HALESWORTH TENNIS CLUB

Draft minutes of the AGM 2025

The AGM was held on 22nd April 2025, at the Insomnia Café in the Halesworth Co-op

The Meeting opened at 18.30pm

1. Welcome and Apologies for Absence

Simon Thackray (Chair) welcomed those present to the AGM.

Present

Trustees: Simon Thackray, Lyn Burnett, Charlotte Binder, Mick Binder, Mike Davis, Ben Sharratt

General members: Steve Burnett, Ewen Bell, Jane O’Hanlon, Shayne Davis, Ann Jones, Valerie Carroll, Heather Laws-Smith, Kate Batten-Phelps, Philip Gough, Barry Johnson, Jane Walker, Barry Johnson, Alison Pettafor, Richard More, Carl & Rebecca Woodard, Roger Webb, Richard More

Non-member

David Hooper

Apologies

Trustees: Tessa Summers

Coach: Gary Howe

General members: Liz Cunningham, Christopher Jenkins, Richard & Wendy Story, Joan Cane, Sue Foster, Bill Gerrish

2. Approval of the minutes of the A.G.M. 27/03/2024

The draft minutes of the 2024 AGM are published on the website for all members to view. These were agreed as a correct record, proposed by Mick Binder and seconded by Ann Jones. There were no matters arising from the minutes not otherwise covered within the agenda. These will be signed by Simon.

3. Officers’ Reports

1. Report from the Chair - reflections on the last 12 months and looking ahead to new challenges

Simon delivered his Annual Report. The full text is presented below.

Chair’s report for 2024-25 season

The financial year has ended on a very sad note with the death of Sarah Giles.  Sarah has been a long-term stalwart of the club, a great supporter of social events, and just a lovely lady, always a delight to meet.  We will miss her enormously.  Our hearts go out to John at this very sad time.

2024-25 has been a hugely important year for the club.  It has been a bumpy road we’ve had to navigate.

The first big bump was just before the season properly opened, we were given notice by HeadsUp that they were pulling Ross Wilson, our club professional, out of Halesworth and depositing him in Loddon.  Without a professional, our coaching programme would disappear at a stroke.  We have been very grateful to Gary Howe for agreeing to step into the breach and to fill the void.  It has meant some changes as the time that Gary was able to give us was limited; the biggest change has been to merge the two junior groups so there is currently only one junior group on a Monday at 5.00pm.  This isn’t ideal but it has been a case of needs must.

The next bump was the open day last May where, unlike the previous year when the sun had shone, we had lots of visitors and 13 new members signed up on the day, last year it was dull, slightly chilly and rain in the air.  This obviously restricted the number of visitors and thus the number of new members – just 6 signed up on the day.  You might think that 6 new members in one day must be positive.  In fact, it barely holds the club in a stationary position.  Every year we lose a handful of members.  This is for a variety of reasons – juniors may not continue with tennis; members of all ages, particularly the over 70s, suffer injuries causing them to give up tennis; members move away from Halesworth; and sadly & tragically we may have a member dying as we have had recently with the death of Sarah Giles.  5 years ago, we had a membership of as low as 35 which made the club almost financially unsustainable.  Earlier this last season, that number had doubled to 70; by the end of this last season, we calculate that the number of expected renewals will be 62.  This is a constant challenge and one I shall return to.

For the second year, the club managed to put out a team in Div 3 of the Lowestoft & District League.  Thanks are due to Tessa for the thankless task of getting a team together to fulfill our fixture list during May, June & July.  The team performed very well, particularly the women (exclusively Tessa & Lyn), and finished mid-table.  We have entered a team again this coming season.  Tessa would love to hear from you if you’d like to play some team tennis, particularly if you’re a woman where ideally, we’d have a pool of 4 or 5 players so everyone gets a match but it will make life a lot less stressful for Tessa in putting out a team.  Division 3 tennis is competitive without being daunting.  Matches are conducted in a friendly atmosphere; winning isn’t the be all and end all.  If you are a woman playing to intermediate standard or better and would like to play the occasional match, please do contact Tessa as soon as possible as the first fixture is only a few weeks away.

Fundraising for the court resurfacing has dominated the year.  The biggest bump in the road was undoubtedly getting turned down by the Sizewell C Foundation.  Everything had seemed positive until their panel ruled that Halesworth as a whole wouldn’t qualify as it has not been severely impacted by the Sizewell C development.  That application stretched over several months and required an awful lot of input of information.  I’m particularly grateful to Lyn for providing me with many background policy documents which enabled all the boxes to be ticked.

