How far can ten quid go?

Yesterday we held our Annual General Meeting in the Bradbury Works meeting room. As a community interest company limited by guarantee, we hold an AGM every year. Certain things need to be done at the AGM. The audited accounts for the previous year need to be approved by HCD’s members. The auditors need to approved. The annual report too. Finally, the new General Council members need to be approved. So it’s important (if a bit boring) stuff that needs to be done at our AGM.

Our annual report is available on this website. We call it an Impact Report. It is an easy read and is filled with good pictures.

The meeting was led by our Chair, Rod Campbell Taylor, who introduced and thanked the staff, and then handed the meeting over to Dr. Simon Dancey, our CEO. Simon gave a brief overview of the work we did over the previous year up to March 2025 before asking the managers of each section to give a brief overview of their team’s work.

Leah, from the property team chatted about the occupancy rates we have achieved. This is important because the rents we receive pay for 80% of our operations. Bekele and Anja also talked about the important work they did promoting skills & training, and community & place.

Douglas introduced the 10 quid game where Rod was given a tenner and asked to buy Anja’s nice hat. Anja used the 10 quid to buy Simon’s daughter’s sunglasses (a real bargain!). Simon chose to buy Leah’s mobile phone. Leah then Bought Victor’s trainers. Douglas quickly snatched back the tenner from Victor before he spent on something, or take his trainers off. Everyone returned the items they had “bought”, so the trauma of losing much beloved possessions was limited.

That well-travelled £10 produced £40 worth of value in our local “economy” in less than 2 minutes. The moral of this game was to show how value multiplies when it’s kept in a local economy and local transactions are supported.

This, Douglas asserted, was the true purpose of enterprise support at HCD. The facilitation of a thriving local economy.

There was much debate that followed on other matters. All the necessary decisions were made before we retired to the deck on the first floor. To eat locally sourced food and drink bought from our tenants.