Hello everyone, 

A special welcome to Roy Minshall, Richard Nicholson, John Rigby and Susan Herman who have joined our Spring Advanced Driver Course.

Our Spring Course is now extremely busy with nine new Associates. We have been organising ourselves to deal with this fantastic number. I’d like to offer a particular thanks to Observers Andrew Appleton, Chris Bradley and Val Cunningham who have risen to the challenge by each providing observed runs to several Associates during the week rather than on Sunday mornings. This has helped greatly. Our new Associates are very keen and some have even attended on Sunday mornings at the St. Helens Fire Station, not for observed runs, but to listen to short presentations provided by our Lead Observer Mark Hemans.

As our Group Year ends with our AGM on the 6th June I’m very optimistic about its future. We have great teams of Observers and Committee members who have been and continue to develop what we do to ensure our Associates have the best possible experience. This is what we are about as a Group, our Associate focus. We take the view that even an Advanced Test failure can be turned into something positive. If our Associates leave the Group as more confident and skilful drivers than when they first came to the Group then that is a success. A good experience will spread the word about what we do and help us to reach even more people. 

We fully understand that not everyone wants to do an Advanced Driver course. They may just want to improve in some areas of their driving. Drivers often give their cars an MOT. I think of drivers receiving an MOT of their driving. To this end we are very happy to give any of our members an opportunity to have an annual review of their driving, provided by members of our Observer team. This is completely confidential. We are here to help you become the driver you want to be.

Mark Farnworth

Group Chairman