I won’t go into each funding success story; I did send a detailed account to the membership a couple of months ago.  Since that paper, there have been 2 important events: -

1. I said in that report that I was optimistic about securing some funding from the East Suffolk Community Partnership.  This was successful and enabled us to replace the front fence with a cost of £4,500.  The funding at that stage didn’t extend to being able to replace the front gate.  However, thanks to some advice from Premier (the court resurfacing company) and equipment supplied in the main by Mick & Charlotte, a small work party set to work a fortnight ago and got the job done.

2. The golf day took place on 29 March 2025, a beautiful sunny, warm, spring day.  There had been an awful lot of planning going into this; thanks to all committee members and those members who helped on the day.  Particular thanks to Mick, Charlotte, Tessa & Lyn who had borne the brunt of the organisation.  The result was that we exceeded our budget expectations by 100%.  We had cautiously hoped that we’d make a clear profit of around £2,000; in fact, we made a profit of just over £4,000.  This has led to an overall surplus on the entire court resurfacing project.  The numbers are set out at the end of this report.

And so, to the resurfacing itself.  I hope most, if not all, of you have paid a visit to Dairy Hill to see the changes for yourselves.  Just to run through what you’ll see front to back: -

• A new front fence with refurbished front gate
• New surrounding court edging
• Resurfaced courts
• New net posts & nets
• Second entrance gate direct to the car park

And still to come: -

• Painted courts in Wimbledon colours of purple court with green surround
• Pickleball line markings on one court

Work was slightly delayed due to the late delivery of the bitumen.  We lost a week and consequently also lost our anticipated slot for the painting of the courts.  The painting will now take place over the week of 6/7/8 May and the courts will be open for play on Monday 12 May.  Our first weekend open (17/18 May) will be enhanced by our open morning on the 18th which, given some decent weather, we hope will bring in a lot of potential new members.

What is the current state of the club’s health? 

• The infrastructure is as strong as it’s ever been.  We have: -
• Security of tenure for 25yrs
• LED floodlights
• Resurfaced courts
• The membership is at a stable 62 members

There are, however, challenges on the horizon.  First, the demographics of the club: -

• Junior members (aged under 18)        14
• Age 18-49                                            9
• Age 50-69                                            21
• Age 70+                                               18

I don’t think I need to spell out the problem.

The problem isn’t helped by your ever-aging committee!  We currently have 7 committee members, all longstanding members of the club, only one committee member is aged under 60, and 4 of us are aged over 70.  Not only that, but all 7 are members of the ‘experienced’ group that meets on Saturdays and Tuesdays.  So, we are not a good cross-section of the club.  We are not the people to meet the challenge of bringing in more juniors and more in the 18-49 age group.

To entice new players may well require changes to the coaching programme as well as more interaction with local schools.  This can only be done with discussion with Gary Howe, our club professional.  He has plenty of experience & knowledge to bring to the table.  What he doesn’t have is a lot of available time.  This will be a task for the 2025/26 committee.

The present committee does have a proposal to put to the members, and we’ll come to that further down the agenda.

In short, I believe the club is in excellent shape to be able to move onwards & upwards; but it would be a mistake for the club to believe that it’s ‘job done’.  There are, as I guess there always will be, new challenges ahead.

Simon Thackray, Chair of the Trustee Board

Appendix: The court resurfacing figures

2. Treasurer – presentation of the annual accounts

Mike initiated his report by thanking Simon for his huge efforts in securing funding from various sources for the court resurfacing project, acknowledging the tremendous amount of effort that went into each application. He then thanked all those members who supported the club through donations. Mike stated that the accounts presented at the AGM (to April 22, 2025) show the latter part of members’ contributions as well as the income generated by the Golf Day fundraiser.  The outcome is that the club is in credit by over £2,000 going into the new financial year. Mike stated that an audit needs to be conducted, and Simon indicated that he could assist with this. Richard asked if the club is VAT registered (for the purpose of reclaiming VAT – members would not be charged) and Simon said we are not. Simon then drew our attention to the terms of the loan from the Suffolk LTA. He indicated that this is an interest-free loan of £12,000 which runs over 10 years - £1,200 per year, therefore.

4. Club Developments

1. Membership and Club Developments

• The reopening of the courts (date announced at the AGM)

This is recorded in Simon’s report above but to reiterate, the courts will reopen on Monday, 12 May.

