CNCC AGM 2022

[CNCC]

A reminder that the CNCC Annual General Meeting is on Saturday 26th March, 10am at Hellifield Village Institute.

This will be an in-person meeting, although if anyone would like to attend remotely please email secretary@cncc.org.uk to request joining details. As well as our member clubs (https://cncc.org.uk/about/clubs.php), we welcome anyone with an interest in what we do, either to particulate, ask questions, make suggestions, or just spectate.

If you wish to attend, just turn up

Member clubs representatives; please don't forget to bring or email your voting authorisation letter.

The agenda for the meeting is online (https://cncc.org.uk/meetings/) and officer reports will be posted during the week ahead of the meeting. The agenda includes the usual housekeeping items and elections, plus an opportunity to discuss the upcoming changes at Birks Fell Cave. We are pleased to see an applicant for the vacant role of Access Officer, and we hope this will enable some movement with the stubborn issues at High Birkwith. The meeting provides a good opportunity to discuss this and gain consensus on a good strategy moving forwards.

We would be delighted to hear any ideas you have for the coming year, from training, access, conservation, promoting caving, online resources, or any other ways you feel CNCC could be better supporting northern caving.

Our meetings are always friendly and welcoming, a great chance to make new contacts, and we are usually done around 12:30 (ish) so time for some caving afterwards.

Alternatively, immediately after the AGM, there is the opportunity to go along to our CNCC Training open day at the Yorkshire Dales Guides Barn in Stainforth, where our Training Officer will be running a fully booked SRT workshop. This is a great chance to see the excellent venue that we use for most of our SRT training workshops and to see what happens, and to speak directly to our Training Officer about future events.

We hope to see many of you on 26th March.

 

[CNCC]

AGM 2022 Outcomes

The combination of some new technology, a well-attended main hall in Hellifield, plus several people joining on Zoom, meant that our first hybrid AGM was a great success.

The Officers reports provided a great chance to reflect on some of the successes of the last year. This included conservation projects at Starting Handle Hole, Scoska Cave, numerous fallen tree removals following storms in late November, and planned projects at Chanterelle Pot and Greenwood Pot.

We reflected on the excellent, varied, and highly praised CNCC training workshops that have run, with more dates to be announced soon.

Our webmaster told us about his work to completely overhaul the CNCC website, while entertaining us with the usual download and engagement statistics; 1500 Facebook followers and 350 mailing list signups, and averaging around 2000 cave description and 2500 topo downloads each month!

Reminder of mailing list signup for roughly monthly updates on matters affecting northern caving: https://cncc.org.uk/mailing-list/index.php

Finally, we heard about the various initiatives to promote caving, including the framed photos which have been distributed to several local venues, articles in local publications, and using our contacts to promote the excellent work of others dealing with collapses in White Scar Cave (which the team involved hope will be completed during April), Aygill Caverns and Wretched Rabbit (for which work is planned to restore safe access by the end of summer).

Onto the Committee and Officer elections, we re-elected our Chair (Andrew Hinde) and Secretary (Josh Young), both of whom expressed that this may be their last year in the roles. This means next year we may be looking for new volunteers for these two important positions.

It is not too early to register your interest in these (or any other) roles for 2023!

We re-appointed Kay Easton as our Conservation Officer, Pete Bann as our Treasurer (after a few years away from the role), Ian Patrick as Training Officer, and we re-elected the Committee.

We are delighted to welcome Adele Ward as our new Access Officer. Adele brings with her a tremendous enthusiasm for caving, many contacts in the caving world (being too embarrassed to list at the meeting how many clubs she is a member of) and a passion to help make a difference. With issues such as the loss of access to caves at High Birkwith to deal with, having an Access Officer is a tremendous relief, although this particularly situation is unlikely to have a quick resolution as it goes far beyond just cave access.

We also welcomed one new full member; Peak Caving Club.

The only further agenda item was a summary of the situation at Birks Fell Cave over the last year, and an opportunity for Q&A about the decision to step back from the historic permit system. No concerns were raised, meaning we consider Birks Fell Cave to be open access thanks to CRoW from 1st April onwards. A more comprehensive article on this will be published in the coming days.

Thank you to everyone for attending; It was an enjoyable, positive meeting, only 90 minutes long, meaning everyone was out by 11:30am to enjoy the unseasonably warm and sunny weather (or to get underground away from it).