Brian Wakefield welcomed the Council to Birmingham and said that it lived up to his promises of sunshine for the Meeting,. He then welcomed Peter Maguire to his first Council since he had assumed the mantle of Editor of NARF News and produced his first edition for us. Brian also gave a warm welcome to John Reidford down from Scotland after a few years absence and remarked how much better in health John looked than on the last occasion he had met him.

John said he had made the effort to come to Council to say a personal �thank you� to members for according him the honour of the recent Life Vice Presidency accolade. John caused a ripple of laughter when confessing that in his haste to get away from Scotland, he had left behind his Life Vice President medallion!

The President then presented a Life Vice President Medallion to Bill Meaden who had been unable to be at the October meeting due to other commitments when it had been intended that this would have been presented. On demand from members for a response speech, Bill said, �Thanks�. (First time known to be lost for words!)

Peter Robinson went through some of the many items of correspondence that he had received since the last Council including:

1. A letter from Robin Currie, then Chief Executive of The Fire Service College indicating that Michael Kernan, the College Historian and Archivist was hoping to compile a Register of Fire Art in the interests of our Service. The Objective being to have some indication of the extent of Fire Art, its location and accessibility. The request was, that if you have in your ownership, or in your keeping, any works of art which fall within the definition (any art produced by serving or past members of the Fire Service or any art depicting or connected to the Fire Service, regardless of the artist) could you inform Michael Kernan. Michael�s telephone No 01608 652461 with e.mail address as [email protected].
2. Peter had also received from Mr Kernan a copy of a presentation he had made to a recent Fire Service College Research Conference in 2003.
3. Correspondence had been forthcoming from a company called �Funeralcare� which had been set up after a Forum chaired by Claire Raynor and made up of representatives from charities, associations and other organisations that are , in some way involved in the process of bereavement. Its mission was to recommend ways in which the group can take the fear out of funerals and provide more choice, knowledge and support. Subsequent telephone contact had led to an acceptance that the company would produce some information for use in a future NARF News. (since received)

Information had been received from �Venue Master� a company that specialised in conference venues and also another called �Space matters � who are able to assist small organisations with weekend outings etc.

Note: In regard to the item dealing with funeral plans and publication of details in our NARF News, the Chairman sounded out the Meeting because of the potential sensitivity of such matters, but it was unanimously agreed that this was one subject that for all of us eventually would be inevitable and shouldn�t be ignored.

Peter reported on the content of an e-mail that he had received from Lynne Bairsto from No 1 District in January after having been privy to some earlier similar information from his old boss at FSC who still resided in Lancashire. This was to the effect that Lancashire Branch had decided to withdraw its some 400 members from NARF effective form 31st December 2003. Despite sterling efforts by No 1 District officials to reverse this decision including a letter written to every member of the Lancashire Branch these had been unsuccessful. Lynne Bairsto gave an account of the efforts that had been made and advised that some of those who had been subjected to the Lancs decision had already joined as Direct Members and some had been accepted into Blackpool and Southport Branches. Lynne emphasised her disappointment that out of the 440 letters sent out to seek a rethink on the situation on the part of Lancs members there had been only a few responses and a result that fourteen only had so far signed up as members elsewhere. It was the consensus of the Council, that the decision was short sighted and left what was now only a local social organisation in the county without recourse to representation if any pension problems arose in the future. It was notified that one of those from the Branch who had joined since as a Direct Member had been the Chairman and had indicated that if there was ever an initiative to reopen the Branch he would be willing to start it up again!

Mr Robinson went through the written report from himself and Paul Webster and emphasised that after the October Meeting of Council he personally would be relinquishing the role of Acting General Secretary since it seemed obvious that all the while he was prepared to do the work on even a temporary basis, there was no incentive for Districts to seek to get someone to do the work on a regular basis. Peter did say that his intention was motivated as much for health reasons as his reluctance to carry on indefinitely.

Roy Orringe asked that a Vote of Thanks be extended formally to Messrs Robinson and Webster for keeping the Secretariat going after Andy Mulligan had been forced to withdraw on health grounds.

