Director’s Report

I’ve spent the last two months working on our contact lists so we can comply with the General Data Protection Regulations. I contacted most of the 36,000 people on our database.  That reduced the number to around 31,000.  Some people wanted to leave our database, many emails bounced, but 1300 wanted to stay on our list.  This gives us an opportunity to build a relationship with those people.  It isn’t very clear how the new rules apply to an organisation like the SHA.  They are concerned with marketting and the protection of personal information.   The vast majority of the contacts on our database who have not responded are not private individuals.  They are politicians, academics, local and national organisations, who advertise their contact details to the public.

We now have eight functioning branches.  The branch in Oxfordshire appears to be on the brink of viability and I’m hoping that we will manage to get at least one branch going in Yorkshire this year.

The membership of the association has continued to grow, though rather more slowly. Now at 1082 paid up members.  Analyzed by geography the current figures are: