Hello

SUP would like to invite you to the Partnership’s Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) and Annual General Meeting (AGM) which takes place on 2nd October 2019 at 2.00 pm in the Moffat House Hotel. This is an important meeting as we are proposing some changes to the governing document of the Charity.

The Southern Uplands Partnership has been running since the year 1999 and following a review of the existing Memorandum and Articles of Association, the proposal is to update and distil these into a single modern document known now as the Articles of Association, which takes full account of the Companies Act 2006, the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, and current best practice.

Since 2009, it is no longer possible to apply amendments to a Memorandum of Association and therefore all of the constitutional terms will be included in one document, namely the Articles of Association.

Most of the changes are technical, although we are also taking the opportunity to remove certain sections which are no longer considered to be required, such as the provision for a separate Council. We are proposing to increase the size of the Board from a maximum of 12 to a maximum of 15 and we also propose to eliminate the distinction between Group and Individual members (and nominated Directors).  These changes will be voted on at an Extraordinary General Meeting which will take place immediately prior to the AGM.

A copy of the draft Articles of Association is available to view

At the AGM we have three new Board members standing for election and we are suggesting that membership subscriptions are reduced to zero. We believe this will encourage more people to be members and it will reduce administration costs. We will be encouraging our supporters to consider making donations to help with our core costs.

The AGM will be followed by two excellent speakers. Andrew Sheridan from Scottish Forestry will speak about the Scottish Forestry Strategy and local plans for forestry. Julian Bell of SRUC will give us an update on the research he has been doing into the current economy of the land around the Talla-Hartfell Wildland Area.

We enclose the formal Notice & Agenda for both the EGM and AGM.

It would help our planning if you could let us know if you intend to attend the event (email piptabor@sup.org.uk). If you would like to send a proxy to vote on your behalf, forms are available on the website (see AGM/EGM post)  where you will also find the Minute of last years’ AGM, draft Accounts and our Annual Report.

We look forward to seeing you on 2nd October 2019.  Please RSVP piptabor@sup.org.uk by 25th September.