Thursday night saw the first meeting of the Ipswich Town Supporters Trust. Here are the minutes.

Held at the Council Chamber, Ipswich on Thursday May 15th at 7.30pm

Philip Ham, chaired the meeting and introduced Simon Binns, from Supporters Direct.

Simon outlined the background to the formation of the Trust and emphasised that as yet there was no Trust, and that what the fledgling organisation developed into was down to the members. He said that it was easy to underestimate the importance of what was being planned as the Trust could conceivably be around for as long as the club is, but that it was “not that scary really.” He continued by saying that it is important for everyone to make their views known and to have a sense of where they wanted the Trust to go, and to say if there was something that they were unhappy with.

He suggested that our discussions should lead to the creation of a Board comprised of between 6 to 14 people consisting of a Chairman/woman, Treasurer, Secretary, Publicity Officer, and other interested parties.

Simon went on to explain the functions of some of the key positions; the Chairman/woman would act as the point person for the organisation, the Secretary was really the “conscience” of the organisation and was responsible for completing annual returns, organizing meetings and maintaining the membership list. The Treasurer would be responsible for completing financial reports and maintaining a record of income and expenditure, while the Publicity Officer would be responsible for publicising the Trust and ensuring that the right message was put across.

Simon then talked about the constitution of the Trust suggesting that three to four people got together to review the draft constitution to ensure that the document correctly represented the objectives of the Trust since this was the document that would determine what the Society was going to be about. He explained that once the documentation had been completed and officers appointed that the registration of the documents would take three to four weeks. During that time the society should focus its attentions on developing a business plan.

The meeting then moved on to the stage where we needed to determine what people wanted to do and to ascertain what their individual skills were with a view to forming a smaller working party that would reconvene in a couple of weeks and focus more closely on appointing officers and other members of the Society Board. It was emphasised that people who had been unable to attend this meeting still had an opportunity to register their interest. Simon suggested breaking off into groups that focused on the various roles and discussing amongst the members what they wanted to do. The break off groups were divided as follows: Chairman/woman, Secretary, Publicity, Constitutional review committee, Launch committee and Treasury.

The approximately 70 people who were present then broke off into groups to discuss their objectives and capabilities, Simon moved around the groups clarifying any queries that people had and explaining where we trying to get to. Following some intense discussion each group was asked to report back to the meeting on the results of their discussions and to nominate people to come back in a couple of weeks to develop the Steering Committee.

The following people expressed an interest in adopting a role:

Secretary
Julie Raynor, (Football in the Community), Liz Edwards, (Membership), Colin Kreidewolf, (Secretary)

Constitutional Committee
Mark Bradley, Paul Woodgate, Stephen Edwards and Peter Clark

Treasury/Finance
Nick Lingley (Treasurer), Jane Summerfield, Richard Baker and Robert Chambers

Publicity
Josh Warwick (Publicity officer), Justin Taylor, Alexandra Hayes (Website), Gavin Wilding (Website), Justin Ashford, James Shillaw, Lisa Goughan

Launch Committee
Amanda Bloom, Ian Stanley

Chairman/woman
Carl Day (Chairman), Peter Morris (Vice Chairman), Phil Ham, Ray Slegg, Alasdair Ross, Ivan Ward, Terry Shackle, Graeme Keeble, Tim Edwards.

Simon concluded the meeting by thanking everyone for attending and stated that the next meeting for those interested parties would be in two weeks time. Notification of time and venue will be sent to all interested parties. The next meeting will be aim to form the Steering Committee. The meeting closed @8.55pm.

Those interested in involvement in any of the sub-committees who were unable to attend the meeting email colin.kreidewolf@govett.co.uk specifying which area.

Anyone who is interested in being part of the Trust, either as part of the Working Party or as a regular member, email philip.ham@twtd.co.uk

Photo: Action Images

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