South Bucks U3A About Page

is the new name for the Beaconsfield and District branch of the U3A. Founded in 1988, we currently have over 600 members and 37 active study groups. There is a General Meeting held on the third Tuesday afternoon of each month, usually with an invited speaker. This provides a regular opportunity for all members to meet and chat over a cup of tea and biscuits.

The Branch has 37 special interest groups which meet usually on a monthly basis. Full details of these groups may be obtained by selecting the Activities button above. The current membership fee is £20 p.a. plus a £5 joining fee.

If you require information on other U3A branches in Bucks, or neighbouring Counties then the Links button above provides direct links to the appropriate web sites. Click Here or scroll to bottom of page to see the Committee.

If you would like to read the branch's constitution it is available as a PDF file - Click Here to view it.

From the Chairman....

I would like to apologise to our members, but unfortunately as I have been unwell I am not allowed to mix with crowds, and this has prevented me from attending our general meetings and chatting to our members, but I have managed to attend our committee meetings.

I would like to thank all our committee, depleted in numbers as I have mentioned many times before, for all their hard work, and for Alan and Kate in particular for taking my place at the general meetings. I hope to be back with you early next year.

At the risk of repeating myself, and perhaps even boring you, we do have a membership of just over 600 and I find it hard to believe that we still cannot manageto have a full committee because of the lack of volunteers. Our present committee are super, covering very well for the shortage, but we cannot expect them to carry on indefinitely like this.

Our U3A does not run itself, it takes a lot of work to ensure that it does run successfully and we do need additional help.

We have our AGM in May, when some of the committee, myself included, have to stand down, which means that we need YOU to come forward and help, and put yourself forward to stand for our committee.

We now come back to our quorum, which again is repetition from previous newsletters. As you know, the quorum in our constitution is too high and we just cannot achieve that number to be present at our AGM.

The committee have decided, with consultations, that 12.5% would be a fair and realistic number for our quorum. This equates to approximately 75 of our membership which we think we can achieve for our meetings.

There is a separate notice in the newsletter giving the date of a special meeting as the 21st February 2012, which is at the end of our general meeting with a speaker.

We are very unlikely to have a quorum for that meeting, our present constitution states that we need 20% of our membership for that, so if we have not managed our quorum we can adjourn the special meeting for a minimum of 21 days, which would be until our meeting on the 17th April, when the numbers present constitute a quorum. If, as I hope, it can be passed by then, this means that we have our new practical quorum in place for our AGM in May. I am sorry about all this repetition but it is so important for the future of our U3A.

The recruitment consultant asked me "What do you think of voluntary work?" I said" I wouldn't do it if you paid me"

May I, on behalf of myself and the committee, take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2012. I look forward to seeing you at our meetings next year.

Louis Moss