I am honoured to have been elected to be the President of the Canterbury Justices of the Peace Association. I follow in the footsteps of people who have set a high standard and I will try my best to maintain that.

We have an energetic and hardworking Council and I look forward to working with them.

I wish to sincerely thank Bob Macgregor for his wise and sage leadership over the past two years. Even through personal health issues Bob led the Council extremely well and we should all be appreciative of his contribution.

We are leading into a very busy year and it will require all of us to help the two organising Committees to ensure that our National Conference and 100th celebration are events that our colleagues will see as a bench mark for future events.

Congratulations to Graeme Barber on his election as Vice President and we welcome Neville Brown on to the Council, I hope that he finds the experience as rewarding and satisfying as I do.

I attended the training in Culverden which was attended by a very enthusiastic group of Justices. We have been very successful encouraging Justices to complete the Accreditation Training and we are currently sitting around 35% of our members being accredited. That still leaves the target a fair way into the distance. We have certainly done our part in providing a number of training opportunities so we need to look at how we can convince those yet to be accredited it is a necessity. One of the ways that came up at the AGM is for those that have completed the accreditation to seek out someone who hasn’t and convince them to attend a training session, which would really get us up in the percentages.

I have to say I was a little disappointed to so few at our AGM. Given the numbers at Training I think we need to try and encourage more to attend the AGM.

If there is any matter you need advice or information on please do not hesitate to contact myself or any member of the Council.

I would like to wish all our members a very Merry Xmas and a happy New Year. Enjoy time with your families and most of all stay safe and I look forward to catching up next year.

Regards

BJ