Minutes of the AGM held at Hallhill Healthy Living Centre, Dunbar

Thursday 9 th November 2006

•  Welcome and Apologies

The Chairman welcomed everyone to the 7 th AGM of the Dunbar Harbour Trust.

•  Minutes of previous AGM

The minutes of last year's AGM were approved by JB and seconded by JSB

3 . Chairman's Report and Resume of sixth year

Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 7th Annual General meeting of the Dunbar Harbour Trust and thank you for attending.

You'll be delighted to learn that I do not intend to spend a lot of time going over all the things that the Trust has been doing during the year to 31st January 2006 for two good reasons.

Firstly, recent changes in legislation mean that a lot more information about the activities of the Trust during the accounting period has been included in Director's Report which forms part of the annual accounts, a copy of which has been given to you this evening and, secondly, you have also been given this evening a copy of the first issue of the DHT newsletter which provides you with a comprehensive summary of the Trust's activities since it was established 7 years ago. I don't therefore intend to go over this ground again and I would recommend that you take the time to read both the Director's Report and the newsletter after the meeting which I hope you will find informative.

What I propose to do, however, is firstly to bring you right up to date on a few of the larger projects that we are involved with and then to highlight some of the things the Trust will be focusing their attention on in the future.

On the projects front I can tell you that we have now been granted our licence to distribute fuel from the old RNLI fuel store so we can now start to commission the facility and should be in a position to start deliveries very soon. The final plans for McArthur's Store will be discussed and approved next week which means that we can hopefully get tenders prepared and sent out by the end of the year. We've had a positive response from the Big Lottery to our request for grant assistance for the construction of the toilet and shower facilities which, unfortunately means a lot more work in terms of preparation of further documentation, but does give us hope that at least partial funding can be secured. The preferred candidate to carry out the conservation plan for the Battery development project will be recommended to the Board later this evening which will mean work on this phase of the project can then commence and, as some of you will have seen, the old bridge over to Lamer Island has now gone and we now await the installation of the new bridge in January 2007. The new bridge will look the same as the old but will be fully mechanised and hydraulically operated.

As you can gather, there is a lot going on and I think it would be appropriate at this stage to say that none of this would or could have happened if it had not been for the huge amount of time and effort which every member of the Board has put in over the past few years. I would like to take this opportunity therefore to thank them all for their support and commitment and hope that they will continue to offer this support and commitment into the future.

What then are the things which the Trust is going to be focusing its attention on over the coming months? Firstly I believe we need to address the question of our ability to communicate with our stakeholders. As a Board we are conscious of the fact that we are seen a little bit like the Masons and that we are some sort of secret society which meets behind closed doors and nobody is allowed to know what we are doing. This perception has to be eliminated and we are currently looking at ways in which we can make our selves much more visible to our stakeholders and encourage feedback from them.

As a first step we are about to issue a Newsletter, a copy of which you have been given this evening, and we intend to have more informal information meetings in future. André Coner has been working hard on upgrading our website and we hope that this will provide a lot more information about what it is we are doing and also encourage feedback. If there are any other ways in which you think that we can keep stakeholders better informed we are open to your suggestions.

Another matter which needs our attention is the Business Plan. An outline business plan was prepared based on the results of the survey we carried out in August 2005 and this formed the basis of the majority of the work that we have been involved with since then. A considerable amount of progress has been made since August 2005 and it is now time to review the plan, make sure we are still adhering to the purposes of the Trust and to roll the plan forward for another few years.

Lastly and importantly we must never loose sight of our responsibilities for health and safety in and around the harbour. Risk assessments have been and will continue to be carried out by the HMC which we hope will identify where risks are highest and what needs to be done to minimise these risks. Constant vigilance is required by us all, however, to ensure that the harbour is a safe and clean area of which we can be proud. I would like to thank the HMC and the harbour master for all their work they have already put in to addressing this issue and perhaps this is another matter on which there should be better communication with our stakeholders.

My thanks once again to the Board for their excellent support and a special thank you to Thelma Band who has to be one of the best minute takers in the business.

4. Annual Financial Statement

Becky Donald - Finance Director, presented the Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 st January 2006. After some questions and discussion the accounts were approved .

5. Questions from the floor

Q1. Duncan Forbes raised the issue of the lack of notice for the AGM appearing in the harbour area.

CMcW agreed that communication needed to be improved and this issue was now being addressed

RL asked Duncan if he had any suggestions on improving communications. EO'B suggested issuing a newsletter with the mooring application forms. JB suggested that Duncan may enquire if a volunteer to sit on the Harbour Management Committee could be found from among the fishermen - Duncan agreed to ask for volunteers.

Q2. Duncan Forbes brought up the issue of the plans shown on the web site to improve facilities for the diving community and asked who would be funding these improvements.

CMcW advised that these recommendations had been discussed but not yet agreed so the question of funding has not yet arisen. Uta Penny suggested charging divers for parking their vehicles. The Chairman said the whole issue of parking is currently under review.

Q3. Duncan Forbes how we plan to police Harbour Byelaw 3.3.5 which deals with diving in the harbour entrance and approached and was advised that all byelaws would be policed in the same way.

Q4. Duncan Forbes asked if all Directors were aware of the report concerning the 'harbour incident' and was advised it had been circulated to all Directors and only the appendices were withheld for reasons of confidentiality.

Q5. Duncan Forbes asked when fuel will be available and was advised it was expected to be available within a month.

6. Any other Competent Business

None

The Chairman thanked all those present for attending and brought the meeting to a close.