Warrington Division Retired Teachers' Section

NATIONAL UNION OF TEACHERS

ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR RETIRED TEACHERS

North West Region Represented by Kevin Ashbrook (Warrington) and Alan Cave (Bury)

REPORT ON

ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING

Held on 8 June 2007 at the Bloomsbury Room, Canterbury Hall, Cartwright Gardens.

Venue for the meeting was a basement room with no ventilation or air conditioning and was not appropriate, BUT the lunch was excellent!!!  Perhaps we can have our meetings at Hamilton House then walk down the road for lunch here!!

The meeting: opened with a general, highly charged discussion on how appalled the members of the Advisory Committee felt about the very late cancellation of the planned meeting in March. It was stated that the committee wanted to register a great objection to how and why this was done. It was asked that a letter of thanks to previous members of the committee be sent for their work over the past 4 years and it was to be noted that it was a very poor way to end 4 years, and in some cases more, attendance at the meetings. The Chair apologised profusely and these apologies were finally accepted after a very long discussion.

1. ELECTION OF VICE CHAIR:  Ray Russell was re-elected as Vice Chair of the Advisory Committee unopposed.

2  MATTERS ARISING FROM PREVIOUS MEETING: 

a. The retention of members on retirement was asked to be on the agenda for this meeting but did not appear. Discussion took place and it was decided that this was a natural topic to be included in the Retired Teachers’ Conference after a paper to be produced by HQ on the matter.

The committee suggests:

i. the production of a retirement leaflet, summarising the benefits of retired membership

ii. the use of the much under used website to publicise retirement issues.

iii. there should be a place for retirement issues in the Teacher Magazine.

iv. to encourage all local associations and divisions to set up and/or continue with Retired Teacher Sections.

The Retired Teachers’ Conference is now to be held at

Hamilton House on Thursday 11^th October

Topics to be included are Retention of Retired Members, Inheritance Taxes, Social Care and the NPC Pensioners’ Charter. More information to follow soon.

3  REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE SECRETARY – BARRY FAWCETT:

a. Update TPS:- a ballot of members of the union overwhelmingly endorsed the new pension scheme arrangements by 99% to 1%. Barry praised Teachers’ Pensions for the good job they have done on their website with the interactive areas and the contacting of teachers in March with their current pension details.

Barry stated that there is absolutely no chance of getting teachers’ pensions linked to average earnings, Therefore we must campaign for this to happen to state pensions instead.

b. Public Service Pensioners Council:- The AGM took place last week, the key aspect was the restoration of the link between the state pension and earnings by 2012, if possible. This will be a key issue for the next General Election in 2009/2010. Unfortunately not much can be done in the short term. We need to join forces with others to get a clear commitment from the political parties to restore the earnings link.

4  NATIONAL PENSIONERS’ CONVENTION:

i. Thanks to Ray Russell for thorough report from the Pensioners’ Parliament held at Blackpool in May.

ii. Report on the NPC Council held 27/03/2007:- Main considerations were:

a. Council Tax …A fairer system!

b. The Age Referendum….over 75,000 votes were cast, 90% of which were for the statement, ‘The government are not doing a good job over pensions’.

c. Some local authorities are removing concessionary fees for OAPs on adult education courses. This has been brought to the attention of a government minister who has stated that there is no case for this to happen…WATCH THIS SPACE.

5 ELECTIONS…. a report on the voting in Region 4 for the recent elections of the Advisory Committees was received. No clear reason as to why the high number of spoiled ballot papers occurred in this region as the same set of circumstances did arise in other regions with no significant problems.

6  HEARTH PRESENTATION

A presentation of the Hearth website was given by Phil Katz. It is a very impressive piece of technology, which when fully running will be a great boon for all NUT local officials.

N.B. Several members of the committee did criticise the NUT website (www.teachers.org.uk) for the lack of information on the Retired Teachers’ Tab. Last piece was dated 2004!!

7  DATE OF NEXT MEETING: To be decided but possibly either 13 or 20 November 2007.

8  New Principal Officer: is Nick Kirby whom we met for the first time today.

Alan Cave 23 Dingle Road  Alkrington  Middleton Manchester M24 1WF

Tel No:  0161 643 4500        Email:  alancave@fsmail.net

Kevin Ashbrook  9 Almer Drive Great Sankey  Warrington  Cheshire WA5 1JU

Tel No:  01925 638 383        Email:  kevinashbrook@warrington-nut.org.uk

Warrington Division has a healthy retired teachers' section numbering in the region of 95. If you are an ex-member of the NUT it costs only £4.20 per year in membership fees, sent to union headquarters, to be a member of the retired teachers' section.

We have a monthly meeting at T. J. Hughes Cafe, where a dedicated few meet over a coffee and new faces will always be welcomed. In addition we meet approximately three times a year for lunch and a talk.

 If you are interested in joining us contact Kevin Ashbrook, secretary, simply by telephoning 01925 638383 or e-mail at kj.ashbrook@ntlworld.com