Minutes of the Newark Ramblers Committee Meeting held at Oscar's Inn, Baldertongate on Monday 21 July 2025
Present Alan Burrell Chair
Brigid Murphy Group Secretary
Margaret Shaw Group Treasurer
Chris Small Membership Secretary
Caroline Lee Walks Coordinator
Stephen Swanwick Assistant Walks Coordinator
Dave Johnson Footpaths Officer
Jacqui Anderson Social Secretary
James McGill Area Representative
Peter Robinson Committee Member
1 Introduction and apologies
Apologies from Judy Price, Adele Burrell, Ken Martin.
2 Minutes of last meeting – matters arising not covered elsewhere on the agenda
The requirement for group reports to Area Council to be standardised and include specific stats has been rescinded.
3 Reports from Officers
Individual reports from officers had been circulated in advance and gave rise to the following points. [Note: Brigid holds the reports and will supply copies on request.]
On budget, only the basic allocation of funds has been requested for next year. It was agreed that this was the correct decision.
Three people have expressed an interest in taking on the Treasurer role when Margaret steps down at the AGM. The current Independent Examiner is willing to continue in the role.
On social events, a few more people will need to book for the ceilidh if it is to go ahead. The proposed HF holiday is looking unlikely, but so far has only been flagged on the Social WhatsApp group. It will be included in the Newsletter (to be issued later this week) and flagged up in the covering email.
Action point:
Brigid to draw attention to HF holiday in covering email to newsletter.
4 Process for cancellation of walks
Some people had mentioned that they had not received notification that a walk they had booked on had been cancelled. It was suggested that this might have been because the cancellation emails (which come from either Roger or Brigid) had gone to their spam folders. The monthly walks programme email from Brigid usually contains a reminder to members to check the website or app before heading out for a group walk.
The cancellation process is as follows:
- Walk leader tells Caroline that they have decided to cancel a walk.
- Caroline cancels on the Walks Manager system, which automatically updates the websites and the Ramblers App
- Caroline advises Roger, who removes that walk from the booking form and, as an additional courtesy, emails walkers who have already registered for the walk.
- The cancellation is also posted on the Car Share WhatsApp group.
Caroline generally emails all walk leaders at the beginning of each month. She will include this process in her next email.
Action point:
Caroline to include process for cancellation of walks in her next email to walk leaders.
5 Correspondence
- Car share scheme.
A member had written asking for the Car Share WhatsApp group to be promoted to newer members. Chris confirmed that details for this group are included in the welcome email to new members. A reminder about it will be included in the newsletter.
- Safeguarding
A member had completed the online Ramblers Safeguarding training and had written suggesting that a local safeguarding officer should be appointed to committee. After discussion, it was decided that this would not be appropriate. Committee felt that this could detract from the clear message in the training that safeguarding was the responsibility of all. Furthermore, such a role would need continuous training and professional support behind it, which is not something that Ramblers have currently put in place for each group. Ramblers Central Office do have a national safeguarding team to deal with any issues. Note, the Safeguarding training is not one of the Walk Leader training modules but stands alone to be completed by all volunteers. Alan will reply to the email accordingly.
c. Guest walker
A very nice email had been received from someone from another group who had joined one of our walks, thanking us for making them feel welcome.
Action points:
Jacqui/ Brigid to add a note about the Car Share WhatsApp group to the newsletter that has been drafted.
Alan to reply to member on the subject of Safeguarding.
6 AGM November 2025
The AGM will be held in the afternoon of 12 November. A location in Newark is preferred and proved successful last year with over 40 people attending. The room in the library that was used last year only holds 40 people (for insurance reasons) so another venue needs to be found. Brigid will check availability and cost of Castle House or Town Hall first. Following that, other possible venues are Robin Hood Theatre, Newark Showground and Coddington Village Hall. Brigid to go ahead and book if the cost is up to £75, and, if not, get back to committee for further direction.
If display boards are needed, Neil Stafford at area is the person to contact for these. The slide-show last year went down well and Nick Roulstone could be approached to do something similar for this year.
Action point:
Brigid to book venue for AGM, or get back to committee with options.
