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Report from Sussex Regional Group - 21 June 2004

Report for the Regional Co-ordinators Meeting 

Introduction

Since the last Regional Co-Coordinators meeting we have finally managed to get the Sussex regional group under way.

This has taken a great deal of work but it has been worthwhile as interest in the group has been encouraging, and the meetings held successful.

Getting Started

Before sending out any letters to prospective members, we set about designing a programme which covered the year from October 2003 to December 2004.  This included arranging the speakers and topics, getting some idea of dates and also possible venues.

We decided to organise a programme for the whole year based on the idea that even if people were not interested in all of the meetings, they would be interested in one or two of them and would therefore be more likely to join up.  In addition to this, we decided that for this year at least, our charging structure would be based on a yearly subscription, with the following benefits:

• Members could see they were getting ‘value for money’
• We would have some funds in advance without having to worry about funding for each meeting
• There would be less book-keeping
• Members would be encouraged to get their ‘money’s worth’

The programme is on the SFE website but a copy is now shown in Appendix 1 for your information.

Once this had been done, acting on advice from other Regional Co-ordinators, we sent an introductory letter out to as many people as we could within East Sussex and East Kent.  Accompanying the letter as said was our programme and also a membership questionnaire.

We sent out around 80 letters and from this gained approximately 30 members.  We also sent follow up emails to those who did not reply and gained an extra couple of members in doing this.

Once we had set the wheels in motion, we needed to deal with the practicalities of opening the Sussex SFE bank account. 

We decided to use Lloyds TSB as we have had some dealings with the manager of a local branch and although he was as helpful as possible, it was very difficult to meet all of the opening requirements.  The problems were not really with regard to identification but more with the identity of Solicitors for the Elderly and more specifically the regional group.  Whilst the national group could be verified through company house, the bank required some sort of constitution from the regional group which was not available.

This was resolved by sending numerous forms to the bank along with (more importantly) a form of ‘delegation’ which was signed by Danny Carter and Martin Terrell as committee members of the National Group.  In all it took us around 3 months to open the account.

Our Members

Our membership is currently at 41.  Geographically, the membership is broken down as follows:

We believe that there is a lot of scope for growth, particularly large towns such as Brighton and indeed Tunbridge Wells.

We also have not targeted West Sussex at all, which is something we plan to do towards the end of the year ready for the next one.

Ideally, we would like all or our members to become members of the national group, and next year we plan to introduce a reduced subscription for national group members.  The below graph shows the current situation as regards this:

The Meetings

We have so far held 3 meetings, including our inaugural meeting.

As per the programme the speakers thus far have been Jamie Bogle, Denzil Lush and Penny Letts.

In terms of numbers at the meetings, these have been good.

All except one or two of our membership (at the time) came to hear Jamie Bogle.  Around 48 came to hear Denzil Lush (14 personal injury lawyers paid an extra fee to attend) and we had around 25 at our last meeting.

At our inaugural meeting, on arrival we arranged for tea and coffee to be served and afterwards there was a buffet and some drinks.  This proved to be quite a successful formula; people enjoyed being able to discuss matters after the lecture, and in particular enjoyed picking the speaker’s brain!

We have done the same at our last two meetings, although the buffet has now been cut back to Canapés. Of course not everyone stays at the end for a drink but again, the majority seem to enjoy chatting informally at the start of the meeting and at the end.

On average, the meetings have been costing us around £500 which includes any speaker’s fee.  Provided that we get a few new members, we should be able to continue running our meetings in this way.

Our fee structure

As previously mentioned, in order to simplify matters for at least the first year, members have been charged a subscription for the year which covers attendance at all meetings.  This charge is £80 per person, £150 for two and £50 for any extra.  We have also charged a one off attendance fee of £50.

We believe that this represents very good value, particularly as refreshments are also served at the meetings.  Having received no real feedback regarding the charge, we can only assume that it is acceptable to everyone else. 

Next year in line with our plan to encourage more to join up to the National Group, we plan to introduce a reduced rate for members.

As the group gets larger, we feel it would now be prudent to give some thought to getting a few more people involved and forming a committee.

Currently the paper work is very time consuming and leaves very little time for working on increasing membership and raising general awareness. 

We would also hope to have some interest from the ‘local press’ and continue to encourage local newspapers to include something about the meetings.

Essentially we would like to make the group more successful and the best way to do this is with more members.

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