to carry on.

I'm not sure what we can do to inject some enthusiasm in those area where there is no activity. Any suggestions very welcome.

The same goes for registrars. We're missing so many model registrars and there are some who are very quiet. If those registrars are finding that they can't really commit to supporting their models then let's find somebody else to have a go.

I think everyone will agree that the Driving Member is an exemplary magazine and anyone who receives it is astonished at the quality of its production. I think Kevin could do with an MBE for the work he does but I do worry about you Kevin, I think you need someone to shadow you, an assistant editor who might take some of the workload and may step in the odd month, because one day you will want to retire and I'm desperately worried about that.

 

Increasing the visibility of the club in multi-make regional events hasn't been very successful but actually I see this is where we need to go. An example was this year’s South Gloucestershire Vintage Extravaganza (at South Cerney) where our stand was organised by Kevin Bennett. There was a good number of cars and we will be going next year.  It will be where we recruit new members.

To this end I'm proposing we do a club wide “Drive it Day” supporting the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs (https://fbhvc.co.uk/drive-it-day). The aim is to raise money for charity and this year they raised £47,000.

Maybe adjacent regions can work together and meet up. I'm sure East and West Midlands, Essex, East Sussex and Kent, Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire can all meet up somewhere.  I'm going to make an effort to get the northwest members to meet up somewhere - all on Drive it Day. A suggestion was made that we could aim to make it like the old “Norwich Union” runs where cars set off from all over the country with a common destination.

Let's see if we can make it a big success.

 

That’s where I am – in summary we are doing well but we need help to run the club in all sorts of areas so please step forward an offer your skills to keep this great club going forward.

 

Colin Heslop, Treasurer – presentation of the accounts

The accounts were made available to the membership the Driving Member. Nothing very different from last year, a break-even is forecast. Our Income is remaining stable but the magazine and postage costs are going up all the time despite our editor working hard to minimise increases. It seems we may have to look at the subscription for next year. Advertising revenue for the year was £9,363.

Tony Fardoe asked if we had considered reducing the size to A5 and had two sample magazines from other clubs he belonged to and suggested this would save money. There was a discussion about reducing the frequency to six per year.
 

Robert Longstaff pointed to his experience with one of the other clubs of which he is a member where they reduced the size but found the costs were not materially reduced. Furthermore, members saw the value of their membership being halved and questioned value for money. We must decide what the club should be delivering for the members.

Simon Pickford asked for a breakdown of the annual costs of production for the DM. These were:. Production and Printing £29,000 Editorial £6,000, Labels £2,000, Postage UK £10,000, Postage International £7,000, Miscellaneous other items £1,500

 

William Edwards was of the strong opinion that reducing the frequency or capacity of the magazine would seriously affect the advertising revenue and as we relied on this revenue as our only surplus it would be a serious loss to the club.

James Watt suggested that the board take forward the discussion with Kevin Bennett, the Editor, at the next board meeting.

 

Simon Pickford noted the reduction in advertising revenue. Jeremy Rogers explained that David Manners Group have moved their advertising budget to larger clubs. In order to retain their business we offered a 45% discount. We also lost Machine Mart as we were a smaller audience than they had expected. We had also missed placing Longstone’s entry for several months and so they were now receiving free adverting to make up the deficit.

 

William Edwards noted that DMG has agreed an 12% uplift for this coming year and Longstone were now paying once more.

Laurence Jones had questions of the lack of consistency of the way we present the name of the club. We should determine the correct format and use that one format throughout.

 

Graham Emmett, Membership – report on membership

As previously discussed under Chairmans report: We’ve been around 1500 members since 2020. We’re currently: Total: 1491; UK: 1255; International: 250.
On this date (23 Nov 2024) we are 13 members up on 23 Nov 2023.

James Watt (Company Secretary) expressed the need for more volunteers to help run the club as too much was falling on too few shoulders.

Jeremy Rogers expressed the need for two-way communications and that event organisers must inform him of organised events. .James Watt emphasised that unless an organiser notifies Jeremy Rogers of an event, DLOC Public Liability insurance will not cover the event. We must be notified.

 

A discussion followed about the progress of recovering the archive from JDHT and the lack of commitment from JDHT. Tony Bagley outlined some of the history. Tony Fardoe made the point that the Daimler name was slipping into the shadows and we were not a priority. Matthew Waterhouse agreed to progress the issue with some urgency with Keith Benjamin of JDHT.

 

Duncan Saunders asked for an explanation of the membership number and why it had changed. Graham Emmett explained that the adoption of the Crossmember computerised Management System mean that we had to have a membership number that was in numerical sequence.
Old membership numbers were in the format of a sequence number (nnn) and a two-digit year (yy) so were nnn/yy, for example: 113/83. To preserve the historic numbers, the sequence was reversed and century digit added (c) so they became c/yy/nnnn e.g. 1830113. Since the introduction of Crossmember in 2020, all membership numbers start 22 followed by a 4 digit sequence number e.g. 220113.
This allows for the sequencing of member lists in historic date order.

 

Kevin Bennett, Editor – magazine status

Unfortunately, Kevin was unable to attend the meeting.

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William Edwards; Advertising – report on current advertising status

All members can play a part in our advertising. If you use a company who advertise with us – tell them you have seen their advert!  Similarly if you use a company who don’t advertise, tell William.

We have carried over 10 of the advertisers from the last rally into the Driving member and will do another 10 next month. These were free inserts and some have taken up a paid for advert.

Tony Fardoe related that he had been talking to DMG (Kate Manners and Yvette) over a photo competition entry. Kate had suggested holding a Daimler day at the DMG premises. TF will progress.

 

To re-elect the Directors standing down by rotation

Colin HeslopFor 19+ 26 (proxy); Against 0

 

To elect any new Directors.

No nominations were received.  

 

To elect

1. James Watt as the Honorary Secretary    For 19+ 26 (proxy); Against 0

2. Colin Heslop as the Honorary Treasurer For 19+ 25 (proxy); Against 1(proxy)

 

To authorise the Directors to fix the annual subscription fee

Proposed by Laurence Jones, Seconded Glyn Overy. For 20 + 26 (proxy); Against 0

 

Special business

No member-generated requests have been received.

 

This ended the official business of the AGM.

 

The meeting ended at 12:35