MEETINGS
THE FIRST MEETING: TO FORM A TENANTS AND RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION, CONTACT THE CAMDEN FEDERATION OF TENANTS AND RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION, AND THEY WILL HELP YOU SET UP THE FIRST MEETING (ASK THEM TO CHAIR AND TAKE MINUTES FOR THE FIRST MEETING, AS WELL).
AFTER THE FIRST MEETING:
It's very easy to have the first few meetings for your Association; it's
harder to keep up the enthusiasm after that because there's a lot of
work involved for some people when you have a meeting and no work at all
for others.
As a TRA, you should have at least four annual meetings a year, one of which
will be your Annual General Meeting, where you elect the new Executive
for the coming year. If you have many more, people might get tired
of coming to meetings; if you have less, people will feel they're not involved.
Every meeting should start exactly at the time the notice said it was going
to start and shouldn't go on any longer than 90 minutes (the shorter the
better).The minutes of the meeting should be no longer than two pages.
Your meetings should take place in:
1. Autumn
2. mid-January
3. mid-to-late March
4. Summer
how to plan a meeting
things to discuss at your meetings
how to get people to turn up to a meeting
how to get people involved in committees
how to plan an AGM
what to do after a meeting
WHAT TO DO BEFORE THE MEETING:
TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE MEETING:
The Executive (co-Chairs, Treasurer, Secretary) all meet to decide
on the date of the general TRA meeting. For this meeting the Secretary
should bring copies of the Minutes of the last meeting (with the communal
amendments). This is a very short meeting to discuss if there are any guests
from the Council to be invited and to also discuss any problems which might
come up at the meeting.
The Executive together decides on the Agenda for the coming general
TRA meeting. An agenda is just a list of what is going to be discussed at
the meeting, and this list should be written down by the Secretary at this
meeting and a copy given to the co-chairs, so that everyone knows what is
going to be discussed, and in what order it should be discussed at the TRA
general meeting.
A General Agenda
THE SECRETARY:
1. Two weeks before the meeting: Post a notice of the meeting (where,
what time, if there are any special things to be discussed, if there are
any special guests) on the communal notice board and in the lift. so everyone
knows about the meeting.
2.One week before the meeting: Post a copy of the minutes of the last
meeting on the communal notice board at least a week before the meeting,
to give everyone a chance to read the minutes before they come to the meeting.
3. Two days before the meeting: Make as many copies of the notice
(and possibly the agenda) as there are flats and post them through
everyone's door, so everyone knows about the meeting. Don't run off the copies
using your printer - make one copy, and then photocopy the rest (the Fitzrovia
Neighbourhood Centre and the Camden Federation of Tenants and Residents
Association provide free photocopying facilities) or use somewhere
like Mailboxes Etc on Store Street if you want good cheap photocopies without
having to go too far to get them.
4. After the meeting: Take down all the notices
immediately, after you leave the meeting.
_____________________________________________
An AGENDA for a general TRA Meeting:
MINUTES OF THE ______TENANTS AND RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION
DATE:
TIME:
PLACE:
NAME OF SECRETARY TAKING MINUTES:
LIST OF PEOPLE PRESENT AT MEETING:
LIST OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE SENT THEIR APOLOGIES:
ADOPTION OF THE MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING:
ANY BUSINESS ARISING FROM THE LAST MEETING:
MAINTENANCE OF COMMUNAL AREAS REPORT:
LIFT REPORT:
TREASURER'S REPORT (IF NEEDED):
SPECIAL INTEREST COMMITTEES
(for example, Garden, Heritage, Noise, Social Events, Arts Grants, Health
Club, Service Charges, Lease-holders, Tenants, etc)
ANY NEW BUSINESS:
GUEST SPEAKER (IF ANY)
CLOSE OF MEETING
SOCIAL EVENING
_______________________________________________
You must have an Annual General Meeting (an AGM) where
you elect the new Executive for the coming year. This meeting has to take
place on or before the date you first became a TRA (so if your Association
started in autumn, it will be in autumn). Because the Council bids are set
up around the tax year, which ends the last day of March, it's probably most
useful to have your AGM in either the summer or the autumn, so that the new
Executive can use the winter and spring meetings to discuss bids for the
Council, rather than using them for the AGM.
There are two things you must have to make your AGM legal:
1. You must have an independent observer for your AGM meeting; invite someone
from the Camden Federation of Tenants and Residents Association to this,
and ask them to Chair and to take Minutes for this meeting. AGMs should be
as short as possible, with a social evening following.
