The Guild Master - Peter Niblett, supported by the Vice-Master - Andy Ingram, Hon. Gen. Secretary - Alex Blissett, Hon. Gen. Treasurer - Robin Milford and Minute Secretary - Tony Smith, opened the meeting at 10.16 a.m., welcomed those present, especially new and returning members, and Barry Fry said a prayer.
The other members attending were Rachael Barber (Immediate Past Master), Martin Barnes (Belfry Stewardship), Lizzie Colliss (Report Editor), John Croft (Winchester Exec Rep.), Martin Daniels (Peal Recorder), Anne Deegan (IoW Sec.), Margaret Downer (IoW Exec Rep.), Barry Fry (BRF Trustee), Lucy Hopkins Till (Andover Exec Rep.), Mike Hopkins Till (CC Rep.), Sallie-Louise Ingram (C&S Sec.), Pete Jordan (Striking Competitions), Stephen Lutener (Basingstoke Exec Rep.), David Mattingley (BRF Trustee), Kaye Mitchell (C&S Exec Rep.), Micki Nadal (Winchester Sec.), Viv Nobbs (PRO), Bruce Purvis (Librarian & Archivist), Hugh Routh (A&P Sec. proxy), Mo Routh (A&P Exec Rep. proxy), Margaret Smith (Basingstoke Sec.) and Judy Sparling (Education).
Apologies for absence had been received from Kathryn Carter, Michael Church, Kirsten Cousens, Rodolph de Salis and Greg Jordan.
The Hon. Gen. Secretary read the following names while members stood in memory and Barry Fry said a prayer.
| Phil Clarke | St. John, Bournemouth | |
| David Poulton | Christchurch | |
| Terry Tarrant (LM) | Andover | |
| Philip Belgeonne | formerly of Hursley (died April 2024) | |
| Don Blissett | formerly of Sherborne St. John | |
| Canon Norman Chatfield | formerly of Bishop’s Waltham | |
| Ted Duff | formerly of Brading and Arreton | |
| Mike Halsey | formerly of St. John, Jersey |
Following a correction, the minutes of the meeting held on 14th March 2025 were proposed by David Mattingley, seconded by Pete Jordan, approved nem. con. and signed by the Master as a true record.
There were no matters arising.
The Master read a statement (see Annex). In answer to a question from Viv Nobbs, the Master said that an appointed Safeguarding Officer would not be an employee. In answer to a question from Mo Routh, the Master said that the appointment would have to be confirmed at the next AGM and then, under the current rules, would last until the end of the triennium. The Master’s proposal that the task of appointing of a new Safeguarding Officer be delegated to the Principal Officers with the ability to co-opt members to aid in the selection process was seconded by Bruce Purvis and passed nem. con.
Central Council Representatives. There were no candidates.
Independent Examiner. Chris Ford proposed by Tony Smith, seconded by Alex Blissett.
Communications Committee. There were no candidates. The Master encouraged district representatives to seek members who could help.
Christine McCallion (Hursley).
Peal Recorder - Nil.
Librarian and Archivist - £300.
Report Editor - £50.
Public Relations Officer - £100.
Education Committee - Nil.
Striking Competitions Committee - £295.
Belfry Stewardship Committee - Nil.
Communications Committee - £480.
Youth Ringing Committee - £1,805.
The bids were approved en bloc on the proposition of Pete Jordan, seconded by Bruce Purvis.
A Budget for 2026 prepared by the Hon. Gen. Treasurer had been circulated. Robin said the biggest increase in expenditure was due to the Central Council affiliation fee rising from 40 pence to £1 per member. The budget was approved on the proposition of David Mattingley, seconded by Lizzie Colliss.
The Hon. Gen. Secretary said that an updated grant application form had been prepared. Two new applications had been received: from All Saints, Dogmersfield augmenting from 3 to 6 at a cost of £77,984; and a supplementary application from St. Peter, Ropley. On behalf of the Trustees, Alex proposed grants of £8,000 to Dogmersfield and £2,000 to Ropley, which were seconded by John Croft and agreed nem. con.
In answer to a question from Viv Nobbs, David Mattingley said that the Brading project no longer included augmentation to ten and the Trustees were seeking further information.
