Brief summary of the Public Meeting on 30th September for those that couldn't make it.

Karen Varley spoke first about what has happened and what needs to happen for the club to make the change into a co-operative. Steady progress has been made, with a six month extension to the club tenancy and a couple of days of consultancy booked with the Plunkett foundation to advise on becoming a fully fledged co-op. There has also been the development of the facebook page Netherton Sports and Social Club, this blogspot, an e-mail address nethertoncoop@gmail.com , and a surveyhttp://www.surveymonkey.com/s/78TL5MP (please complete!)

The next steps will include getting and following the advice from the Plunkett foundation around a business plan and creating the new entity, generating a mission statement and logo, providing WiFi, increasing the number and variety of events on offer, freshly ground coffee and other hot drinks, development of a webpage.

James Newton then spoke about new ideas for events and activities for getting more people in the club more often. Ideas included having bands (of various genres), Bingo nights, meetings of local gardeners, board and card game nights, arts and crafts evenings, and provision of meeting rooms during the day for business or charity groups. We were (and still are) looking for ideas that can tap into members of the community that don’t currently use the club as well as those that do.  Please complete the survey to help with this.

We then had a discussion about improvements that need to be made to the club, including a lick of paint, potholes and lighting in the car park, servicing of the boiler, disabled toilet facilities, Kitchen facilities and general improvements to communication and the frontage of the club to make it more welcoming.

There was a lot of constructive chat in the club afterwards and several new people came forwards to volunteer their skills or become a member of the steering group, and any one else who wants to get involved is welcome to get in touch via the facebook page, nethertoncoop@gmail.com or just come down to the weekly meetings at 8.30 every Monday (apart from Bank Holidays).