Colin said that all the detail was in his written Report and Accounts Summary, he apologised for a small mistake but then said that since most had already noted it and drawn it to attention, he would leave it for the rest to test their powers of observation . ( to save frustration it was the figure of �443 44 on page one, which shows on the 2003 Expenditure table on first page of the figures as �443 79. It is in fact the �443. 79 which is the correct one!)
Colin advised that we didn�t get the last �1500 from Daniel Thomas our previous publishers and had in consequence of dispensing with their services already paid for one issue of NARF News and will henceforth continue to pay for both printing and distribution as intended. We will have three issues this year and as long as subscriptions continue to come in should be able to accommodate this without problem.. Colin identified that so far only 5355 members have paid their subscriptions for last year out of over 7000 on the Data Base. Colin said he had provided a column in his figures showing the number of members in each District and how many have paid thus far!
Colin Richards again drew attention to some discrepancies between the figure Colin was showing for his District at 397 members when they only had 279 in reality. The Treasurer stated that this was likely because he showed 8A and 8B together. However since Arthur Pike stated his figure to be 60 only for 8B District this would give a total of 339 for the two Districts which still indicated a significant number over and above for District 8. Graham Bow gave some clarification and drew attention to a supplementary paper he had distributed that morning preparatory for his later input on Membership matters which might help to clarify the anomaly which would obviously need to be sorted out for future purposes.
In answer to a query from John Reidford as to how the Accountancy method used actually worked, Colin Bailey advised that in accordance with the Constitution, subscriptions should be due in January of each year or soon afterwards. In practice this rarely happened but as long as he could keep tabs on subscriptions he could manage the accounts .
The Secretary drew Council�s attention to a letter he had received from Barry Unger who was overlooking District matters in respect of Essex in No5 District. In this letter Barry explained that subscription collection in Essex Branch had fallen way behind because of the unfortunate demise of the person who had agreed to look after the financial affairs of the Branch, which is another of those that has dual identity with an Old Comrades Group with not all officials or members belonging to both organisations making for complications in working arrangements. This did seem to indicate the sort of difficulties that the Treasurer has to take into account when producing annual reports!
Colin Bailey invited Wendy Garrett to speak about Direct Members who have not renewed their subscriptions since according to the money coming in, there were 73 who had not paid for 2003 and now 129 who had not paid up so far for this year. Roy Orringe advised that this shouldn�t be too much of a concern because these members who had omitted in 2003 still had until the end of 2004 before being removed from the Data Base and there was still time!
Wendy stated that it didn�t work quite like that with Direct Members since most of these had Standing Orders and the subscriptions are usually forthcoming in January. After that month she doesn�t expect to get any more at a later stage. She would send out a reminder letter to those who haven�t paid for a two year period at the end of this year, and would also send out a letter to those who would ostensibly have until the end of 2005 before the formality of removal from Data Base. Tom Parry asked if there had been any feedback on the reasons for the �fall-off� to which Wendy responded in the negative. Mr Parry hoped that the future regular circulation of NARF News might improve upon this unfortunate erosion of members. The President reiterated his persistent claims that subscriptions should where possible, be deducted from source even if it invoked a modest charge from the Pension Payment Authority. West Midlands pay two and a half percent for the privilege. Mr Howard said that in No 1 District they have to pay 36 pence per member but this is well worth while. Roy Orringe said the whole of Wales were on Direct Debit arrangements because they were now regionalised. Maurice Howard stated that because people were inherently lazy about infrequent payments the Direct Debit system was a great �saving grace� for Branches. The Treasurer agreed with the need for payment by Standing Order and said it should be something we should really seek to get in position for all members next year.
At the conclusion of the long discussions on the Financial Report, the President stated that he had been a bit depressed about its contents because this tale of unpaid subscriptions comes up year after year and asked for any other issues to do with finances of the Association.
Andy Mulligan referred to the failure of Daniel Thomas (our previous Publishers) to honour the contract for diaries for 2004 and stated that he was concerned about the ethics of the company seeking income from advertisers for the diaries and then not delivering on the contract to enable their distribution.
Peter Robinson reminded members of Council, that this had been the concerns of the Editorial Committee two years previously, when delays in the production of the diaries by the same company, had led to a failure to distribute many to members. This the Committee had felt was unacceptable, prompting the initiative to take NARF away from reliance upon sponsorship, which could leave us open to similar claims of commercial opportunism. NARF had quite rightly terminated further dealings with this company and this the Secretary felt was sufficient action for us to have taken!
It was Proposed by Harry Martin and Seconded by Bill Meaden that the Financial Report be accepted by the Meeting. There was no opposition to the Proposal!
Barry Hook stated that the Financial Report was the most detailed that we had had in the past and suggested that a Vote of thanks be extended to the Treasurer. This was supported by Bill Meaden who said that this was one of the first that he had been able to understand fully due to the extent of detail provided. Bill thought that the Vote of Thanks should also be extended to cover the other areas that Colin Bailey dealt with for NARF and included the Web Site for which Colin had entire responsibility for inclusions and updates. This received unanimous support.