The Master proposed and the Hon. Gen. Secretary seconded,
that the Guild Privacy Policy should be updated. A document explaining the rationale and specific changes had been distributed; and
that the production and publication of a Legitimate Interest Assessment be delegated to the principal officers (Master, Vice-Master, Hon. General Secretary and Hon. General Treasurer).
In reply to a question from Micki Nadal, the Master said that emails regarding historic Safeguarding incidents would be transferred to, and securely stored by, the diocesan Safeguarding teams. In reply to a question from David Mattingley, the Master said the published policy would include revision information. The proposals were agreed nem. con.
| 10th January 2026 | Alton & Petersfield ADM - St. Lawrence, Alton | |
| Andover ADM - Highclere | ||
| 17th January 2026 | Basingstoke ADM - Rotherwick | |
| 24th January 2026 | Christchurch & Southampton ADM - Ringwood | |
| 7th February 2026 | Portsmouth ADM - Alverstoke | |
| 14th February 2026 | Winchester ADM - Winchester Cathedral | |
| 21st February 2026 | Isle of Wight ADM - Newchurch | |
| 21st March 2026 | Executive Committee Meeting | |
| 18th April 2026 | SEECON Youth Striking Contest - W&P | |
| 16th May 2026 | Inter-Tower 6-bell striking competition - A&P District | |
| 13th June 2026 | Inter-District 8-bell striking competition - C&S District | |
| AGM - Christchurch & Southampton District | ||
| 4th July 2026 | RWNYC - Nottingham | |
| 12th September 2026 | Essex Trophy - Sussex County Association | |
| 19th September 2026 | Inter-Tower 8-bell striking competition - A&P District | |
| 21st November 2026 | Executive Committee Meeting |
Martin Daniels was planning to publish compliant W&P peals on the Guild website, starting with those rung after 1st January 2025, and updated weekly by the Peal Recorder.
David Mattingley advertised a 2026 Calendar which had been designed by a young Portsmouth District ringer for sale at £10 in aid of Fareham bells.
Viv Nobbs sought judges for the Isle of Wight 6-bell striking competitions on Saturday 29th November.
There being no further business, the Master closed the meeting at 11.08 a.m.
As some of you may already know, Adam Greenley has decided to step down from the post of Guild Safeguarding officer. I would like to make it clear that it is his decision and that the Guild principal officers have expressed their regret that he has felt it necessary. He would like you to know the reasons for his decision and so I will give you an account of the events that have taken place since Adam’s election at last June’s AGM. I will then outline the steps that the principal officers would like to take next, namely to appoint a new Safeguarding Officer, to improve the way we handle Safeguarding Data and to revise the Guild’s Privacy Policies. Once we have a new Safeguarding Officer we plan to update the existing Safeguarding Policy, something that both Adam and his predecessor were hoping to do.
At the AGM in June we were in the slightly unusual position of having a contested election for Safeguarding Officer. On the day following the AGM Daniel Graham sent a gracious email to the WIN-PORT mailing list that wished Adam well in the post. However since then he has made several complaints about the election and about actions subsequently taken by Adam and the principal officers. Dan has expressed a concern that I will use this statement to spin negatively against him. He is not here to give his account so I will try to give an unbiased statement of the facts and state Dan’s opinions where they differ from ours.
In the week following the AGM I received two emails from people who had not been at the meeting itself, stating that they had heard that the election had been manipulated and this was then followed by allegations from Dan himself. They included pressure being put on people to vote against him, there being a suspiciously large number of attendees at the meeting, people (including me) saying negative things about him at the meeting and miscounting of the votes cast. We replied saying that we had seen nothing untoward happening.
Dan has also said that we should not even have had an election and criticised me for not having intervened at the meeting to stop it. His reasons were:
There is a paragraph on page 5 of the Guild’s safeguarding policy that says that the Guild will appoint its safeguarding officer using a safer recruitment process. It does not mention elections.
The Central Council safeguarding guidance to societies uses the word “appoint” rather than “elect”
Safer recruitment includes checks on the suitability of candidates before they can be considered, to avoid an inappropriate person being chosen as could happen with a completely open election.
Many other Guilds appoint rather than elect their safeguarding officer.
