Ecology Building Society Annual General Meeting 2016

In 2016, our AGM and Members’ Meet up was held at Ecology’s offices in Silsden, West Yorkshire. We received lots of positive feedback from our members about the day.

Throughout the day members had opportunities to explore our permaculture gardens and find out more about our eco-built offices.

During our AGM business, there was intense questioning from our members about the way the Society operates and the services we offer. The Directors responded to questions on their area of expertise – here are some of the Q&As.

Voting results:

Overall voting turnout was 15.92% – a slight decrease from last year, and 39% used our online voting service. We’re always trying to get more members involved in voting, if you’re a voting member, please use your democratic power in 2017!

Ecology recently became the first building society to receive the Fair Tax Mark accreditation. After lunch at the AGM members heard from Richard Livings of the Fair Tax Mark who discussed how their campaign on the responsible payment of tax is helping to create a fairer society.

In our Sustainable lending in practice session later in the afternoon members heard stories from our Chris Coates and Jan Maskell from Lancaster Cohousing who are building a greener future.

The final afternoon session, Your Society – Meet the Directors gave members the opportunity to grill our Directors on our 10 year plan in more intimate smaller breakout groups.

We have received lots of positive feedback from members about the day. Feedback from one member: ‘so glad to be a customer of a genuinely ethical company! Thank you for being here for me!’

And, another member commented: ‘[I liked] meeting people with similar values’ and another commented: ‘Enjoyed seeing the gardens and learning about the eco-construction of the building’.

Thank you to everyone who gave feedback on the AGM. We read every form and your suggestions will be used to help us deliver better events in future.