The Presidents Report

The end of my period of presidential office is now approaching and I will be handing over the reins to Dr Stuart Lyon at the Annual General Meeting, which is to be held on the 11th November at 5.00pm at the Naval Club in London.

My two years of office have passed by with great speed and I am delighted to say that the finances of the Institute are now better placed than when I started my Presidency. Significant cuts in overheads and costs were required to enable us to recover from a period of expenditure in which we made significant investments, particularly in the acquisition of Corrosion House at Leighton Buzzard. We also improved quite radically the Journal, Corrosion Management, which has also become an increasing cost to allow for as part of our important membership services.

The cost savings that the Trustees had to put in place halfway through the last financial year helped us avoid the difficulties of cash flow experienced towards the end of the previous year during which we made a deficit of nearly £20,000. Furthermore, I am delighted to be able to report that these cuts and trimming of budgets, expenditure and overheads, has turned the finances of the Institute round to the tune of almost £25,000. As members will see from the attached summary of accounts we have achieved a surplus of £5,831.00 for the financial year ended in June 2003.

This turn around has been achieved with tremendous help from the Trustees and members of Council as well as the input from Branches and Committees. In particular I would like to recognise the efforts by our new Treasurer, Tony Collins, in conjunction with Brian Weston, who was appointed by the Trustees to help "steady the financial boat". In addition to the financial controls the secretariat of the Institute has been run and organised in a very professional and efficient manner by the Honorary Secretary, Dr Jim Burnell-Gray and I am indebted to him for his support during my period of office. I would also like to pay tribute to the "new contracted out staff" at Corrosion House, in particular, Gill Inwood and more recently Cerri Sweet, who have been able to continue the administration at the offices on significantly reduced hours compared with recent years.

The 2003/2004 financial year shows from it's summary accounts that the financial turn around has been helped, not only by the significant reduction in the overhead costs of staff at Corrosion House but also in the surplus that we achieved on UK Corrosion 2003 at Harrogate and also the surplus achieved at the Surfex 2004 Conference, at Manchester in June this year. The success of UK Corrosion 2003 which followed the financial losses made on the 2001 and 2002 Conferences, was due in no small part to the time and effort put in by the organising committees, particularly members of the Yorkshire and North West Branches who gave up so much of their time to make both events so successful.

With respect to the Surfex Conference, I would like to thank Yvonne Waterman and Chris Pacey-Day of the Oil and Colour Chemists Association (OCCA) for the support and assistance they gave us with running the event at their venue. A further increase in our income has been achieved through the increasing and improving Training and Certification courses, which have been so successfully and professionally run by Argyll and Ruane. The income for this during the current financial year has exceeded £10,000, which shows an increase of over 40% on the previous years income. My thanks for this success goes jointly to Lucia Fullalove, who has taken over as Chairman of the Governing Board and Roger Hudson her immediate predecessor. I would also like to recognise the work done by Dave Griffiths, the Argyll and Ruane Scheme Manager and it's Director, Martin Dawson for the time and effort that they have put into developing and maintaining the standards of all the ICorr Certification schemes they run, both in the UK and on a Worldwide basis.

I would like to say how delighted I was that the Institute was awarded the right by the Science Council to award Chartered Scientist status to our membership which I believe will provide a significant recognition to our Institute as well as providing a useful source of income in the years to come. Our Honorary Secretary, Dr Jim Burnell-Gray, who is himself both a Chartered Scientist and a Chartered Engineer has been the driving force behind this achievement.

I regret that I have not been able to find the time with my own company consultancy assignments to develop the benefits of our commercial organisation Correx Ltd, I hope that over the coming year with Stuart Lyon taking over the Presidential role that I will find more time to introduce a number of fund raising activities through this new commercial organisation which has been set up to separate the commercial activities from our Professional Membership services. As members will be aware the formation of Correx Ltd was a necessary step, not only to undertake fundraising activities but to meet the requirements of the Inland Revenue for the granting of Gift Aid by members not already claiming personal tax relief.

Thanks are also due to Dr Christopher O'Shea, our new Webmaster who has developed the web-site over the past 6 months and the success is reflected in the number of "hits" that our web-site is now receiving. This must be an encouragement, particularly to all of the Sustaining Member Companies who have been supporting the Institute over the past years.

Finally I would like to thank all of the membership and staff for their patience and support that they have given me during my period of office.
David H Deacon
President
2003/2004