Hello members.

As the Christmas season draws near and the year comes to an end the committee would like to wish all our members a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

2024 has seen the club membership hold steady and we are anticipating a number of new members joining us in 2025.

In January our treasurer will be in touch to chase up your membership fee for 2025.

As many of you are aware it was decided at the AGM in April this year that we will be changing the way we fund the Club and the lunches in 2025.

From 2025 there will only be one class of full membership, the retired status has been removed. The “Tanners” status is still available to those who are unable to attend lunches but wish to stay in the club and still be in contact with the members.

From January 2025 your membership fee has been reduced to £50 irrespective of your membership status. The ‘Free’ lunch in April has been withdrawn and both lunches will now have to be paid for at the RAF Club going rate less £20. Currently we anticipate April’s lunch to be £100 less £20
If you attend both lunches your membership fee will effectively be £10 for the year.

The committee believes that this new way of paying is fairer especially to those that couldn’t make the ‘Free’ April lunch.

After ten years of being the Honorary Secretary I have decided that I am going to hand over the secretarial duties during 2025.

I have seen a lot of changes over the years, the move from paper to email communications, the long overdue acceptance of Lady members, Guests at lunches plus on-line AGM and committee meetings and newsletters all come to mind however it is my belief that the club should have an active member of the industry as the secretary and having now been retired from the industry for over five years it is time for me to step aside.

Martin Verspeak has offered to take on the roll. Subject to members approval at the AGM in April I will officially hand over the duties to him then. Until then Martin will be shadowing me for the set up and running of the April luncheon. After the April lunch I will shadow him for the rest of 2025 whilst he comes to terms with the Honorary Secretarial duties. I believe that Martin will bring his professionalism and enthusiasm to the roll and along with the rest of the committee will keep moving the club forward.

We have to thank all members on your fantastic generosity in donating monies in the John Hill Cup. The total raised for both lunches totalled £1005.02 which this year has been donated to four charities, the last three of which are ones that V21 members had raised monies for during the year. We are still wondering who put the 2 pence in the cup in April!