{"id":3918,"date":"2026-05-17T12:23:57","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T11:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/?p=3918"},"modified":"2026-05-17T12:23:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T11:23:59","slug":"2026-world-of-widewater-wow-agm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/?p=3918","title":{"rendered":"2026 World of Widewater (WoW) AGM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On 14th May WoW held it’s Annual General meeting at the Lancing Community Hub. It was very well attended with approximately 40 people at the meeting and many thanks to everybody who was able to join us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Chair Person. Gill Purnell kicked off the meeting with an overview of the last year, with particular emphasis on the Widewater drought and the terrific and speedy work Tom Rutland MP and his team, The Environment Agency, Lancing Parish Council and WoW did to solve the problem. Gill also spoke about the ongoing work to keep the pipe inlet to the lagoon clear which is headed Peter Whitton who is an associate to the WoW Committee, and his army of volunteers. The volunteers include some of WoW’s Committee Members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gill Purnell, Chairperson of WoW<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gill’s overview was followed by our Vice Chair Person Paula Baker who spoke about Events WoW held during the year including the Nature\/Flower walk and the quiz at the Longshore. and Paula also read out Jo Procter’s Wildlife report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following on from Paula, WoW’s Treasurer Dave Hoggen delivered his report on WoW’s finances. During the year, we received a total of \u00a3669 from membership fees and donations for which our community group is very grateful. We raised a total of \u00a3210 from events including the WoW Nature Walk and the quiz held at the Longshore. In real terms, WoW made an overall loss in the 2025\/26 year of \u00a3101 but we are not unduly concerned about this because WoW paid out costs of around \u00a3300 in respect of the Mitigation Pipe project and equipment required for the ongoing monitoring of the heath and effectiveness of the new pipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following on from Dave, Marion Hoggen who is the WoW Secretary and also our Membership Secretary delivered her Membership report. We currently have 72 subscription paying members who pay either by Standing Order or by cash. Marion sends regular updates to the members via email but she mentioned that she doesn’t have email addresses for all of the members so she is seeking a way to resolve this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Marion, we then had 2 fabulous speakers, Barrie (Baz) Turner who is a relatively new WoW Committee Member and Peter Whitton who is a very valued associate to our committee. Baz’s speech “Wonder of Widewater” took us through the history of the lagoon in words and photograph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Baz Turner<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Peter’s speech “Avoiding Another Drought” explained how the drought occurred together with ongoing maintenance, and measures which may be necessary to keep the water level healthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following on from our speakers, the AGM concluded with a short Questions & Answers session during which concerns from the floor were raised about the unusually (in recent years) high number of Swans on the lagoon and the added risk this causes to Cygnets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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MP Tom Rutland with Gill at the AGM<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 14th May WoW held it’s Annual General meeting at the Lancing Community Hub. It was very well attended with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3924,"href":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3918\/revisions\/3924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancingwidewater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}