| Dear Fellow Fuellers, I thought I would share some good news with you to start the holiday season, not least as my last two monthly ‘blogs’ will now not be published until the Clerk and I have both returned from our holidays, which will be towards the end of August: that is not the good news! Instead I am delighted to report significant progress in our administration and on our website. We have, as you will be aware, overhauled our membership application process and applicants will henceforth be able to be admitted to Freedom within as little as 14 days from the receipt of an application form completed to the satisfaction of our Honorary Treasurer and Clerk. The overhaul revealed a number of areas where our systems were found to be in need of improvement. Not least was our membership records, which are now included in a new database which contains all the information the Company holds about each member. The information is used by the Company for company business and includes the information that the member has authorised for release only to other members through the members’ only section of the website. Each member will receive from the Clerk, early in the autumn, a request to confirm the accuracy of the information that we hold about the member: this information will be included in the request. The requests will be repeated annually and you are also requested to inform the Clerk if any of your information changes in the interim. The aim is to keep the database up to date and avoid, if not eliminate, the communication problems of recent years. I also conducted a review of compliance with the UK General Date Protection Regulation and we have made a number of changes to cater for recent changes to the regime. The overhaul of the application process and the removal of the ‘glitches’ the overhaul revealed involved an enormous amount of work and we owe much thanks to Hon Court Assistant (and past Clerk) Roger Cloke, Past Master Chloe Andrews-Jones and Junior Warden Ash Shastri for shouldering much of the burden. Not least among the benefits is that our membership numbers are now back on the increase – over 5% since last March - after falling during and in the aftermath of the covid epidemic. The second good news concerns the website. The increasing concerns about its operation and content led to the Court deciding, last January, to seek advice as to how the problems could be resolved. We were lucky enough to engage an expert based in Mumbai who is an old contact of Ash, our Junior Warden. The expert’s preliminary view was that we would probably need an entirely new site but we immediately set in train a significant programme of updates and improvements under the supervision of a new sub-committee chaired by Court Assistant Michael Green, who also chairs the Communications Group. As a result our expert recently reported significant improvement, including on Search Engine Optimisation and Google Page Rankings, so we are now only planning (more) improvements to the existing site. These will include a major upgrade to the members’ details in the members only section of the website, which is to be sourced directly from the new database. Our thanks are due to Michael and his team, Past Master Jan Harrison, Livery Member Colin David and Junior Warden Ash Shastri. Life should return to normal in September, my penultimate month as your Master. I am incarcerated in the Tower of London and robe and medallion on September 5th before escaping, after what I understand is a ‘good lunch’, with the funds donated (by you!) to procure my freedom being donated to the British Legion and the Fuellers Charitable Trust Fund. The following Sunday, September 8th, will see me at the Merchant Navy Memorial Service at Tower Hill, with the Air Fuels and Sustainable Energy Associations (‘AFSEA’) conference, the Modern Companies Dinner and our visit to the Hattingley Valley winery all the following week. We are then holding a ‘welcome’ party for our new members on the evening of September 17th at Carmen Hall, after the General Purposes Committee (‘GPC’) meeting. The evening is designed to introduce those who have joined the Company in the last couple of years to the GPC and the Chairs of the various groups and sub-committees and receive an outline of how the Company and each committee operate. The event will be open to all members but there will be a limit on numbers and a calling notice will be circulated towards the end of August. We are then giving an online lecture, on September 25th, as part of ‘Knowledge Miles: The 695th Lord Mayor’s Lecture Series’ of webinars that explore the connections of the Square Mile and its roles as ‘The World’s Coffeehouse’ addressing diverse global challenges: our topic is the role of hydrogen in combating climate change. We have also been asked to host a Lord Mayor’s colloquy on the same subject in the Mansion House on the morning of October 22nd. This will be followed by us providing a panel on energy for the London Livery Climate Action Group conference on what is needed to ‘Build a Resilient Future for the UK’ in the afternoon. Past Master Averil Macdonald and Junior Warden Ash Shastri will be leading our teams for these events. We are also planning a trip to the ‘Energy from Waste’ site at Greatmoor, near Aylesbury, in October and then, on October 31st, I will be handing over my role as Master to the Senior Warden before her Installation Dinner at Mercers Hall. I very much hope to see you at some, if not all, of our September and October events and in the interim ……. happy holidays! James Master P.S. I almost forgot, but by the beginning of September Margaret, Maia, Theia and I should be halfway through our Ridgeway dog walks, with the scheduled finish on or before September 30th. Thank you to all of you who are supporting us by donating to the Fuellers Charitable Trust Fund and JDRF – and do please support and/or join us if you can! |
