Professionalism stressed at BPCA AGM

On 8 June BPCA held its Annual General Meeting in their sparkling new offices on the Pride Park Business Park in Derby. As with most AGMs, the meeting ran almost by clockwork, despite initial concerns that this might not have been the case.

In the chair was British Pest Control Association (BPCA) President, Martina Flynn (BASF), who deftly steered the meeting, such that it was all done and dusted within just 22 minutes.

As far as changes to the BPCA office holders there was none. Meaning the meeting approved the election of Martina to stand as President for another year (so making her presidency a three year term), with Henry Mott (Conquer Pest Control) remaining as Deputy President and Jenny Humphrey (DRE Pest Control) as Honorary Treasurer.

As for new Executive Board members, an election was required for the four spots available. Once the votes were counted, Philip Bowman (PPC Environmental) and John Forrest (Forrest Environmental Services) were elected as new members of the Board. This was in additiion to the re-election of two existing Board members, Richard Strand (Pest Information Consultancy) and Lewis Jenkins (Check Services). Again there was no change to the chairs of the manufacturers & distributors, fumigation and servicing committees, held again by Paul Hoyes (Killgerm), David Heaton (K&S Fumigation Services) and Iain Whatley (Enviroguard) respectively.

If there was to have been any controversy at the meeting it would have been concerning an exceptional item of expenditure for £70,000 recorded in the 2010 accounts. The President read out a prepared statement detailing the background, which went back to 2007 when a bespoke customer relationship management system (in other words a highly specialist piece of computer software written specifically for BPCA) was commissioned by the Association from Borough IT based in London. As others have discovered, for example the Government and its NHS computer system, there is much that can go amiss with these large bespoke contracts. After protracted negotiations to attempt to rectify the position, legal advice was sought which recommended an out of court final settlement with Borough IT. A question from the floor asked if this figure included BPCA’s own legal costs. Unfortunately it did not and these amounted to a further £30,000. On behalf of the whole Executive Board, the President expressed her regret for this loss and stressed that while BPCA felt the IT company was at fault, lessons had been learnt and improvements to systems and governance had been put in place to prevent any future repetition.

Plans for the next three years
Having now been in post for nearly a year, the BPCA Chief Executive, Simon Forrester, presented a review of activities over the last 12 months and highlighted the direction for the Association for the next three years. Amongst other points, Simon explained how a recent survey of members revealed, not surprisingly, that members looked to the Association to bring in more business for their activities and to offer added benefits and value for money for their membership fee. The imminent launch of the new BPCA magazine, alexo, targeted at the members’ customers would raise their profile, and as Simon said: “Pest control needs to be seen as a professional industry, undertaken by professionals.”

PROMPT members swelling
The theme of demonstrating professionalism was echoed by invited speaker Rob Simpson, Managing Director of BASIS. He outlined the PROMPT scheme and the significance of collecting CPD points. He stressed the independent nature of BASIS and was very pleased to report a surge in PROMPT membership during 2010 – rising from 354 in January 2011 to well over 900 by the end of May this year.

The BPCA Officers: Left to right: Nigel Binns (Immediate Past President), Henry Mott (Deputy President) and President, Martina Flynn, in the chair. Honorary Treasurer, Jenny Humphrey not shown