South Central Branch

Chairman: Metthew Higgs
Email: matth@ciaalarms.co.uk

Meeting Adddress: St Leonard's Hotel, 185 Ringwood Rd, St Leonards's, Hampshire

Meeting Postcode: BH24 2NP

Phone Number: 01425 471220

Fax: 01425 480274

Monthly meetings & venue:

The meeting is currently held at the same venue on the first Thursday of the month.  Meeting usually starts around 18:45 with hot food and the meeting starts around 19:15.  The Hotel has excellent facilities including restaurant, bar & accommodation.

Summary:

Future plans for the branch.
The South central Branch has a loyal core group who always attend and they provide a strong base for the Branch. Average numbers of attendances for the meetings is around 20.

I would like to try and get more of the local Architectural Ironmongers to attend on a regular basis and would also like to try to encourage students to attend the meetings.

During 2007 a couple of students taking their scheduling exam asked for some advice with the paper. They were grateful for the advice offered; so this year I would like to open this offer to the students from the Branch area by offering organized Q & A sessions. I will be looking for volunteers from the Branch who will be able to help with this.
If any students are interested in this please contact me for further information.
This will hopefully help them with the exams, but also get them to meetings so that they can hopefully see how they can be both useful and informative by keeping them up to date with current regulations, changes and just generally what’s available on the market today.

I feel it’s important to let people know that these meetings are relaxed and relatively informal as well as educational as at the end of the day they are giving up their spare time to attend.
It is also important to let people know that these meetings are more than just a learning platform; they provide a base for a social gathering where everyone can talk shop or chat; and quite often problems can be thrashed out and resolved regarding a particular issues just by talking about it over a drink after the presentation.

Another aim is to organize presentations from companies from the other side of the industry, such as Test Facilities, Building Control & Door manufacturers.