The President suggested that the appointments of Temporary Secretariat, National Treasurer and Auditor be dealt with collectively. It was agreed that Peter Robinson and Paul Webster be approved in a continuing temporary role covering General Secretary duties, Colin Bailey continue as Treasurer and that the Auditors Chipchase Manners and Co of Middlesbrough be retained for the ensuing year. This was agreed.

Bill Meaden advised that before moving on, we should consider the question of the urgent need to find a replacement General Secretary and said that it might even be necessary to consider this as a paid post if the post could not be filled . The Council had an obligation to resolve this issue. Roy Orringe said that this was a problem that had gone on for years and agreed it should be accorded priority now that Peter Robinson had issued a time limit on his continuance in the temporary role. Barry Hook suggested that there should perhaps be a Job Specification for the post of General Secretary so that potential applicants could know exactly what was entailed. Peter Robinson offered to produce a job specification together with Andy Mulligan since between them they knew exactly what was involved from having had hands on experience of the workloads. It was agreed that an advertisement should be placed in the next NARF News seeking to recruit someone to the post by which time Peter and Andy would have the detail of the job available for any person seeking clarification of the amount of commitment required. There was a suggestion from Harry Martin, that perhaps we could write to Chief Fire Officers to see whether they had anyone willing to take on the position and Lynne Bairsto thought that perhaps there might be a widow NARF member who might be prepared to take the position on to retain regular contact with the Service. It was however agreed that the initiative to fill the post would be passed to The General Purposes Committee and the Job Specification when available would be passed to Maurice Howard as Secretary of the Committee. During the discussions on the issue, Peter Maguire outlined his reasons for taking on the Editor post for NARF News after having been retired for a few years. He said that he needed to get back again in contact with brigade people and for a challenge to stimulate his mind again, the small retainer attracted to the position was for him not a main consideration. Although Mr Meaden had suggested that there should perhaps be a need to consider some form of Honorarium for the Secretarial post, this was not wholly supported with Mr Howard suggesting it would be cost prohibitive and the current temporary Secretary claiming that it shouldn�t be beyond the capabilities of a competent member of NARF to be willing to take it on as had been the case historically. There was also an apprehension among members that if one role became paid, this would be seen as discriminatory since there were other major roles in NARF such as that of the Treasurer and Membership Secretarial functions which were also time consuming and heavy on workload. There had already been a financial concession made for the Secretarial function, that token payment could be made for the production of The Minutes of Meetings and to this end, Mrs Buckby had been employed since the October Council. This said Mr Robinson, had taken a large slice of the work he had needed to do, away and, left what he felt to be perfectly manageable albeit that as Mrs Buckby had hurt her back and wasn�t here for the weekend of meetings, it had again fallen back upon him this time!

The President moved the Agenda item forward by asking that the Meeting now looked at other positions needing to be confirmed. Brian advised the Council that Frank Byrne who had accepted the position of NARF representative on the National Pensioners Convention last year was being obliged to relinquish the post. The meetings of the Body are frequent being about twelve a year and since Frank still worked in retirement, he was being obliged to take a substantial number of days off without pay. This suggested the President was too heavy a commitment and he perfectly understood why Frank now sought to find someone with more free time to undertake the time demanding function. Ideally, this would suit a person resident closer to London but with now, no District 10 functioning and nobody volunteering from Home Counties Branches we needed someone to offer to do the job. Andy Mulligan told members he would be willing to take this additional task upon himself, but identified that because of where he lives, it might prove more costly on travel than for someone geographically nearer the London venue. It was proposed by Peter Robinson and seconded by Bill Meaden that Andy be appointed to this role and any extra travel costs borne willingly because of Andy�s unquestionable background knowledge of NARF matters which would make him the ideal national representative for the Association. This was accepted unanimously.
Bill Meaden advised that Andy should now serve be on The NARF Pensions Committee with Barry Hook and himself. In addition, he had a spare ticket for the NPC Parliament to be staged in May over 18th, 19th and 20th May and hopefully Andy would be able to attend that function as well.

The President thanked Frank Byrne for all his efforts since he had taken on the NPC role but emphasised that everybody would have sympathy with his reasons for giving it up to someone else!

Brian moved to the Editorial Committee and it was agreed without demur that Barry Hook, Tony Palmer, Tom Parry, Graham Bow and Peter Maguire (new NARF Editor) should be confirmed in position.

Again without demur the General Purposes Committee was confirmed as, President, Roy Orringe, Colin Bailey, and Maurice Howard.

Bill Meaden was confirmed as our Representative on Age Concern.

Unanimously unopposed were Barry Hook and Bill Meaden on The Public Services Pensions Council (PSPC)

Hazell Buckby was confirmed in position of Minute Secretary.

(Note: On return to Districts after the conclusion of the two days of meetings it was learned that Mrs Buckby has indicated that she does not wish to continue with the role of Minute Secretary and this will be acknowledged in the General Secretary Job Specification when produced!)

PBarry Hook, Secretary of the Committee, stated that already very good relations had been established between the Committee members and the new Editor Peter Maguire. Peter had already produced one issue of the News and there was already enough material for the next issue.
A company called Foxprint were now doing the NARF News and although they had been retained on a trial basis Barry sought approval to commit them to a longer contract, say three years since it was important to �keep a winner on board�. It was agreed that the Editorial Committee be left to produce a contract to reflect the need for three issues a year for that period.
Bill Meaden asked why we could not move to four issues per year as had been mooted when Council first initiated the move to self sufficiency for NARF News production. Barry explained that there was currently not really enough material for four annual editions and annual income for the Association was still not appropriate to extend to another edition. The President suggested also, caution and said we should look at the trends before committing to extra expenditure. Mr Meaden stated that the only tangible thing that members received from NARF, was the NARF News and felt that we should consider four editions as soon as possible but was forced to concede that Council should let the new Editor �get his feet under the table� as it were, before extending his brief.
Brian Wakefield suggested that we shouldn�t get too depressed about only doing three issues of NARF News since the distribution is the costly part and we shouldn�t get too far ahead of our income plans. In response to a query from Maurice Howard as to whether the initiative discussed at earlier meetings to distribute NARF News to fire stations had been followed up, Graham Bow notified members that there had been a distribution to the three FSNFB locations at Penrith, Harcombe and Littlehampton of a hundred copies to use in the Centres but so far there had been no movement on getting the issues out to fire stations.
Mr Robinson stated that there was already adequate methodology to get NARF News out to those on fire stations who may be moving towards retirement. This was the initiative approved in 2002, to allow any serving fire fighter in his last year of service to have a completely free year of membership including inclusion on the Data Base and receipt of three issues of NARF News!
Colin Bailey suggested that primary responsibility of local officials is to publicise NARF to potential members. Spare copies of NARF News at the moment only ran into 2/300 copies and these are in fact distributed by West Midlands (where they finish up after distribution!) to fire stations in that area only.
There followed an involved discussion on methodologies of increasing recruitment with Tom Parry, Frank Byrne, Brian Wakefield, Colin Richards all offering suggestions about the way forward until the Secretary on a �point of order� suggested that since Recruitment was Item 18 on the Agenda and we were still dealing with Item 10, perhaps for minute purposes it might be appropriate to curtail discussion on recruitment issues until later.
Before moving on however, Barry Hook referring back to his Report, did make mention of the Tyne and Wear initiative on recruitment which had met with success.
Colin Bailey enlightened members of Council, that a 1000 NARF recruitment flyers had been distributed in Pensioner�s pay slips by the Tyne and Wear Pension Authority and up until last Saturday this had resulted in 105 Applications for membership of NARF. Barry added that 75 of these had joined Branches in the North East with others joining as Direct Members.

As a final part of his Editorial Report, Barry made mention of the diaries ,which had after all, not been forthcoming from Daniel Thomas for 2004. There will be provision made in 2005, but the distribution would need to be predetermined to reduce postal costs. Previously, diaries had been distributed initially to District Secretaries. This had resulted in postal costs to get enough distributed from Districts to their Branches. Then there were incurred costs in posting them on to members who didn�t get to meetings early in the year. The intention in future would be to send them to Branches directly so that only one cost was incurred, ie/ postage charges to the Branch. This was to have been the way to distribute them in 2004, but there had been a lukewarm response to requests from Editorial Committee as to who wanted them and who didn�t! In the event, we didn�t get them at all so it was for 2004, purely academic!

