2025 P&TGRS AGM Report

Welcome

Our AGM allows residents to find out what Penn & Tylers Green Residents Society has achieved in the previous year.

Whilst delivering the statutory requirements, we also make it an interesting evening and included a few surprises.

Welcoming all our guests, we took the opportunity to recognise the previous Buckinghamshire councillors, Katrina Wood, Nathan Thomas and Steven Barrett with a small gift.

Changes to the Board of Trustees

We were delighted to official ratify the appointment of five new trustees; Ollie Godwin, Nicola Hooper, Julie Newman, Ruthie Pocock and John Watson.  Sadly, we also said goodbye to two; the first was Robert Taylor who had resigned due to time conflicts and we gave him our thanks in his absence.

Our President Earl Howe shared his memories and appreciation of the long involvement of Cathy O’Leary (and her family) with P&TGRS. Cathy resigned as a Director and Editor of Village Voice towards the end of 2024, after over 20 years of volunteering in a number of roles with the Society and its predecessor, the Residents Association. We have gifts for Cathy and her family which will be handed over privately.

He then went on to surprise David Harris with recognition of his 43 years service to P&TGRS as Finance Director, previous Chair, and as Chair of the Woodlands Committee. Although David is not retiring it felt appropriate to appreciate his contribution as he steps down as Finance Director and Chair of Woodlands to take more time with Margaret and enjoying less demanding roles.

Finances 2024

David presented a summary of our Profit & Loss and our Balance Sheet for 2024,  explaining that we had a surplus of £37k in 2024, largely due to a generous legacy payment.

Our balance sheet is divided into restricted and unrestricted funds, the former are £744,644 and the latter £119,793, giving  £864,437 in total. Restricted funds can only be spent on specific areas of the Charity’s work, namely Woods & Open Spaces, Village Pre-School, Woodland Trust funds and funds held for other local groups like ‘Unlock Their Words’.

You can see our Statutory Report for 2024 

Annual Report 2024 (and a bit of 2025)

‘Our Chair, Madalyn Roker, reviewed our year, taking us to the current day, by comparing it to our objectives.

We are not ‘just’ a Residents Society, we are fully fledged charity with assets of over £850,000 and we demonstrated that our achievements were delivering in all areas of our objects.

Objective:  “to promote any charitable purpose for the benefit of the inhabitants …”

Our main platform for communication and fund-raising is Village Voice magazine and the new team (co-editors Julie Newman and Ruthie Pocock, supported by designer Jo Bolton and copy wrangler Hilary Forbes) have given the magazine a cleaner look, with larger images and new advertisers but without losing the essence of the magazine. We also increasingly use digital communications; Facebook, Website, Email newsletters and in 2024 we added Instagram.

Objective: “to advance education“

Village Pre-School goes from strength to strength, offering longer hours, places for younger children and thanks are due to Gill Lynn who retired at the end of 2024 after 20 years of service to VPS and Nicky Lovegrove who continues to manage the pre-school with skill and care. Sharon Herron is our Chair of the VPS sub-committee and take especial care of their needs within P&TGRS.

We have been able to support a local campaign ‘Unlock Their Words‘ created by Neville & Natalie Parnell, which raised almost £6000 for children with speech and language needs within the area. Most of these funds have been allocated to the First School who have been able to teach all children and staff Makaton as well as supporting individual children with specific needs.

We do not restrict ourselves to educating children and Miles Green and Andrew Mullin’s book ‘The History of the Pubs of Penn & Tylers Green’ sold over 300 copies. Thanks to the authors and also to Sue Breeze who managed the sales of the books.

Objective: “to secure the preservation, protection, development and improvement of historic, artifactual or public interest in the area.”

Due to our robust financial position we were able to confirm that we had offered Holy Trinity Church 50% of the budgeted cost of repairing the bell tower, amounting to £17,500.

We were only able to do this because of the recent legacy payment received and urge anyone looking at their estate to consider leaving P&TGRS a donation in their will.

Russell Read has recently added Grant Giving to his existing role of Special Projects and is helping on various prospective donations.

We also thanked Amanda Page for her tireless work moving us to, and then managing our book-keeping in Quickbooks. After doing all the hard work, she has decided to step down as our Bookkeeper and we have a gift for her. We also thanked Mike Dugdale for his background work on our finances and board self-evaluation.

Objective: “social welfare for recreation and other leisure-time occupation with the object of improving the condlitions of life for the said inhabitants'”

We have increased our events calendar and recent events have included our Easter Egg Trail in Common Wood, the Quiz and Expo, as well as regular Litter Picking (working with Nicole Webster and Penn Parish Council). We also contribute to the monthly Community Lunches, working in partnership with Emma and David Byrne, all events are managed with Julie Newman who is working hard on encouraging Madalyn to delegate.

Under this category, the Board were also delighted to present Karen Shardlow, CEO of Scannappeal with a cheque for £5,000 towards their campaign to raise funds to purchase a mobile breast scanning until for South Buckinghamshire. Karen explained that this will be available to men and women and encourage higher take up of screening, which is the first step to detecting breast cancer.

Object: to promote high standards of planning architecture in or affecting Penn and Tylers Green.

Our planning subcommittee, chaired by Sue Breeze, is constantly monitoring and commenting on planning applications. We were also represented on the team who delivered the excellent Penn Neighbourhood Plan, adopted in March 2025. Miles Green, Ken Cooke and Gerry King attended many days of the Gomm Valley hearing, and we objected strongly to the recent works undertaken by Taylor Wimpey on the proposed entrance to Hammersley Lane. Rayners have now secured planning approval and have started work on the removal of the modern elements, but the original buildings will be preserved, thanks to the earlier work by Miles Green.

Object: to secure protection, conservation and enhancement of the wildlife and countryside in or affecting the two villages

Our Woodlands sub-committee manages Common Wood, Millar Wood and Coppice Farm Greens. The Friends of Common Wood membership is growing – providing additional funding for the woods and open spaces, thank you to Jane Tichbon for administering the scheme. The committee is progressing with the updated management plan, budget and we constantly have new volunteers in the woods. Thanks to committee members, David Harris, Nicola Hooper, Mike Morley, Brian Adams, Nick Barber, Chris Saunders, the Woodland Trust and all of our volunteers.

As you can see, we have created a solid platform from which to grow and deliver on our objectives and encourage others to consider joining us.

This marked the end of the official business of the AGM and we welcomed our guest speaker.

The Woodland Trust Presentation

Our guest speaker, Laura Judson of the Woodland Trust, entertained and educated us with details of the Trust’s work from the Highlands of Scotland to Cornwall to protect conserve and create woods, trees and wildlife.

Laura has worked with P&TGRS since about 2000 when Penn and Common Wood were protected from potential development and was delighted to present David Harris with a wonderful montage of images of their work.

The video above highlights our little known rainforests (c) The Woodland Trust

The evening ended with a drinks reception, thank you to everyone who brought a donation of food for One Can Trust too.

Photos from the Evening