In the strange new Covid world we now live in a number of members of the former Rottingdean Preservation Society gathered in the village hall for a very different AGM.

Socially distanced and grouped in safe household bubbles, doused with hand sanitiser and all wearing either masks or plastic face guards, the membership voted in several important changes during an hour long meeting.

Voted through was a procedural change to our rules which will enable us to collect future votes either by proxy or by post. This will avoid us having to hold meetings when, like now, circumstances prevent members from attending in person due to illness, or valid concerns over personal safety in pandemics like Covid. Who knows what is around the corner and our predecessors couldn’t have predicted the current circumstances in which we now operate.

The other major change was in our name: from today we will now operate as Rottingdean Heritage. This reason for this change was largely to disassociate our charity from the work of the parish council, and to try and clear up some confusion as to who was responsible for what.

We want to focus more on the history and heritage of our village and the buildings we look after (such as The Windmill) and relaunching as RH will help sharpen our message and will hopefully help us to engage more with the younger demographic of our village in the future, where we hope to increase our dwindling membership numbers.