My response is that Guild rule 5 requires us to hold an election for Safeguarding officer every three years. To mitigate the risk we had done checks on the two candidates. However it is true that we had not published a formal Safer Recruitment process and it is true that many Guilds appoint rather than elect.
A more serious situation unfolded during the handover of the Guild’s safeguarding email account safeguarding@wpbells.org. When Adam gained access to the account he found that all the email history had been deleted, both incoming and outgoing. The Guild has no safeguarding case management system of its own and we were concerned that some of the emails might be needed to assist in future investigations including those from the police. Accidental or unlawful destruction of such data amounts to a Data Breach as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office (the ICO) and we are obliged to report data breaches to the ICO if they are not contained within 72 hours. To contain the breach we asked our email provider to recover the deleted emails. We could do this as the account in question is owned by the Guild itself.
I should make it clear that our reason for recovering the emails was simply to preserve them should they be needed in the future. I can confirm that the email account has only been made accessible to Adam and he has assured me that he has not forwarded any of them or disclosed their contents to any third party.
After we had recovered the account, it became clear than Dan had taken his own copy of the emails prior to deleting them. This was because he also recognised that they should be preserved. In our view the holding of sensitive data by someone who is no longer the Safeguarding Officer is itself a data breach. We asked him to delete his copy, which he has done.
We have a fundamental difference of opinion with Dan. His view is that the people sending confidential emails to safeguarding@wpbells.org prior to the AGM thought that they were sending them to him and that they would need to give consent for them to be seen by anyone else. Our argument is that the Guild has a legitimate interest (namely safeguarding) in retaining the emails. This is to maintain the integrity and continuity of our Safeguarding process regardless of who the Safeguarding Officer happens to be. We take the view that most people would have a reasonable expectation that an email address like this would be associated with the role not the person. In addition the new Data Use and Access Act has strengthened the ability of organisations to handle safeguarding-related data without requiring consent.
Dan does not accept our view and has reported our recovery of the emails as a Data Breach to the ICO. I have suggested to him that, rather than continuing an argument about the legal situation we both wait for clarification from them.
Dan has called for the resignation of all the principal officers over the way we have handled this. As well as reporting us to the ICO he has raised a complaint about the election process to the two Bishops, the Archbishop of York and the Parliamentary under-secretary of State for Faith, Communities and Resettlement. My understanding is that they have declined to intervene telling him to raise his concerns with the Guild.
Dan has asked me to let you know that he has serious Safeguarding concerns with the Guild’s behaviour. He wants us to know that all he has been trying to do is what is right for Guild members and what is right overall.
Adam would like me to share his reasons for resignation. I will quote directly from his resignation letter [This section has been removed for legal reasons]
This series of events risks undermining trust in our Safeguarding processes and has highlighted some areas where we need to make improvements. I will now discuss the steps we would like to take.
The way that we handle confidential safeguarding data needs improvement. I have talked to the Diocesan Safeguarding teams about putting a formal data sharing process and agreement in place. Confidential safeguarding emails will be forwarded to the appropriate diocesan team where they can be stored securely. They will be deleted from our email accounts although we will retain a log of what was sent.
This will entail an update to the Guild’s Privacy Policy. This is an item later on in today’s agenda.
I have also talked to the Diocesan teams about how to replace Adam. In the short term I will act as interim Safeguarding Officer, but we would like to appoint a new one in the next few months, under the provisions of the Guild’s Rule 4. To address the concerns raised by Dan we would like to use the Church of England’s Safer Recruitment process. What this means is:
We will advertise the vacancy to all Guild members, providing a job description and explaining how the recruitment process will operate.
Members who are interested will be asked to provide a brief personal statement, a confidential declaration and two references.
Applicants will be interviewed, even if there is only one. The interview panel will consist of two of the principal officers and another member of the Guild who isn’t an officer.
If the panel can find someone who is suitable and prepared to do the job, we will ask for a DBS check and if that is satisfactory we will appoint the person to the post.
The appointment will be confirmed at the next AGM, as required by Guild Rule 5.
We can also consider changing the Guild rules so that in the future the position becomes an appointed rather than an elected one.
I am therefore asking you as the Executive Committee to delegate the task of appointing of a new Safeguarding Officer to the Principal Officers and to give them ability to co-opt members to aid in the selection process.