Editors Letter

Incredibly, more than a year has elapsed since I was appointed as APEA Chairman.

This past year has been an incredibly busy one for me in both my business and private life. Recently I have moved both my home and a large part of my business from the leafy surrounds of the south of England, to Barnsley in the north of the country. Having lived my entire life in the south, there have been many culture shocks for me to consider, but overall, I must report that the genuine friendliness and honesty of northern folk has delighted both me and my family and reinforced our opinion that we should have made the move years ago!

Regarding the APEA, I am delighted with the way in which we have progressed throughout the year. When I took on the position of Chairman, we were without any administrative support following Brian Taylor's early retirement as a result of his illness. Without doubt, this difficult period put a huge amount of strain on the Association, but I am pleased to report that with the willing support of council members and other loyal supporters we rode the storm, until Jane Mardell came to our rescue in July last year!

Working with Jane has been an absolute delight. She is efficient, superbly able to work on her own initiative and has a great personality and sense of humour! I am sure that I speak for all when I compliment Jane on the enthusiastic way in which she has approached her appointment as Business Manager. In my opinion, she has taken the bull by the horns, and has succeeded in injecting professionalism into the workings and presentation of the association

The publications committee has been working extremely hard to improve the appearance, layout and content of the Bulletin. I am sure you will agree, that in its new format it is now most professional, and a publication which we can be justifiable proud of. Please keep up your support for the editorial team, and keep your articles and submissions coming.

Throughout last year the APEA re-established and developed it's training programme. The training committee, under the chairmanship of Brian Baker, worked relentlessly to produce new and professionally presented training material. APEA training has been well received within the industry, with many large organisations signing up for bespoke training courses. I must compliment Brian and his colleagues for their diligence in promoting and establishing the association as a professional training provider.

Branch membership is still an area for concern, and I would ask that you give your local branch your full support. Members participation is the very lifeblood of this association, please consider what you can do to help revitalise your branch and encourage the support and attendance of others..

the recent jointly hosted APEA/IFFE exhibition and conference held at the NEC in Birmingham. As an exhibitor and as a representative of the APEA, I found the whole event a resounding success, and it is my opinion that merging with William Reed Publishing was the right move. Exhibitions are all about attracting visitors, and William Reed with their publicity machine working overtime certainly managed to do that! They succeeded in increasing the "foot fall" far beyond that which has been previously achieved by the APEA when hosting its own event. Whether or not it is a principle that we should adopt in the future is a separate issue, and not for debate here, but I genuinely believe it was right this time, and I sincerely hope that all of you who attended found it to be informative and enjoyable.

Without doubt, the 2003 APEA Annual Dinner was a resounding success! This event, which was held in conjunction with the APEA/IFFE Show saw us back at the old and preferred venue of the Metropol Hotel in the grounds of the NEC. This well established and unique event provides the perfect forum for socialising and networking with friends and colleagues, and from what I observed this year we certainly delivered the goods! On behalf of the council, I would like to thank all of you who supported us by sponsoring tables and hope that you will continue to do so at future events.

It just remains for me to thank council members and the countless others amongst you who have given your willing support throughout my period of chairmanship. It has been a great honour to occupy this position and an experience I will cherish long into the future.

Tony Jenner (Chairman)

At last Spring is in the air and no doubt all of you will now be busy making plans for the summer... myself included.

Since my last update the APEA Council and members have been busy at the International Forecourt and Fuel Exhibition at the NEC in March. This was a busy show with the APEAcontributing speakers to ‘The Platform’.

The APEAstand, situated next to ‘The Platform’, was kept busy with alot of interest from members and nonmembers. I received positive feedback from visitors in respect of the activities and services of the APEA and interest as to how they could become further involved with the APEA.

I am grateful to all the APEAmembers that helped out on the stand, your help and expertise were invaluable.

To compliment the exhibition the APEA held its’ annual dinner at the Hilton Metropole at the NEC on 5th March.

The APEAdinner was well attended with over 360 people and by the reports I have had back, a good time was had by all (well those that can remember anyway!).

I would like to thank those of you that have sent kind thankyou letters and emails to me, these are very much appreciated.

So onto other matters now:

Membership

To date there are 930 APEAmembers with payments still arriving for renewal payments.

You can find new members to the APEA for February and March on page 8, some of these generated from the recent IFFE at the NEC.

I am keen to keep the database up to date so please let me have any changes to your contact details. This will also ensure you receive any correspondence from me.

AGM

The AGM was held on 12th May and therefore too late to be covered in this issue of The Bulletin. There will be a full report in the September issue and the minutes can be found on our website.

Website

I am now keeping a close eye on the website so that it is continually updated. Please let me know if you have any interesting news items that you would like to include on the site. As I mentioned in the last issue these can be submitted directly to the website and I will check them for suitability.

Bulletin

Thank you to all of you that have contributed to this issue of The Bulletin, please contact our Editor if you have any articles or letters for the next issue and he will forward them onto me. His contact details can be found on page 3 of this issue. Please also note that any advertising issues should be directed to me in future.

Yearbook

Thank you to all of you that returned your Advertising/Registration forms so promptly. I am now typesetting the 2004 Yearbook, so if any of you have not replied, please do so by the end of June if you wish to have your details included. As usual all corporate members are entitled to a free Classified entry in the Yearbook but unless I receive your registration form your company details will not be included.

Training

There is a booking form enclosed with this issue of The Bulletin to make it easier for those of you interested in booking APEATraining Courses. Course dates are listed on page 57 and course descriptions on page 59. Please contact our Training Chairman if you wish to make a booking.

General Assistance

Finally if any of you need any assistance with industry matters, please do not hesitate to contact me on 01799 502929 and I will endeavor to help.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Jane