The Trustees are delighted to announce the creation of two Community WIldflower Borders on the field. Details of our plans can be found here: https://www.alfredpalmermemorialfield.org.uk/community-wildflower-border
The position of Publicly Appointed Trustee has been advertised in accordance with guidelines. Only one candidate applied and so we are pleased to announce that Sarah Smith has been re-elected as the publicly appointed Trustee for the next three years.
The Trust is pleased to announce that a Members Bid by local councillors has been successful in generating the remaining funds to purchase portable floodlighting for the Field. We will now go through a period of evaluating the lighting required. We hope to have the new lighting available early in 2018.
Once the new lighting is available, the Trust will work with Mortimer Football Club on the removal of the fixed lighting.
The Trust is grateful to our neighbour,Tom Maynard, for making available to us a mower he has refurbished. This enables the Trust to maintain all areas of the field that have been generously maintained up until now by the Parish Council.
This equipment gives the Trust a great deal more flexibility in implementing the development plan whilst also saving the Parish Council the contractors fees. All mowing of the field is undertaken by volunteers so please let us know if you want to try your hand!
The Trustees have agreed a rolling hire Agreement with 1st Mortimer Scouts for the area of land that formerly housed the Guide hut. This has been fenced by the Scout Group as a part of their requirement for child safeguarding. This enables them to offer more external activities to the cubs and scouts. The agreement in place also means that this area will be available to other groups such as Duke of Edinburgh expedition groups.
There are a small number of individuals who are consistently misusing the facilities of the APMF. Acts of vandalism and damage to the field with motorbikes are the most serious. In response we have sent a letter to all of the direct neighbours of the field. We have uploaded this here as it is the whole community’s responsibility to demonstrate that this behaviour is unacceptable.
Please help us in the ways outlined in the letter. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, then please call 101 and report any and all incidents that you see.
We have now had delivered the secure storage required for the APMF. It is positioned close to the second pitch towards the Scout Hut, very close to where the new area for the Scouts will be.
Siting this storage unit has been a challenge to create as small an impact as possible on the field and our neighbours. The unit is already olive green, but over the summer we will be planting natural screening to further reduce any visual impact that it may cause.
The Trust has purchased equipment that will be stored in the unit which will enhance youth football on the APMF. This equipment and storage will also be available to other hirers of the APMF.
Having reached agreements with all APMF users, we are actively pursuing our strategic development plan, the core of which is a new pavilion for use by all beneficiaries. This new pavilion will include secure storage areas and enable us remove both of the temporary storage units on the field.
The Trustees and the executives of Mortimer Football Club (MFC) have worked hard over the past few months to establish a plan to ensure that MFC can continue to thrive at the APMF as the lease arrangements for their current facilities transition to the hire agreement system the APMF now operates under. We are delighted to say that we now have agreed how this can be achieved.
The Trustees have been looking for the support of all users of the APMF to develop the facilities for the benefit of all in line with our Development Plan. MFC bring their time, energy and experience to this project and the Trustees look forward to working closely with MFC, and other users, to plan the project and raise the funding required.
The Trustees have been applying for funding for a number of projects. We are pleased to say that Greenham Common Trust have offered part of the funding required to acquire portable floodlighting as a long term solution for our users needing to train on winter evenings.