Bill Meaden elaborated upon his written Report and suggested that there would be a degree of commerciality involved in the new �Age Concern England � initiative outlined in his report. He stressed that Age Concern does speak directly to Ministers on issues of concern to the aged which makes it a significant organisation with which we should continue to be associated

Wendy Garrett asked Bill whether Age Concern gave any advice on schemes for fixed payments on gas and electricity ?. Mr Meaden promised to approach someone in Age Concern at an imminent meeting to establish whether this was the case!

There were several other interest queries directed at Mr Meaden by John Reidford, Harry Martin and the President. Harry Martin�s query revolved around the reluctance of police in Northern Ireland to attend incidents involving old people. Bill said he would draw this to the attention of Age Concern but suggested that there would need to be some information on specific cases since evidence would be needed to take any action on the issue.

Barry Hook speaking to his Report, suggested that now Pensions Companies are dealing with local authority pension payments more and more, day to day problems are being referred by members to the Pensions Committee. In particular there were examples of firemen who having been recently on strike, and then having retired since resumption of work, had received less pension than they had anticipated due to break in their service of some eight days or more on strike! This could have reduced expected pensions by up to �400 per year.
Barry apologised for a typographical error in his report which stated that the 2004 Pension increase would be 2.8% payable from 5th April 2004. This should have been �from 12th April�

Barry Hook, on his feet again, mentioned the case of Annette Carson who was a Widow who didn�t get her State pension increases paid because she was living in South Africa. Barry said that whilst fire brigade pensions weren�t affected, this was also the situation for State pensioners who decided to live in Australia but that those seeking to reside in the USA, did get the increases as did those living in Europe. In the event that persons in these circumstances came back to the UK, the annual pensions increases , would be reinstated , but stopped yet again if they returned to the countries subject to these anomalies. A wealthy Canadian backer had offered to fund an appeal in respect of this particular lady, to The House of Lords.
Bill Meaden gave a resume, of another complex case dealing with the problems that might occur when an older man on occupational pension, divorces a much younger wife, ie/ one well short of retirement age!
Brian Wakefield said that the PSPC was the right organisation for NARF to be involved with, since it would be PSPC who would seek to preserve �inflation proofing� of our pensions. He suggested also that it would not require an Act of Parliament for instance, to stop �commutation of fire service pensions� if the Government decided to do such!

Note: The Council Meeting ceased overnight at this juncture and resumed again on Sunday morning 7th March 2004.

The President welcomed members back to the resumed Council Meeting. Before the meeting commenced formally, Colin Bailey told members that he had omitted to tell them under his earlier Agenda item, that NARF was now registered under The Data Protection Act and that Districts and Branches could if they wished put this on their letter headings!

Colin Bailey said that as far as this item was concerned, he was unable to report anything, because there had been no meetings of The Trust to which NARF had been invited and as far as he could establish there had not actually been one anyway! �The silence from The Trust had been deafening!�
Mr Bailey said that he had called in at The National Arboretum on his way to today�s meeting and had been disappointed to discover that although the drill tower is still up, and some planting had put in place, the structure is looking tatty, needs painting and is covered with bird droppings where they sit on the structure. The base is also covered with bird detritus. Colin told members that he had written earlier to The Trust to offer some assistance from NARF and this had been acknowledged. He had been advised that a new body was being set up to replace the Management Council on which we had been represented. Our offer to assist would be on the Agenda of the first meeting of the new Management Advisory Board but so far nobody had been invited to join the body and the meeting had not been scheduled. Colin was concerned that so far no arrangement had been put in hand for the memorial service set for this September although it was known that it would not this year be at St Giles Church with a possibility that it would be staged around the memorial itself, albeit many thought the area to be far too small. With the previous Trust Secretary, Paul Biles now retired and a new one not as yet appointed and the Chairman of The Trust on a World Cruise, there was a real concern about lack of progress.
Peter Robinson suggested that it might be helpful if he spoke to Sir Graham Meldrum, Chief Inspector of Fire Services whom he understood to be Vice Chairman of the previous Management Council, since on a previous telephone conversation on the subject of the Arboretum, he had proved to be most helpful. It was agreed that Peter should seek to do this as soon as possible after return home from Birmingham.
There was some more discussion on the subject with most being dismayed at the inactivity.

