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 2003.

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 68 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 enthusiastic support of this championship. We ourselves ran sprint events at North Weald during the year; regrettably we lost our usual BARC co-promoted event at Lydden due to last minute date changes by the circuit.

Rallying appears to be maintaining its popularity within the club with entries at healthy levels. 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. The Scatter Rallies were run as a mini series with the other Weald clubs and proved popular. Interest in 12-car rallies has been particularly strong with many events fully subscribed on their traditional Friday evening. Interest in Chin’s rally school has waned somewhat recently however he remains keen to encourage new competitors to the sport, so do join in during 2004 if you are interested in competing in rallying.

The club also continued its involvement in co-promoting the multi-venue Rally of Kent, with Bexley Light Car and Maidstone & Mid-Kent Motor Clubs. The event appears to have now found a regular place in the calendar running in mid-March and continues to attract healthy numbers. However, we need to bear in mind that the event is heavily dependant on the significant levels of sponsorship support that it receives from Barretts. Our thanks go in particular to Colin Billings and the organising team for all the effort that they put into making it yet another success.

Our Off-road activities during 2003 were again restricted to the Evening Autotest series that was ably run during the summer months by Clive Cooke. Autotesting appears to be gaining in strength with good entries at most of the events during the summer. The series culminated with an entry of twenty-three competitors in very dusty conditions!

Production Car Trials (PCT) appears to be gaining in popularity with a significant number of club members taking part in events organised by other local clubs. As a consequence we are contemplating organising an event of our own in the near future.

Socially, the club has remained fairly static again during the last year with club nights being reasonably well supported. However, as always we would be happy to see many more of you attending, if only on an occasional basis during the year. I’d like to pass on my sincere thanks to those of you who have taken the trouble to organise events during the last year for the benefit of your fellow members.

As 2004 is our Golden Jubilee year we decided to return to Hadlow Manor in January for our annual awards presentation, as we have arranged a summer ball at Leeds Castle in May this year. As a consequence, we were in the surprising situation where we had to turn away people in the last few weeks from the awards presentation dinner due to us filling the venue to capacity. Hopefully we will be able to repeat this at Leeds Castle next month!

I would like to thank Dawn Travers our Acorn Editor and husband Ralph for their hard work in putting together our excellent monthly magazine. I believe that we are fortunate to have one of the best club magazines of its type and as always it provides great value for the membership fee. A big thank you once again to Gordon and Diana Franks for continuing to turn the printing presses at Leighbridge Farm on a regular basis and producing not only the magazine, but many sets of regs for club events too. Thanks also to Webmaster Ian Crocker and his able assistant Ralph for keeping the club website www.sevenoaksmotorclub.com up to-date with regs and event results etc. For those of you that haven’t looked at it I would recommend that you do, as it contains a wealth of information, including sections on getting started in various forms of motor sport. If occasional controversy and more general comment is of interest, then have a look at our very own chat room discussion forum ‘Fast Talk’; however be warned that the views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the club committee!

Membership of the club has remained fairly constant at around 235 at the end of last year. We still have a significant amount of churn in the membership with new members joining and others falling by the wayside, however this has been the case since the formation of the club 50 years ago.

We are still hopeful that we may eventually be able to regain the use of Crystal Palace as a sprint venue. Hopes have been raised slightly recently by news that responsibility for the park has been transferred from Bromley Council to the office of the London Mayor. As mentioned earlier, we were unfortunately unable to secure use of Lydden last year, for our traditional co-promoted sprint with BARC, due to date problems. However, we managed to secure use of the venue for a round of the MSA Sprint Championship which we co-promoted with Maidstone & Mid-Kent Motor Club over the Easter weekend. Longcross is 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 are still in contact with the owners of Dunsfold Aerodrome, the location used by the BBC Top Gear programme, about possible use of the venue for a sprint; unfortunately, due to current planning permission problems they are reluctant to let us use the venue at the moment. As ever we continue to explore the possibility of running events at alternative venues and your committee appreciate any suggestions that you may have on possible locations.

As you will no doubt already be aware from recent announcements we have a new club president in John Symes. John is a long standing member of the club and acted as Chairman for many a year. He will, I am sure, bring his many years of motor sport experience to bear in helping to promote both the club and our sport.

This year as you are already well aware is the club’s Golden Jubilee year and to celebrate this milestone in the club’s history we have arranged the following special activities for you to participate in:

Financially the club remains in a strong position, 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 2004, our Golden Jubilee Year.