Humberside Geologist no 18

A History of the Hull Geological Society from 1984 to 2025

by Mike Horne FGS

Chapter 2.

Organisation.

The Hull Geological Society was founded in 1888. It became a registered Educational Charity in 1963. The organisation is in the hands of Officers and Committee members who are elected annually. There is usually one main Committee meeting per year in December or January to plan the Annual General Meeting and Programmes for the year. The Secretary is charged with enacting the Committee’s wishes. The Treasurer deals with the finances, receiving the annual subscriptions and preparing the accounts for the Annual General Meeting. The President or Vice-President chairs the meetings when available and may formally represent the Society on occasions.

The Committee alone nominates the President for the forthcoming year and Presidents may serve for up to three years. The Committee usually nominates people for the other roles but any member can also make nominations. The Rules specify that there should be a new Committee member each year. Although the Rules state that there should be five Committee members, some people are co-opted because we never ask anyone to resign. Representatives of Hull Museum, Hull University and the Harker Geological Society are or were invited to Committee meetings. The Committee has the power to co-opt Officers between AGMs if posts fall vacant; this happened recently following the death of our Treasurer Rod Towse.

The Committee used to meet in the home of the Secretary or President, but now the meetings are hosted by the University of Hull. From time to time during the year further short Committee meetings may be held if the Officers request further guidance from the Committee. These might be after an evening lecture, during the lunch break of a field meeting or more recently by e-mail or video conferencing.

The four main Officers (President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary) are considered by the Charity Commission to be the Trustees of the Society. The Secretary acts as the editor-in-chief of the Society’s peer-reviewed journal, Humberside Geologist and oversees the editing by a team of volunteers. Over the years some new named roles have been added to the Committee as required: these are the Website Editor, Publicity Office, Librarian, RIGS Officer, Membership Secretary and Archivist. Occasionally there has been an Assistant Treasurer, who is effectively the Treasurer-elect for a year to learn the role and enable a smooth transfer of the accounts.

The Rules of the Society were rewritten in 1963 with the help of a lawyer and approved by the Charity Committee. They set out the objectives for the Society which cannot be changed. Some of the rules were changed in 2016 to reflect current financial practice. The Society has also introduced some policies and procedures over the years, either because an incident indicated that a decision was needed or to reflect good practice established by other similar organisations. The Society is not a company and has no employees, however the Committee has adopted good practices that might not be legal requirements.

We have not experienced any accidents at our events but in 1999 the Society adopted a Safety Policy which has been amended from time to time. The Society requests that event organisers complete a risk assessment, especially for field meetings. To make this easier for event leaders a series of pro-forma risk assessments were produced by Mike Horne and David Hill in 2016 to cover a variety of standard meetings. A Data Protection Policy was introduced in 1998 following a perceived incident of stalking by a member and to comply with the law (which might not actually apply to an amateur society). A later Procedure outlines how the Society stores, shares and uses the personal data of members. This had to be amended slightly during the COVID pandemic to allow for the release of personal data to the emergency services.

Other short ad hoc decisions have been made over the years, which have become policies, or codified custom and practice. These include our non-approval of the sale of specimens at our public events for personal gain and stipulating that young geologists may not be allowed to attend some field trips and should always be accompanied by a responsible adult (after we lost a teenager on the beach once).

In 2008 the Society was given a large number of books and journals by the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull. Stuart Jones became the HGS Librarian and converted a room at his home to become the Library. These books were not regarded as an asset in the Society’s accounts. Stuart was paid an honorarium and expenses towards the cost of heating and insurance. Paul Richards catalogued them, producing a searchable cross referenced catalogue on CDROM (Richards 2003). The Society received other books from members, Wyke 6^th Form College and some bequests, from John Neale, Ron Harrison and Derek Gobbett for example. However few members actually borrowed the books. When Stuart became ill and needed the space again the books were offered to members and various organisations such as Hull Museums and Hull University. In the end they were donated to the new Natural History Museum in Sheffield, who collected them in 2024.