January 2023

As you are probably aware Jim Mason stepped down as Chair and I was elected following five years leading the Urban Group. I am delighted that the Secretary and Treasurer agreed to continue in post and most members of the Urban Group moved over to become trustees and committee members of the Civic Society.

Your committee members with various leading roles are now as follows.

Andy Moore        Chair

Dianne Parkin     Secretary
Martin Lander     Treasurer

Steve Marsh       Communications/Media

Tim Lee             Communications/Media
Andrew Beeson  Membership (Individual and Corporate)

Ursula Jones      Events

Paddy Jelen, Yvonne Pini, Stuart Burns     Without Portfolio

Our Planning sub-group remains as John Smith and David Heeley.

New focus and aims

Whilst continuing to meet the objectives of the constitution we will initially focus on the following priorities.

Projects and campaigns

• Review, update and improve communications, media and marketing
  
• Planning issues
• Increase and broaden the demographic of the individual membership and increase corporate membership

Events

• Establish and improve connections with all local authorities, prominent organisations and other local voluntary groups
  

Current projects and campaigns

• Further church floodlighting
  
• Remedial work to pavement lighting (SKDC)
• Bronze plaques restoration (STC)
• Water Street tree and riverbank enhancement/essential work (SKDC)
• Enrichment and further development of our Historic Sites app
  

Events

The final event of 2022 on December 15th was a talk by the well-known Auctioneer David Palmer at Browne’s Hospital. David has a wealth of knowledge about antiques and provided a very entertaining evening which was enjoyed and appreciated by a good attendance of members.

Ursula and her events team are organising a shop window competition for town centre shops to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III together with a children’s ‘spot the odd one out’ competition. Look out for details in the media

Comments and contributions

We welcome comments and contributions from members on any Civic Society issue and particularly ideas for events and projects. Further communication links will be available shortly, in the meantime please email [email protected]

And finally...

My sincere thanks to Graddon Rowlands who after many years of involvement with the Civic Society and the Urban Group has recently decided to “retire”. We will all miss Graddon’s knowledge, advice and commitment but I know he’ll be in the background to offer an opinion when required.

Andy Moore