2. You must be quorate (which means you must have the
minimum number of flats represented to make a quorum, which you find
written in your constitution). In our case, for our building with 36 flats,
we decided that 8 flats (with one vote to a flat) makes a quorum, so you
have to have at least 8 people from 8 different flats, to make the election
of the new Executive legal.
The Four General Meetings for your Association:
1. Have an autumn meeting. This is one of the best times to have an Annual
General Meeting. If it is your AGM, you have to be
quorate. If it isn't your AGM, it doesn't matter how
many or few turn up.
Keep in mind, though, that if not many people turn up, either you are living
in paradise or you should be very concerned.
If you're not living in paradise, how to convince people to come to your meeting.
2. Have a meeting in January to consider whether you want to bid for the
District Monitoring Committee's big bids (up to £10,000) and little
bids (up to £1,000) for structural improvements on your building. If
you decide things should be bid for, you then have a couple of months to
do some research into whatever the project will be (Camden is quite willing
to give you whatever you bid for, so be careful. consider noise problems
created by hard surfaces like asphalt, for instance, before you ask to have
the asphalt resurfaced; there may be a better solution to the problem. This
meeting is about identifying the problems and deciding in which priority
they should be addressed. Decide who is going to research each problem, so
they can bring their research to the next meeting.
3. Have another meeting in late March or early April, so that you can re-consider
and submit your DMC bid. If you are going to submit a DMC bid, this meeting
should be quorate as well (or you have to do a door
to door survey,) to be sure that a quorate number of people know what your
bids are, and a majority of them approve. This is important because lease-holders
are responsible for providing part of the money if you are granted
a DMC bid.
At this meeting you have a chance to reconsider your priorities and
decide what the solutions should be to the problems ; your secretary will
also be able to come up with a written draft of the bid that everyone agrees
on at that meeting. (Once you have decided on the bid, the Secretary can
send it to the DMC by letter or e-mail, co-signed by both chairs). It's
important to have the time between the January and March meeting to research
possible solutions to your problems.
Also, be aware that if there are any external noise problems for your building,
you should be discussing them and possible solutions at this meeting and
at the summer meeting.
4. Have a summer meeting/social event. Use this to discuss the results of
any bid from this year (were you successful? what should you be thinking
about as bids for next year? Are there any other grants you could apply for
(Community Chest, for instance, or arts grants). You will also be discussing
noise problems, if any, at this meeting.
Committees
How to get people involved in your TRA
Try to get everyone involved in something after they leave a general meeting
(even if it's just getting them to post the notice of the next meeting through
everyone's door). If they have a special interest, have them join or
form a committee about that interest (make the people who are concerned about
noise part of the noise committee; make the people concerned about maintenance
part of the maintenance committee; make the people who are interested in
heritage part of the heritage committee).
Where TRA's are concerned, where one or more are gathered together,
you can have a committee. A committee can be any number of people from one
upwards and whomever wants to be part of a certain committee should
be made welcome. Committees should, when they wish, be able to engage in
their own correspondence with the Counsel about their committee's concerns
(or, if they don't wish to do this, or they need some extra clout, then they
should draft the letter, which one of them will sign, with one of the co-chairs).
Any formal exchange with the Council should be co-signed by one of
your chairs, and a copy provided for the Archives.
Camden Council representatives will tell you they don't want to deal with
too many people and try to make your co-chairs do all the work. This
is nonsense. They get paid to deal with people, and if your committee has
right and justice on its side, Camden Council will have to address the
committee's concerns -- eventually.
Always remember: the floor you get the Council to clean may not just be your
own; if you can get your communal floors cleaned properly and sealed properly
four times a year, you can tell other TRA's what you've done and how you've
done it, so they can get their communal floors cleaned and sealed as well.
The Executive is there to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves;
you must consider all residents of Camden Council buildings, not just your
own.
Why People Don't Come To Meetings:
If you find the only people who turn up are the Executive (or sometimes not
even all of them) you have a serious problem.
--It may be that people feel you've been having too many meetings, or
the meetings are too long or the meetings are at the wrong time or on the
wrong day of the week. If this isn't the problem:
-- It may be that the place of the meeting is unsuitable, either physically
unsuitable for some people (not accessible for elderly or disabled
people) or psychologically unsuitable. Try to have your meetings within your
own building, whenever possible, to save time travelling. Also, try to have
the meetings in different flats, so that it isn't always in the same place
(with ground floor flats being given a priority, because they are the easiest
to get to for disabled people). If this isn't the problem:
-- It may be you're not making the meetings interesting enough, so people
can't see why they should come. Either your priorities are wrong, or you
can interest more people by inviting a member of the Council or a Ward
Counsellor to discuss your common concerns. If this isn't the problem:
---It may be that you're not making people feel they are welcome
at the meetings. You have a responsibility to make TRA meetings accessible
and friendly. Try to have a 'buddy system' where you agree to come with one
person to the meeting and also have another you have spoken to whom you know
will come (these could be committee members). remember that you can build
Jerusalem and have fun too. once the notice of the meeting is up, ask people
specifically if they are coming to the meeting whenever you meet them and
explain to them why they should come. Time is precious - if you can't think
of any good reason for people to come - don't hold the meeting - have a social
gathering instead.