Graham Bow made mention of a fifty percent loss of members in The Isle of Wight due to non payment of subscriptions. The General Secretary suggested that there might be a long standing lack of enthusiasm from the Island members since he had never seen a representative at any Council meetings nor had communication from the officials in District12 except for one telephone conversation with Mrs Harley who is the District Sec and Rep. He suggested he might follow up with another telephone call.
Graham reported on the NARF News copies having gone out to FSNBF establishments and drew attention to his supplementary paper circulated at commencement of the meeting which showed the reduction in memberships for certain areas over the last year. Graham advised that although the Benevolent Fund would continue to publish �Firemark� this would not be sent out to NARF members who would receive instead, the new magazine, � Shout� which will come out twice a year. Graham suggested that the Data Protection Act would not be breached by providing FSNBF with a copy of our Data Base for purposes of the �Shout� circulation since they had been distributing our NARF News for us for several years and until comparatively recently anyway! Mr Robinson advised members that he had received an approach recently for a chap called Alan Day of FSNBF to attend this Council Meeting but had put him off, on the basis that it had been only in 2002, when we had allocated 20 minutes of Council Meeting time to a presentation by FSNBF representatives. Instead, Peter had arranged for the Ben Fund to do a short article for NARF News. However, since Alan had been persistent, he had allowed for the possible attendance at our October meeting to make a short approach to members. Since this seemed to be in line with Council policy to meld closer links with the Ben Fund, this was agreed by members and the Secretary said he would contact Alan to that effect!
Graham suggested that any District that would like a regular Ben Fund update letter, should let him have their e-mail address and willingness to receive the document and he would forward copies on,with agreement of Ben Fund.
Before moving to the next Agenda item, Graham advised that he had been contacted by Ben Fund to invite other NARF representatives to come to their Conference this year. Currently Bill Meaden, John Jackson and Colin Middleton are still shown on their list, and Graham suggested that Frank Byrne should be put onto the list to attend on our behalf to replace Colin who has sadly passed-on. This was agreed.

Roy Orringe advised that the matter is still ongoing. There is a lot of confusion, and the Rt Hon Paul Murphy is looking into it for us. There is, suggested Roy, some problems due to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland having some loyalty to previous NI Ministers who seemed to have ineffectively shuffled this matter about for years. Whilst it was conceded by Mr Murphy, that brigades in Northern Ireland seemed to have had some recognition of the problems encountered during �the Troubles�, individual fire-fighters have had no such recognition at all!
Fred Kinghorn asked why there had been objections from NI FBU to the allocation of a medal? John Reidford who recalled earlier discussions in Council along similar lines, went to lengths to explain that he had had direct discussions with NI Union people on this matter to substantiate his strong claim that this was just not correct. FBU, stated John, had not had anything to do with rejection of the medal during the period that it had been �bogged down�. Harry Martin summed up the sad saga, with an impassioned and slightly heated assessment of the current stalemate from the basis of one who had been �in the front line� from 68 to 93. Harry said the current CFO of Northern Ireland is now in favour of the medal and if it gets rejected yet again, it will in Harry�s words, be �down to Politics!�

Frank Byrne who is the outgoing NPC Representative, outlined his report which had been circulated. Frank stated that he had circulated the Manifesto of NPC some time previously.
Barry Hook, Andy Mulligan and Stan Bairsto said that they had not been given a copy of Frank�s Report and the Secretary promised to include a copy for each of them with their Meeting Minutes when he sent them out in due course.
Brian Wakefield sought clarification on the issue of State Pension receivers and Community Charges ie/ Council Tax. Mr Byrne said that there was an acknowledgement that pensions should be upgraded to allow Pensioners to pay the increased Community Charges without claiming discrimination, but Bill Meaden felt that Pensioners should not be treated as a special case as this could lead to their being villified if they were allowed to be free of Community Charging. The Government is at fault because they lay increasing requirements upon local authorities and then do not provide sufficient Government funding to cover the extra demands. During the last four years there had been some Council Taxes that had risen by figures of 20% against 1 to 2% rises in State Pensions.
President again thanked Frank Byrne for his efforts over the last year.

