Chairman and Secretary’s Report to the AGM

Thursday 11th May 2023

We extend a warm welcome to all members who have joined us tonight at our AGM and hope that you will be able to stay at the end for refreshments.

Since the last AGM we have supported Sanderstead Community Day through the provision of toilets and insurance, paid for the Christmas Lights to be installed and The Friends of Sanderstead Library.  Many of our donations are joint funded by the Councillors, however their funds are diminishing and are unlikely to be replenished in the current financial climate so large expenditure costs such as the Christmas Lights will have to be funded differently going forward.

Tonight we will be making donations to some local groups who do so much in their area, The Friends of Wettern Tree Garden, The Friends of Purley Beeches, Sanderstead Neighbourhood Care and South East Cancer Help Centre. Regrettably The Friends of Green Spaces Sanderstead has not found a new Chairman and is currently inactive.

We rely on our membership subscriptions to be able to make these donations and the committee continue to actively work towards increasing membership through the distribution of spare magazines and attending local events.  We have had successful days at The Gruffy Fayre last June, Sanderstead Community Day in September and outside Waitrose in January.  We value these opportunities to meet and talk to our members. We will be at the Gruffy Fayre on June 10th this year and the Community Day on September 30th and hopefully at Waitrose, date to be confirmed. We are very grateful for Guy Salt for his continued maintenance of our database.

The committee have had to spend a lot of time as a result of Nationwide closing our account to try and retain those longstanding members with Nationwide standing orders. To keep costs to a minimum we hand delivered nearly 400 letters and were grateful for the donation of 200 reply paid envelopes by a member for returning forms. Regrettably the banks did not process all the newly completed forms and we have had to go back to over 70 members.

On the issue of membership we have had several discussions about subs and the committee are minded to increase the subs in 2025, this will be put to next years AGM.  In the meantime if any members feel able to increase their subs to £10 it would be appreciated.  As pointed out in the Spring 2023 News, our subs have been £5 since 2007 and we simply can’t do as much as we would like unless they are increased.

Thankfully planning issues have reduced considerably.  There is a definite reduction in applications and a move towards houses rather than flats.  However the developers are usually overdeveloping the sites with too many houses.  We continue to monitor the applications and make appropriate objections when necessary.  The cumulative impact on our already stretched resources is a concern and we work closely together with the Councillors on planning issues. Please refer to our newly launched website to see the up to date status on planning.

The future of the library continues to take up considerable time.  We hope that many of you took the opportunity to express your views on the future of our library earlier in the year with our survey.  The conclusions drawn from the survey have been forwarded to the Council with a basic business plan.  We have had several work days clearing the  leaves and tidying up the garden but it has been mainly the library sub-committee doing this work, we would welcome some help from members.  Please refer to the website for future dates. Please see Richard Pacitti’s report for more information on the library..

As ever, we are grateful to our Councillors Lynne, Hale, Yvette Hopley and Helen Redfern for all the support they give.

Chairman’s Report to the AGM 2022

It is with great pleasure that we can hold a physical AGM after two years of Zoom meetings and we warmly welcome everyone present tonight.

Since our last AGM the committee have agreed to provide funds for the following:

  • Christmas lights
  • Sanderstead Community Day provision of toilets and insurance costs
  • Banners and new signage for the library
  • Wildflower seeds for the library garden
  • Restoration of the village sign

You may have noticed that the refurbished Sanderstead sign was erected today. We approached the BBC1 programme The Repair Shop for this restoration and as they were looking for coronation related items we managed to get down to the last two but unfortunately were not selected. We then found a local firm in Beckenham who looked at the sign and said that it was beyond repair but that they would make a replica as closely as possible to the original. When the sign was taken down the main section was so rotten that it crumbled at the edges. However the carved top section of the sign has been restored. We are extremely grateful to those members who have made a donation to help with this costly project and to the Sanderstead Councillors who agreed to split the cost.

We rely on our membership subscriptions to be able to make these donations and the committee continue to actively work towards increasing membership through the distribution of spare magazines and attending local events. We had a successful day at the Sanderstead Community Day in September and will have a stall at 16th Purley Scout Groups Gruffy Fayre on 2nd July. We are very grateful for Guy Salt for his continued maintenance of our database.

It will be of no surprise that planning issues continue to take up a large part of our time. We look at contentious applications and submit objections and keep a schedule showing the status of applications which is regularly shared on our website, Facebook page and Nextdoor app. We work with the local councillors and other residents associations as a combined force on planning.

We have also been working on the issue of the future of Sanderstead library, with a dedicated sub-committee spending a lot of time talking to Council library staff and other local libraries to try and progress this. We have formed The Friends of Sanderstead Library to help maintain the grounds and to some extent the building and we will have regular working days. Our aim js to create a community hub for Sanderstead.

A lot of work went into our comments on the Croydon Local Plan which has not yet been adopted.

As ever, we are grateful to our Councillors Lynne, Hale, Yvette Hopley and Tim Pollard for all the support they give us and financially they often split the costs of projects with us. Our special thanks to Tim for his twenty years of service and support to Sanderstead Residents and we wish him well in the future. We also welcome Helen Redfern who has moved from being a Purley Oaks and Riddlesdown councillor, to join Lynne and Yvette in Sanderstead. We have a new era in Croydon with our first democratically elected Mayor, a movement that we supported as we believed it was in the interests of our residents.

Heather Lindsay and Mike Leach, Chairman and Secretary Sanderstead Residents’ Association, chairman@sanderstead-residents.co.uk