The first AGM of The Brewers (West Malvern) Community Pub Ltd was held at 10.30am on Saturday 9th September at the Elim Theatre Hall, Westminster Bank, West Malvern. Eighty people attended in person and a further nine attended online using Zoom.
Brian O’Connell started the meeting by introducing the current committee and their roles. In his Annual Report he went on to describe the progress that has been achieved since the pub was purchased on 26th September 2022. Next there was an update on membership. When the share offer closed on 8th July 2022 there were 437 members, and this increased to 439 when additional single shares were sold to St James Church and our new vicar. Since then, two sets of shares have been refunded, one because the member in question’s move to West Malvern fell through and another due to the sad death of another member. The current share capital is £406,000.
Rob Rankin, the company treasurer, presented the accounts for the financial year ending 31st March 2023. These are attached to this news article.
Mark Haslam presented the committee’s plans for the next 12 months, with particular reference to the annex (the “Armpit”).
Next the results of the election to the committee were announced. As this was the first AGM the elections were more complicated because all the existing committee were required to resign, with the option of standing for re-election. The purpose of the election was to select up to nine committee members for different terms (the “term” is the time in office before needing to seek re-election). The three candidates with most votes would serve for three-year terms, the next three for two-year terms and the final three for one-year terms. In the event, only seven candidates stood and the purpose of the election was just to decide the term of each candidate. Future elections will be simpler, as only the three posts ending in that year will be contended. 145 votes were cast, of which three were invalid because they did not include a shareholder number or PIN, and 20 votes were repeated (presumably the voter pressed “submit” twice). This left 122 valid votes. Brian O’Connell, Mark Haslam and Martin Russell were allocated three year terms, Chris Marks, Rob Rankin and Andy Wood two-year terms and Simon Thompson a one-year term.
The meeting ended with a question-and-answer session.
The official minutes of the meeting will be published on this website when they are available.