The President suggested that this was an issue which we should pursue extensively. Brian claimed that there were twenty seven and a half thousand fire brigade pensioners across the country and only six to seven thousand of these were in NARF and paid up or in process. The discrepancy between these figures was in his opinion, not acceptable and would like to think that with effort, we could substantially increase our membership. Brian said the exercise in Tyne and Wear proved this point with an increase of 30% in that area alone. He said he was aware of a District that had actually raised its membership each year over the last consecutive four years and was Council going to sanction another national recruiting campaign like the one in 2001.
Andy Mulligan also referred to the Tyne and Wear exercise and suggested recruitment flyers similar to those used there, should be distributed in other areas where we could get sanction to do the circulation via pension slips free. In due course said Andy, we should allocate funds to circulate flyers to all.
There was a suggestion that this might not always be viable since some Pension Authorities send out only one pay slip each year but it was a concensus that we should engage in more active recruitment. Wendy Garrett counselled against doing a country wide campaign as we did a few years back, because this resulted in the swamping of the Membership Secretary with applications. Wendy suggested that this time we should seek to do the campaign progressively on perhaps a regional basis. Barry reminded members on the methodology used with the last major campaign and suggested that now that many authorities had farmed out their Pension Administration to commercial concerns it might not work anywhere near as well as the last time. He suggested that Tyne and Wear had been easier because they were a large authority and had only one pension provider. Colin Bailey suggested that we should stick initially with District 2 as a first stab. Brian Wakefield felt that District 4 should be added as well, and Maurice Howard was keen that No 1 District should also be included in the early initiative. This met with agreement of most members, but Lynne Bairsto did caution over enthusiasm for response potential, stating that she had written to 400 of the Lancashire members recently and only received 8 responses.
It was agreed that Barry Hook would again produce the Recruitment Flyer including advantages of NARF membership on representational issues. These would be circulated at District discretion within Districts 1, 2 and 4.

An Emergency Motion from District 4 (which dealt with a change of Constitution to require the submission of Motions for AGM to the General Secretary be earlier than the current December 31st ) was withdrawn by District 4 on the grounds that, since it had been mooted at the October Council, it could not in fact be an Emergency Motion. This was acknowledged by Members and withdrawal accepted with the agreement that the subject would be properly debated at the 2004 October Meeting. An Amendment to the above mentioned Emergency Motion had been sent in by District 1 but was deemed also to have been withdrawn because you cannot have an Amendment to a Motion that hasn�t been taken forward!

This brought Council onto what would have been Motion 2 for consideration, which was: An Emergency Motion from No1 District. (this time an acceptable Emergency Motion since subject had not been identified as of priority nature until February 2004!):-
The Council should take all necessary steps to ensure the full protection of the Pension provisions covered by Sections 26 and 27 of The Fire Services Act 1947 and Section 8 of The Fire Services Act 1959 and all subsequent Statutory Instruments issued under Section 26 of The Fire Services Act 1947.

Maurice Howard stated that his officials had been concerned to read an Article in �Fire Prevention- Fire Engineers Journal� February edition, outlining the content of the Fire and Rescue Bill which will replace the Fire Services Act of 1947. Having obtained copy of the Bill it was found to have references to a new Pension Scheme which would apply to new recruits to the service in future. There was also a passing reference in Clause 35 of the Bill to the existing Pension Scheme which doesn�t specify any changes to be made but doesn�t positively exclude them either. This Motion is to ensure that our Pension rights are preserved including preservation of the commutation scheme.

The President suggested that all Districts should now go back to their Pensions Authorities to ensure that any changes in the existing Pension Scheme should be advised to NARF as soon as they are mooted, (that is if ever they are!) Andy Mulligan said that we have an existing arrangement to be notified of any change, but it was agreed that there could be no harm in reminding fire authorities of this again. It was Proposed by Maurice Howard and Seconded by John Jackson that this Motion be taken forward to AGM. It was carried unanimously.This would be now Motion 1. for AGM consideration.

This took Council onto what would have been Motion 3 and had been submitted by District 7.

