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Important Information – Event Cancellation

It is with huge regret that we have taken the decision to postpone the Member Event which was due to take place on Thursday 19th March at the Tower of London.  We were all really looking forward to the event, to meeting the Members and having a great day networking and discussing hot topics.  However in light of the Government’s announcement regarding COVID 19 late Monday afternoon, we have been left with no alternative other than to postpone the event.

We are working with the venue to look at rescheduling the event and will update you as soon as we can.

In the meantime we will be in contact regarding the AGM as we hope that we can still proceed with this by using proxy votes and you as a Member can still raise any issues or queries which we can then answer online or via the AIM website.

Our thoughts are obviously with all our Members at present but thank you for your continued support of AIM and the team at this testing time.

If you have any queries regarding the event please contact [email protected]

 

Manager’s Travels

How are we all doing?

It continues to be a very busy season for AIM with many of you renewing at this time.  I hope that all your businesses and activities are continuing very well, despite more inclement weather than we experienced last summer.  Exams are over (as a mother of a GCSE student this year, I am breathing a sigh of relief!) and the summer stretches out ahead of us, with residential visits and summer camps.  As Members you provide a tremendous array of activities!  I have been lucky to try some of these for the first time recently, more below.

What’s been happening over the past few months? 

We had a wonderful Member event held at Lord’s Cricket Ground in March, followed by the AIM AGM and it was great to see so many of you there.  I hope that you found the day worthwhile.  Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback.  This really helps us to plan our AIM events.  If you have any suggestions for future member events, please let us know we are always interested in your suggestions for locations and speakers. 

What have I as Manager been up to? 

I am very much enjoying my visits to see as many of you as possible, covering lots of different areas of the UK.  My recent visits have included trying caving in the Mendip Hills at Mendip Outdoors which was great fun; visiting Scotland to see the Actual Reality Trust at Ardentinny, via a lovely ferry across to Dunoon, and then on to Ardmay at the top of Loch Long, both of which had stunning sites and beautiful scenery; and meeting up with Xplore and Klub Group in Stowmarket and seeing their beautiful woodland bush craft areas.  I was sorely tempted to don a wetsuit and swim in the lake at Waterland Gear (next time!) and I had a super walk around the historic house and site at Sealyham in Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire.  I also had my first attempt at stand up paddle boarding with SUP Bristol, managing not only not to fall in, but successfully stand up paddling along the river in Bristol.  Thank you all for making me feel so very welcome at these visits and for your time in showing me round. 

James and I attended the Association of British Climbing Walls (ABC) two day conference in Sheffield at the end of June and met many of our current Members and hopefully some new ones too!   So many of our enquiries come from recommendations- thank you for those.  The conference was very well attended and a great event.

What’s to come over the next few months?

I’m off to the North West at the end of July then Wales and Scotland in October.  We have a Member event in Okehampton on the 7th October – details to follow but please let Cathy know if you would like to attend on [email protected].

As always, the team is here to help you with queries and any issues.  Please do get in touch if we can help you at all.  I’d be delighted to come and say hello so do let me know if you would like me to come and see you as well.

 

 

Data file

GDPR – Love it or Loathe it

At our member event recently in Plas Y Brenin we heard from Ron Ruston at Kennedy’s Law who gave us a light hearted talk on GDPR and what organisations need to know about the new regulations.

There were some excellent points which came out of the discussions and many members asked us to share the slides so they could use these when they got back to their place of work.

In brief what you need to know is:-

GDPR comes in to force on 25th May 2018 and will build on the current Data Protection Regulations 1998

What does it mean?

It means you have to manage and protect personal data that you hold

Why do we need to comply?

  1. To avoid potentially heavy fines from the Data Commissioner
  2. To reduce risk of legal action from the individuals in the event of unauthorised use
GDPR-Presentation-March-2018

If you are interested in finding out more about our member events, either to present or to attend, please email [email protected]