Founded 1980
Chair:        
Secretary: 
Treasurer: 

Graham Smith
Jan Thompson
Graham Mumby-Croft


 Issue No. 84 SPRING 2021
FROM THE TREASURER

As you can imagine the past year has been a very quiet one with regard to activity for the RPGA, although as Treasurer I still have the task of checking the bank accounts to reconcile the standing order payments coming in to cover subscriptions. This task has not changed with the pandemic, as the membership remains reasonably stable and so there are still the best part of 390 separate bank transactions to check and to log on the spreadsheet that I use to track and record payments by individual members. Based on this information, every year Harry and I compare our lists to find where there are any disparities. We do this to ensure that our lists match each other’s as closely as possible given the fact that Harry carries the names of people as members who do not pay a subscription, usually because they are the widow/widower of a member who has died. However each year I will receive at least one payment from someone I am not aware of, and conversely I will also not receive payment from someone who is, or was, a member and from whom I was expecting payment. This can occur if a member dies and Harry is not made aware of this, or it can be, and often is, that someone may have changed banks and forgotten to change their Standing Order. We do of course also get members who, for whatever reason, decide to cancel their membership and not inform us.

So at the end of the 2020 financial year I did a full reconciliation of the payments received and provided Harry with a list of names of those people that I had not received a payment from either in 2019 or 2020. The reason for the 2-years is that Harry and I wait until 2 consecutive years of non-payment of subscriptions has passed before we take the step of removing anyone form the membership list, unless of course we have been informed of their death, or resignation. Once I have done this Harry will make every effort to make contact, and it is only if he does not receive a response that we then look to remove that person from the membership list. Sadly Harry received several responses confirming that the person in question had indeed died, and we had not previously been informed. Unfortunately we have one or two members who seem to have simply disappeared off the face of the earth and we receive no response from them, and surprisingly no feedback from anyone who may have known them as to where they are now. There is very little we can do in this situation, and after the 2-year wait, we remove them from membership. Interestingly, although they do not respond to correspondence or pay their subscription, the Newsletter we send is not returned as “unknown”.

Another purpose for my checking the subscription is that I very occasionally get a payment twice. Often this is because someone has changed banks, or accounts, and set up a new standing order, and failed to cancel the old one, I then receive payment twice. There were three of these this year, two of which were sorted out very quickly by email and the third one, (to which I had to write as we had no email address), has not responded, so this investigation continues.

In a similar vein, you may recall that some time ago I wrote about the old Lloyds account that had been set up many years ago, and all but abandoned when the account with Barclays was opened, and became the primary account for the Association. At the end of 2019 the Lloyds account was closed down, on the basis that if any of the eleven members who were still paying through this account were still alive, and wished to continue their membership, they would make contact to ask why their payments had been stopped. From the list of eleven members paying into that account I was contacted by only one person, and I am hopeful of being able to sort this one out in the near future. From the remaining ten, nothing was heard.

The accounts for 2020 have now gone off for audit and I will look to make a full report to the AGM in October, and of course publish the figures in the Autumn 21 Newsletter. However the headlines are that at the moment the finances are very healthy, despite the fact that the 40th Edition of the Newsletter cost almost twice as much as a “normal edition” at £2390. However it was a cracking read, and well worth the money.
Committee and running expenses have been almost zero this year as all meetings are being held by Zoom, including the AGM.
The main financial event in the year was that the Benevolent Fund was handed back to the PGA. This money had been passed to the RPGA several years ago when Paddy Scriven was the PGA Treasurer and from that time it had effectively sat in the bank, doing nothing. The PGA treasurer agreed to take responsibility for this back under the wing of the PGA, with the safeguard that should a member of the RPGA ever find themselves in the position of needing help, they can apply to the fund in the same way as before.

As always, if you have any questions feel free to contact me: my details are in the editorial.

Graham Mumby-Croft-Treasurer.

Graham Mumby-Croft
Treasurer