How a Stockport allotment society turned an inquorate AGM into a full room

Margaret Ellery has been secretary of Hollins Lane Allotment Society in Stockport since 2022. The society manages 118 plots on land leased from the council, with 141 members once joint tenancies are counted. Its constitution sets a quorum of 20 members for the AGM. In November 2024, 14 came, and the meeting that was meant to agree a plot rent rise could not agree anything at all.

Where the society started

Margaret is a retired school business manager who took a half plot in 2019 and the secretary's job three years later, mainly because nobody else would. The committee has five officers and two site reps, and the society's real work happens in the trading hut on Sunday mornings.

The AGM was the part of the year she dreaded.

Here is how the November 2024 meeting was organised:

• The notice went up on the noticeboard by the gate and in an email to the 96 members whose addresses the society held, 22 days before the meeting, one day over the constitution's 21.
• The accounts were not attached. Members were told they would be "available on the night".
• The agenda item read "Plot rents 2025". The proposed rise, from £42 to £49 a full plot, was not in the notice.
• Nobody knew how many were coming until people arrived at the church hall. At 7:30pm there were 14.

The meeting was adjourned to January. Under the constitution the reconvened meeting needed no quorum, and 17 members voted the rise through. Over the following month Margaret took more than 30 complaints, most of them some version of "nobody told us".

What was actually wrong

Not apathy. Margaret is clear on that.

Allotment holders care a great deal about rents, water and the state of the paths, as anyone who has read the National Allotment Society forums can confirm. The problem was that the notice gave them no reason to come. It did not say what the rent would be, the accounts were not in it, and roughly a third of members never saw it at all because the society had no email address for them. The meeting then ran for two hours and ten minutes, half of it the treasurer reading the accounts aloud, and the 14 who came were not keen to repeat the experience.

The Charity Commission's guidance on charities and meetings (CC48) is written for charities, which Hollins Lane is not, but Margaret found its checklist for notices useful for one reason: it assumes members should be able to decide whether to attend from the notice alone. Hers had not passed that test.

"We'd been telling people there was a meeting and not what it was for. When the notice said the rent was going up by seven pounds and showed exactly why, people turned up to argue about it, which is the whole point."

What Hollins Lane set up in Bitir

The society moved its site announcements and plot rent collection into Bitir in spring 2025, and Margaret planned the November AGM in the same place, following the process in our guide to running a club AGM that makes quorum.

1. A one-page summary of the constitution: 21 clear days' notice, a quorum of 20, voting rights for members with rent paid by 30 September, and no provision for electronic voting.
2. The voting list from the Payments widget, which showed 131 of 141 members paid up at the cut-off. The treasurer chased the other ten, and six paid.
3. One notice on 13 October, 28 days before the meeting, published in the society's channel with the accounts, the chair's report and both resolutions written out in full: the rent rise to £49, with a one-page breakdown of the water and insurance costs behind it, and a constitutional amendment to allow electronic voting.
4. A paper copy posted to the 19 members who had asked for one, so the notice reached every member, not only those with the app.
5. An attendance poll on 27 October with three answers and a seven-day close. Focus reminded each member who had not voted, and Margaret entered the paper members' replies by hand.
6. Written questions collected in the same week, 23 of them, which the treasurer answered in a one-page note before the meeting.
7. An attendance session on the night, with the register taken against the roster as members came in, and the minutes published in the channel five days later.

One decision was contested in committee. The treasurer wanted to read the accounts at the meeting as he always had. Margaret argued that members who had received them a month earlier should spend the time asking about them, and the committee agreed to take all reports as read.

What changed in the numbers

Margaret compared the November 2024 and November 2025 AGMs, held in the same hall on the same weeknight.

The attendance poll mattered more than anything else. On 3 November it showed 26 members coming, which was enough for quorum but only just, so Margaret sent one reminder to the 58 members who had not answered, naming the rent vote. The final count of yeses was 44, and 47 came.

The rent rise passed by 39 votes to five with three abstentions. The constitutional amendment, which needed two thirds of those voting, passed by 41 to three with three abstaining. The two complaints that followed were both about the water breakdown, and both were answered from the note already in the channel.

Rent collection improved too, although Margaret is careful not to credit the AGM alone. With the voting list tied to payment, 137 of 141 members were paid by the end of the year, compared with 124 the year before. Our guide to chasing unpaid membership subs covers the reminder ladder the treasurer now uses.

What Margaret does in Bitir

• Published announcements for site notices, the AGM notice and the minutes, with documents kept in the channel's Library.
• Polls with a closing date for attendance, with Focus reminding members who have not answered.
• Attendance sessions for the AGM register, taken against the member list.
• The Payments widget for plot rents, which doubles as the voting list.
• Role permissions so the treasurer manages payments and the site reps post notices without seeing member contact details.
• Member records holding plot numbers, joint tenants and a "post a paper copy" flag.

What she would tell another society

• Put the actual figure in the notice. "Rents" gets nobody out of the house; "£42 to £49" does.
• Send the accounts with the notice and never read them aloud.
• Ask who is coming two weeks out, while you can still do something about the answer.
• Keep one list, and put the paper members on it too.
• Change the constitution while the room is full.

What's next

The 2026 AGM will be the society's first with electronic voting on circulated resolutions, using an anonymous poll that closes the evening before the meeting, with the result read into the minutes. Margaret also wants the next secretary to inherit the whole process rather than a box file, and is writing it up as a one-page note in the channel.

Related reading: how to run a club AGM that makes quorum, and how community groups run volunteer rotas without a group chat.