Notes of Sustainable Harwell Committee Meeting October 16th, 2019 

Present: Giles Barwell, Chair (GB). Martin Gibson, Secretary (MG), David Marsh, Treasurer (DM)

1. 1. The constitution for Sustainable Harwell (SH) was signed by the committee members. This will be used in the application to be part of the Community Action Group Project Oxfordshire. If accepted, SH should receive a £250 grant to help with activities.
   2. The group will need some funds to maintain activities. The prospective £250 from becoming a Community Action Group would be helpful but we will still need ongoing income. It was suggested that we ask participants to donate to SH. This can be done by ‘passing the hat’ at meetings but also by asking for regular small voluntary donations of, say £10 per year from members. Membership will remain free.
      MG said that his company, Earthly Gains Ltd, would pay for the hire of the Village Hall for the next meeting, at least.
   3. The need for a website was discussed. DM has set one up and is happy to maintain it for free for the time being and is absorbing the hosting costs. We agreed to review the position at the end of the year, when funding is clearer.
      SH needs to decide on having a domain name and who should own it. The website needs to be robust, so processes need to be in place if DM is unavailable to manage it.
   4. An email is to be set up for sustainable@harwell.uk. This will forward to the committee members. When sending emails on behalf of SH, the committee members should sign into the email address from webmail.
   5. Claire Greenwood offered to set up a Facebook group for SH. This will need others to be able to access it. It should be a community group.
   6. Membership and complying with the General Data protection Regulations (GDPR) was discussed. We decided that members were anyone who asked to be on the mailing list as they have opted in to receiving emails. MailChimp will be populated with the mailing list and will act as the membership record.
      GB will pass the email list to DM to add to MailChimp. Once confirmed that MailChimp holds the email addresses, GB will delete them from his personal records to ensure GDPR requirements are met.
   7. Privacy Policy – DM agreed to draft a privacy policy to include the following principles:
      • Membership details will only be used for SGH activities
      • SH will not pass on any members details
      • Members can unsubscribe at any time
        Once set up, GB and MG will be given access to MailChimp.
   8. Communications was recognised as very important. We want to ensure that SH is not exclusive, though recognise that it will not appeal to everyone. We also want to reach a wider demographic as few younger people have attended so far.
      It was agreed that we need a communications officer on the committee. GB will see if Claire Greenwood is willing to do this.
   9. It was confirmed that SH should promote actions that produce change. One action – to have a local refill shop – has been addressed, with The Hive visiting the Village fortnightly.To facilitate other actions, we will seek to set up sub-groups to cover each of the four remaining areas for action agreed at meetings. These groups will be time limited. The idea will be put forward at the next meeting and volunteers to run the groups will be sought. The committee members will offer to help steer the groups to set up any frameworks they need to run themselves.
   10. It was agreed that the next meeting would focus on the four remaining action areas first and then have a talk on other aspects of sustainability. It was agreed that we would see if one or two more areas for action might result from the talk.