• The forthcoming Open Day (May 18, 2025)

As Simon indicated in his report, it is hoped that with our newly surfaced courts (and better weather) we will maintain our current membership and have a healthy number of new members. Lyn showed the article and advert on page 7 of the Community News and thanked Roger for his speedy efforts and generosity of time to produce the advert itself and meet Micropress’s deadline. Lyn distributed posters to the attendees and emphasised the importance of promoting the event both in physical form – displaying hard copy posters – and using social media. To this end, Lyn will send a copy of the advert to all members through Clubspark and encourage them to post it on their social media platforms. Jane suggested that we promote the event at the secondary schools which have students living in our area, namely Bungay High School and Sir John Leman, with Philip adding Thomas Mills.  Lyn explained that we do this in the local primary schools but will act on Jane’s suggestion and see if the secondary schools would advertise on our behalf. Lyn outlined Gary’s draft schedule of activities for the day itself and indicated that he is to attend a Drills & Skills Pickleball session at UEA Sportspark. As Mick emphasised, we all need to do our very best to support the day and encourage people to attend.

• Coaching Programme 2025-2026

Gary was unable to attend due to his Tuesday evening coaching responsibilities for Beccles & Bungay Harriers, but Simon suggested that his coaching programme will remain as it was for the last season and run over Mondays and Tuesdays, as before. Any changes to the programme will require discussion with Gary.

2. Subscriptions 2025-2026

• Tennis Year May 1 – April 30

Lyn made the following statement: “Whilst we hope to attract several new members at our Open Day in May, we must base our subscriptions on what we have now and not on what might happen. Based on the subs collected over the last two years, and considering our ongoing expenses, we need to target around £5,000. To achieve this, the committee proposes the following slight increases in membership costs for the 2025 to 2026 season:

Single Adult - £100, Couple £160, Family £180 and Junior/Student £40

Based on our current membership, this would generate around £4,920. The committee feels that this is a minimal increase considering the expenses incurred to provide a much better community facility and the fact that membership fees have remained the same over our last two seasons – 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025.”

Rebecca asked about the 25 and under group who are not in full time education and the possibility of offering this group a different rate, particularly as we are wanting to attract a younger age range. This sparked various ideas from several of the members with the outcome being that we will introduce two new membership packages as follows:

Single Young Adult 19-25 inclusive (not in full time education) - £60

Single Young Adult x 2 19-25 inclusive (2 persons joining together, not in full time education) - £100

All membership packages were considered appropriate and proposed by Steve and seconded by Barry. Ann made the point that the increases do come at a time when play has been interrupted and a lot of effort made by many (in time and money) to raise funds.

Before moving on to the next agenda item, several membership-related points were raised. Jane Walker asked specifically about what the club has on offer for people joining and how it can be difficult to find out. Also, Jane made the point that after joining, it can be hard to get to know people. Lyn indicated that the website has all the information about our weekly programme but prompted by Jane’s comment, raised the ongoing dilemma of how and when to run a Club session which would allow members to meet other players and to encourage, for example, families to come along. Barry suggested offering a Sunday morning where people simply turn up and play. This was generally considered a good idea while acknowledging that it is a time when children have other sporting commitments. Lyn will put it on the website once courts are open again and see how it goes.

• CLUBSPARK arrangements for renewing membership

Lyn will send an email to all members notifying them of the 1st May renewal date and asking that, as usual, an online payment is made through the website. Before this, she will put the new packages on the website and make them visible.

5. Elections of Officers

1. Chair
2. Secretary
3. Treasurer
4. Trustees

Simon introduced the committee’s intention to step down as one after the Open Day therefore postponing the election of new officers/trustees. The present committee has agreed that new blood is needed to take the club forward in order to offer fresh ideas and new thoughts. Ideally a new committee also will have greater breadth with a representation from a cross section of the membership both in terms of age and playing standards. Simon wanted to start this conversation at the meeting, hoping it would then continue up to Open Day. Alison suggested that the ‘job specification’ for the various roles should be known and this was agreed. To this effect, Simon will compose an email to go to all members, explaining the committee’s intention and providing details of what is required. Simon emphasised that the committee wants the club to succeed, and the present committee members will happily play a supporting role. As Alison suggested, questions can be asked in person of the committee on the Open Day but in the meantime, contact information for all the present committee members will be in Simon’s circular email should anyone interested require more information.

6. Any other business

1. The cost for Pay & Play on the courts will be £15 per court as of May 12.
2. Ann gave a vote of thanks to the committee for all its hard work and efforts.
3. Ahead of the AGM, Sue Foster asked to have recorded her thanks to the committee for all the hard work in organising the funds and resurfacing of the courts.

Meeting closed at 20.20pm.

Thank you to those who attended the AGM 2025