Everyone should be allowed to voice their concerns in a meeting --
ONCE. After that, if they repeat themselves, have them donate 10p a time
to the WHINGE BOX, and you can use the small change collected for
petty cash or to fund plants for the building. It doesn't matter whether
people pay up or not - it will make everyone listen more closely and choose
their words more carefully.
Who Does What at a Meeting
CHAIR OF THE MEETING. This person is just a traffic cop - responsible for
who says what in which order. The CHAIR is important, because this person
tells people politely but firmly when they are not speaking to the topic.
The CHAIR is responsible for the meeting starting and stopping on time, as
well as allowing people enough time to speak, without allowing them so much
time that others aren't allowed to speak as well. The CHAIR OF THE MEETING
can be either Co-Chair from the Executive, or anyone else they would
like to appoint, if there is a particular issue they both want to discuss
in the meeting (traditionally, the CHAIR OF THE MEETING doesn't speak to
the issues raised in the meeting).
You don't need to be very formal, but the CHAIR OF THE MEETING must have
a copy of the Agenda for the meeting (which is given to the CHAIR by the
Secretary before the meeting) and make people stick to it. When people want
to speak, they raise their hands, and do not speak unless the CHAIR gives
them permission to speak.
NAME GATHERER. There should be a person responsible for gathering the list
of the names of the people present at the meeting. This can either be the
Secretary, or someone who has volunteered to do this job. It is important
that the Secretary have the whole list of people who have attended the meeting
including late-comers (with their correct spelling of their names and their
flat number) since it will be needed for writing up the minutes of the meeting.
This is usually either the archivist or the person hosting the meeting in
their flat.
ARCHIVIST. It is simpler for the Secretary if someone also tapes the meeting,
so that the Secretary doesn't have to rely on memory to create the minutes.
This person should be responsible for providing the 90 minute tape, and the
tape machine, and be responsible for turning the machine on, turning the
tape over, and giving the tape, properly titled, to the Secretary immediately
after the meeting to help with the writing of the minutes.
SECRETARY. The Secretary (or someone who has volunteered to be Secretary)
is responsible for taking minutes of the meeting. The rough draft of the
minutes is either handwritten at the meeting (or typed, using a laptop).
Most things are just discussed at meetings, without coming to any proposals
which need a vote. These discussions can be summed up in the Secretary's
own words.
It is important to note the names of people volunteering to do specific things.
It is important, if there is a proposal which is
voted on at the meeting, that the Secretary have in writing:
a .the written proposal (either read the proposal back to the person who
has proposed it, before you have the vote, or have the person making the
proposal write it down and hand it to the Secretary).
b. the name of the person making the proposal
c .the name of the person who seconded the proposal
d .the outcome of the vote (yeahs, nays, abstentions)
The Secretary should, within a week of the meeting, have a copy of the minutes
typed up or written up and posted on the Communal Notice Board, so that anyone
can make corrections (spelling errors, grammatical errors) or amendments
to the minutes (for the times when the Secretary gets the whole thing completely
wrong). This allows people who haven't attended the meeting to see immediately
what was discussed. After two weeks, the Secretary should take down the Minutes
from the Notice Board and put them in the binder, type up the amended minutes
and put that in the binder as well (under MINUTES, so you can find them again
for the next meeting).
MISSING MEMBERS. The Co-chairs of the Executive are responsible for everything.
Any time a member of the Executive or a Committee isn't available and a report
must be given, the Co-Chairs are responsible for giving that report or presenting
the missing member's written report.
What to do after the
meeting
Stay for the social event, if you can. More problems are discussed informally
than formally.
Have the Secretary take down all the notices of the meeting immediately after
the meeting.
Post the minutes on the communal notice board as quickly as possible.
Two weeks after the meeting the Secretary should have taken down the minutes and placed the copy (with corrections and amendments) in a TRA binder.
There should be an informal follow-up by the co-chairs,
to see if the people who volunteered to do things have done them, or if they
will have to be done by the co-chairs or another volunteer.