�With regard to the suggestion contained in Edition No 17 of NARF News, that the title of this Association is no longer appropriate, No 7 District considers that the title� �The National Association of Retired Firefighters� should be retained and urges Conference to reject any proposals to the contrary when considering amendments to the National Constitution�

Wendy Garrett suggested that any changes to the title of the Association would incur about �2/3K in costs of writing off goods already marked with the title and would prove uneconomical! It was after some discussion, during which Colin Bailey who had written the Article in our publication suggested it had been only to promote debate and Brian Wakefield stated that NARF was now a well respected title, that it was decided to support the Motion with the following Amendment:-

First three lines as above:
Last line modified as follows:
�proposals to the contrary when due to consider amendments to the National Constitution�

This revised content Motion was Proposed by Barry Hook and Seconded by Colin Richards. Put to the Vote it resulted in 10 votes for the Motion and 3 Against. It will go to AGM as Motion 2

Now moving onto what would have been Motion 4 on the circulated paperwork, there was a Motion from District 1 as follows:-

That there be a minimum qualifying period of 10 years of outstanding service to the National Association to become a Life Vice President or to have held a National Office of no less than 5years.

Maurice Howard explained that the criteria for Life Vice President nominations was somewhat obscure and District 1 felt that they would like to see some regulation in such appointments. There was some lively debate on this issue but the general feeling seemed to be that the balanced judgement of members of council followed up by a vote on any intended recipient by Council members should be all that was necessary. There was agreement that a majority vote of Council would be sufficient and a reluctance to restrict the appointment by stricter criteria. When Proposed to go forward by Mr Howard there was no Seconder, so the Motion will not go to AGM.

To add to the confusion, the Secretary said that he had now brought forward what he had circulated as Motion 5, but which would now become Motion 3 because the previous one was not now being taken forward.

This was as follows:-
That subscriptions at National Level will be raised to �5 per Member from 1st January 2005.

This reminded the Secretary was part of an ongoing Motion carried over from 2002 when it had been agreed that subscriptions would go up by �1 per year to National Level for each of the years 2003, 2004 and 2005 which means they would have reached the pre-agreed level of �5 by 2005. This agreement publicised to every NARF Member, had been that the increases would be put progressively to Annual General Meetings each year starting in 2002 until 2004, to ensure that there had been plenty of opportunity to challenge the increases if such was the wish of membership. Although to date, he had as Secretary, received no correspondence objecting to the essentially modest annual sums incurred, neither, as far as he knew , had anyone written to the NARF News Editor despite invitations to do so in at least two editions of NARF News, It did seem possible, that there were now retired members leaving NARF because of the increase in their Subscription without ever giving Council the benefit of their objections, which he felt to be short- sighted in the extreme. He hoped there would be no objections forthcoming at this late stage to the last progressive �1?

Proposed by P Robinson and Seconded by Andy Mulligan, this Motion was carried unanimously to go forward as Motion 3 to AGM.

The last in the Motions for consideration had been a Motion contained together with the Amendment to the Emergency Motion from District 4 which had been discussed at the start of the Agenda item. The Secretary brought this to attention of the Meeting as follows:-
That the subscriptions of Direct Members be set at �x amount above the National level. It was argued by District 1 Representative, Maurice Howard with some support from others, that the Council should be careful that it didn�t leave a situation where Branch members might feel it justifiable to leave a Branch and join as a Direct Member because they would be getting a cheaper subscription rate and would not be required to make any payment to either Branch or District!

Mr Robinson felt that this wasn�t the time, when Direct Members were falling off, to be seeking to penalise them just because National Subs were about to go up to �5 per head for Branch Members and that we should wait to see the position later in the year, say at the October Council.
Mr Meaden reminded members that as a Direct Member himself since withdrawal of his Branch from NARF, he had been paying �5 per year whilst Branch Members were still paying �2, then �3 then �4 per annum and nobody had raised the discrepancies in payment then!
After some more general discussion it was Proposed by Peter Robinson and Seconded by Wendy Garrett, �That Subscriptions for Direct Members be retained at �5 for 2005, until we establish some stability in our membership levels.� This was put to Vote with 11 for the Proposal and nobody seemingly opposed. This will go forward as Motion 4 to AGM

Roy Orringe suggested again, that the AGM should move around the country and that perhaps next year we could try staging it at Manchester. Asked to make this a Proposal he did, this was Seconded by Andy Mulligan and passed on Vote unanimously.

The date of the October Meeting was left until venue cleared, but would likely be late in October 2004

Note: Since arranged for 27th October 2004 at Bicken Hill Fire Station West Midlands