As Chairman of Sevenoaks and District Motor Club, I’d like to welcome you to this year’s AGM and a brief look back at our activities during 2002.
I am pleased to report that the club continues to flourish with many of our members taking part in just about every form of motor sport imaginable. We again ran a full calendar of events from many branches of the sport including Sprints, a Road Rally, a Stage Rally, co-promotion of the Rally of Kent, a series of 12-Car and Scatter Rallies and our Summer Autotest series.
Our major club championship, The Marketing Machine Speed League was again well supported with 67 members scoring points in the 16 rounds. This year the championship was sewn up before the final round, however the remaining award winning places were not decided until the last event. Our thanks go once again to Ric Lee and the Marketing Machine for their continued enthusiastic support of this championship. We ourselves ran a total of three sprint events during the year, one a co-promoted event with the BARC at Lydden and two others at North Weald.
Rallying appears to be maintaining its popularity within the club with entries at healthy levels compared to more recent years. As well as running our very successful Kent Road and Spotted Dick & Custard Stage Rallies, the club also ran a series of well-supported Scatter and 12-car rallies during the winter months. Disappointingly interest in Chin’s now infamous rally school appears to be waning somewhat recently, but we are still getting reasonable numbers of novices out competing on events.
The club also continued its involvement in co-promoting the multi-venue Rally of Kent, with Bexley and Maidstone Motor Clubs. Disappointingly the event had to be postponed from its original date last year. However it has hopefully found a regular place in the calendar, as it ran earlier this year as a one-day event in mid-March. Our thanks go in particular to Colin Billings and Neil Brooks-Johnson for all the effort that they put into making it yet another success.
Our Off-road activities during 2002 were restricted to the Evening Autotest series that was ably run during the summer months by Clive Cooke. We will again be promoting motor sport to our younger members this year by giving free entries to the under-21s.
Socially, the club has remained fairly static during the last year with club nights being reasonably well supported. However, there’s always room for a few new faces! I’d also like to pass on my thanks to those of you who have organised events during the last year to keep us amused on club nights.
The Dinner & Dance at Leeds Castle in February was disappointingly down on numbers when compared with the previous year and ran at a loss. The proceeds from the raffle that was held, totalling £276, were donated to the Hospice in the Weald, our chosen charity this year. I would like to thank everyone who contributed for their generosity on the night.
Our Acorn Editor, Dawn Travers, has settled into the editorial role really well and I’m sure that you will agree with me that she is producing an excellent magazine for us all to enjoy each month. Thanks also to husband Ralph for his assistance with putting Acorn on the web too. A big thank you should also go to Gordon and Diana Franks for continuing to turn the printing presses at Leighbridge Farm on a regular basis and produce not only the magazine, but many sets of regs for club events too. Our website continues to gain in popularity thanks to the innovation of our Webmaster Ian Crocker. However, I’m less convinced about the discussion forum ‘Fast Talk’, as it seems to be monopolised by a few of our more vocal members!
Membership of the club fell back to around 230 at the end of last year. This was due, as expected, to the high proportion of lapses that we get and the absence of a high profile event to draw high numbers of new members in.
Despite thoughts that we might be able to regain use of Crystal Palace again as a sprint venue, following its conversion into a Victorian themed park, this now looks unlikely for the foreseeable future. Until there is a change in the park management we are thought unlikely to be allowed to return. We were unfortunately unable to secure the use of Lydden this year, for our traditional co-promoted sprint with BARC, due to date problems. However, we hope to get this event back on the calendar for next year. Longcross is now in the hands of a development company, but it appears that we may be able to continue using the venue for some time to come whilst the necessary planning applications for re-development of the site are made. We have also approached the owners of Dunsfold Aerodrome, the location used by the BBC Top Gear programme, to use the venue for a sprint. Unfortunately, due to current planning permission problems they are reluctant to let us use the venue at the moment. Hopefully we may be able to get a date there in 2004.
The search for a new venue to run a high-profile club event takes on a greater significance soon with the forthcoming Golden Jubilee of the club in 2004. The committee have been discussing suitable ways of celebrating this milestone in the club’s history and are, as ever, open to suggestions from everyone in the club. We have established a sub-committee to ensure that the events that we run during our Jubilee year reflect the importance of this milestone in the club’s history. We have already booked Leeds Castle for a Summer Ball, which will take place on Saturday 22nd May. We are currently considering many different ideas, however we aim to carry the jubilee theme throughout next year and all the awards presented will reflect that. Having considered the current net worth of the club, the sub-committee have proposed a budget of up to £8,000 that will be spent on promoting and running events during the jubilee year (i.e. around 20% of the net worth).
Financially the club is strong, and should remain so for few years to come with prudent management by Neil Brooks-Johnson and your committee. In closing I would like to thank all of those, committee members, organisers, marshals and competitors who have contributed to keep Sevenoaks & District Motor Club the strong and successful club that it is. Have a great year’s motor sport in 2003.

Colin Rodger, Chairman