Biggin Hill Residents Association

Autumn News Round-Up from the Committee

Hi everyone!

It’s been great to see our village busy and buzzing again these past couple of months. The virus hasn’t gone away and life certainly isn’t ‘normal’, but we continue to go about our day to day lives as best we can, supporting local shops and businesses. We’ve resumed our monthly committee meetings, albeit via Zoom rather than face to face and, whilst our summer plans had to be cancelled, we’re making a few tentative plans for the autumn (fingers crossed).

Firstly, we want to let you know that, due to the ‘Rule of 6’, our annual AGM in October is cancelled. The existing committee will continue to serve until an AGM can be arranged, hopefully in the spring. A sad sign of our times, I’m afraid, but, in the meantime, here’s a brief update for you.  

Message from our Chairman, Peter Martin 

It’s trying times like these that make me feel grateful for friends, neighbours and our community. In some ways the situation we’ve found ourselves in has made our community much more resilient and the ‘village’ atmosphere is stronger than ever. We here at the Residents Association have done what we can to assist in the day-to-day business of local activities throughout the summer and are making plans for when things return to normal. I feel that whatever fate decides to throw at us over the next few months will be dealt with through our spirit of community and our ability to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On!’     

Finance update from our treasurer, Graham Savage

Pending the final detailed accounts, we have total reserves of £1960. During the year we received £1085 of membership fees, had a surplus of £270 from the two social events we were able to hold, and approximately £200 profit from merchandise sales. Full accounts will be available for the AGM. 

Litter Pick  

We’re organising a litter pick on Sunday 4 October at 10:30am and invite you to join us, observing all the social distancing rules of course! Equipment will be provided. Just turn up outside Waitrose or at Roundways in the valley. It’s a great opportunity to get some exercise and do something good for your community. 

Poppies

It’s become something of a tradition that we do our best to support The Royal British Legion and demonstrate our gratitude to those who have given all for us in conflicts in the past and those going on at the present. Therefore, as usual, we will be flooding the village with poppies to commemorate Remembrance Day and we’ll be out and about on the weekend of 24 October, putting them up on lamp posts. Unfortunately, because of restrictions on gatherings, we can’t have our normal stand outside the New Life Church, where we ask you to sponsor a poppy and collect donations for the Royal British Legions Poppy Appeal. Instead, we ask you to dig deep and give generously direct to the appeal yourselves, by buying a poppy in person or making a donation online at www.britishlegion.org.uk.  

Finally, if you know of a local group or organisation that could benefit from a donation or indeed, our help, then please get in touch. Email us at admin@bigginhillresidentsassociation.co.uk or by phoning Peter on 07763 215037.