Next meeting:
Final AGM arrangements, including agenda and displays, to be discussed at next meeting.
7 Sports Day
The Tom Mann Pavilion at Devon Park has been booked for 4 August. £111 left of the money bequeathed to Newark Ramblers for social purposes is available for refreshments (and preferably needs to be spent in total because it is being held in “restricted funds”). Alan and Adele will take responsibility for sourcing and providing refreshments. Peter will organise a walk. The walk will start at 5, the games at 6, and there will be a break part-way through the games for refreshments. The covering email to the newsletter will include a reminder about the sports day, including wording to the effect that there will be some refreshments, cakes and snacks available, but members might want to bring their own to supplement what is provided.
Action points
Alan and Adele to investigate and order refreshments.
Peter to put in place pre-sports walk.
Brigid to include note about refreshments in covering email to newsletter.
8 Walk leader training
Walk leaders have received an email from Central Office about the on-line training/ self-certification required. The majority of our active walk leaders have easily led more than 12 walks in the last three years, and newer leaders have completed the online training before being registered as leaders. Some people who have not led walks in the last two years have indicated to Caroline that they no longer want to do so. For the remaining people, Caroline is very willing to talk them through how to access and complete the on-line training, but it has been suggested that we could also offer face to face training, ie go through the on-line training on a screen in a group. Caroline is willing to lead a session if there is sufficient interest, after which she, as walks coordinator, would be able to certify that those attending had completed the training. An added advantage of putting on such a session would be that people who are not walk leaders could join in if interested, whereas you can only access the on-line training yourself if you are registered as a volunteer. Covering all three modules would probably take two hours or so, and so could be completed in either a morning or an afternoon session. Existing walk leaders need to have completed the training or self-certification by the end of the year to continue in the role.
To gauge the level of interest, it was agreed that Steve and Caroline would approach walkers on Wednesdays and Sundays respectively to see if they would be interested in attending a session. A line will be added about the training in the newsletter, asking people who are interested to speak to Caroline or Steve.
Information on which walk leaders have completed the training within a group will be available on the Insight data hub. Brigid will approach Central Office and ask if, in the circumstances of how tasks are allocated to roles in Newark group, Caroline as well as Chris and Brigid can be given access to Insight.
Action points:
Steve and Caroline to assess level of interest in attending a face to face training session,
Jacqui/Brigid to add note about training to newsletter.
Brigid to request Insight permissions for Caroline.
9 Simple ROW maintenance
Committee discussed the possibility of setting up a small sub-group of Newark Ramblers to undertake minor footpath maintenance, such as cutting back overgrowth and (subject to Notts County Council approval) repainting marker posts and possibly undertaking small stile repairs. Notts Area Ramblers have regular Rights of Way meetings with Notts County Council, and so any work that needed their approval could be brought up at these meetings. We would need to set up some kind of system for reporting problems and allocating people to deal with them. There could be liability issues to consider, so James will contact Central Office to check if footpath maintenance activities are covered by Ramblers liability insurance. He will also draft an email to the wider Newark Group membership to assess the level of interest in taking part in footpath maintenance activities.
Action points:
James to check insurance position with Central Office.
James to draft email to be sent to members.
10 Deputy Officers
Dave and James deputise for each other.
Brigid and Nick Roulstone have editor permissions for the Newark Ramblers website so can cover for Roger if necessary, at least for short periods.
Steve deputises for Caroline, with Brigid, Roger Mellor and Carol Wilkinson also having editor permissions for the Walks Manager system.
Ramblers generally only approves access for two people from each group to the Insight Hub, the centrally-maintained database of group members and their contact details, although we are going to ask for Caroline, as well as Brigid and Chris, to be given access for our group. Chris would be able to send out urgent emails to members in Brigid’s absence.
There is no-one who currently deputises for Margaret as Treasurer, and it’s not known if Alan, who currently authorises bank payments generated by Margaret, would be able to generate them for someone else to approve. When the next payment comes to be made, Margaret and Alan will try this out.
Action point:
Margaret and Alan to consider further the options for having a deputy able to make payments on behalf of the group.
11 Date of next meeting
Monday 15 September.
BM
23 Jul. 25