President's Message - April 2021

When I became President of our local institute last year, I chose the theme of Resilience. When I first decided this, it was because we have all faced challenges within the workplace, and I wanted to help our members develop their skills to successfully overcome these challenges.

This theme evolved into helping our members cope during a pandemic and adapting to circumstances that we have not faced before. We successfully moved our whole CPD programme online and by embracing technology in this way we have been able to offer more content than we thought possible. This will be something that will remain part of our education programme, as we recognise that it creates more flexibility and accessibility.

We had a big focus was on our members wellbeing as this became more important than ever before and we tried to be creative with new ideas and events. We did exercise classes, virtual quizzes and our popular July Wellbeing and Christmas Advent events where we encouraged our members to do something everyday that is proven to increase our overall mood and wellbeing.

My fundraising cause of the year was Fabba Theatre Company, although we took a more reserved approach to fundraising this year, we still managed to raise £810 and I would like to thank everyone that donated, liked and shared posts to raise awareness for this cause.

One of my key focuses for this year was to continue to have CPD events targeted specifically at our PFS members. Our collaboration with other institutes as well as the Norfolk PFS has strengthened the amount of CPD events we are able to offer to both our CII and PFS members, as well as bringing new ideas. I am looking forward to continuing to build these relationships for the benefit of our members.

I am still looking to recruit new PFS members to our institute as sadly we have not had any new additions this year. If you would like to know more about what we do and the roles available, please do get in touch laura.blyth@brewin.co.uk.

Another objective for the year was to engage more with our local Chartered Firms. Nicola Holmes joined our local institute whilst working from home and hit the ground running. She took the lead in arranging training courses for Chartered companies in our area, which received great feedback. We are looking at expanding this in the coming year, so keep your eyes peeled.

I have been lucky enough to be given the opportunity to lead our local institute, however, it is absolutely a group effort. I would like to thank every single council member, past and present who have given up their time to make our institute great.

The AGM is a time where we welcome new members, but we also say goodbye to others. Our current Deputy President Richard Howlett made the difficult decision this year to stand down from our Local Institute due to work and personal commitments. I would like to thank him for his contribution and wish him well for the future. I would also like to recognise the other members of our council standing down at our AGM; Sally Bramall, Jess Addison, Katie Burbridge, Kelly Quirke, Rachel Pleasance and Amir Islam. Thank you all for your contribution to our council.

This has been an exciting and rewarding challenge that has taught me a lot about myself and aided my personal development. There is a lot to be gained from joining your local institute and I would encourage other members to become more actively involved where possible.

Thank you once again to everyone for all their support this year.

Your President

Laura Blyth