England – Thames Valley Branch

Profile

The Thames Valley Branch has 291 members, who include: accountants (Chartered and Chartered Certified), barristers, Chartered tax advisors, building and construction consultants, geotechnical consultants, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, mediators, mining consultants, project managers, solicitors, building surveyors, quantity surveyors and valuation surveyors.

The Thames Valley Branch covers the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire.

The branch organises a series of meetings on relevant topics with first class speakers throughout the year. It arranges occasional workshop courses in arbitration and adjudication and runs an active, ongoing CPD programme.

The branch officers are:

Robert Sliwinski
Chairman

Matthew Bastone
Vice-Chairman

David Wilson
Honorary Secretary

Kevin McKee
Honorary Treasurer

Roger Smith
Meetings Secretary

Roland Fuggle
Public Relations Officer

2008 Annual Report by Matthew Bastone, Chairman (ex officio).

During each year we hold seven branch events, five in the Thames Valley area and two in Milton Keynes. Our first meeting of the year, the AGM, was held in March at Beaconsfield Golf Club.

After the formalities of the AGM, our planned event was a talk on the subject of rectification, or quantum meruit. However, due to unavoidable circumstances our speaker was unable to attend on the night and a substitute was required at fairly short notice. In the absence of willing volunteers, the task fell to me to fill the slot and, in what may have been the low-point of the year, I gave a presentation on the judgement of Lord Drummond Young in the (to me) fascinating case of City Inn Ltd v Shepherd Construction Ltd. I say 'presentation' advisedly since this was my first outing with PowerPoint. So the audience had to put up with my fumbling through that too. However, to those unfortunate enough to have had to endure my talk, I can only say that my conclusions about this case have recently been endorsed, rather more elegantly, by an ex-speaker of ours, Jeremy Winter, in a paper recently presented to the Society of Construction Law. I draw some comfort from this, that even our more impromptu efforts to provide decent CPD events to our members have some value.

Our next meeting, in May, signalled a return to an old venue, at the Bull Inn at Bisham. This has proved to be a popular move and attendance at our meetings has shown a noticeable improvement. Another of our committee members, Robert Sliwinski, gave us an excellent talk on the preparation and presentation of a case, directed particularly to adjudication.

For our June meeting at the City Church in Milton Keynes, we were fortunate to secure the return of David Cornes, a branch member and eminent mediator, who came to us with his own very topical subject: is standard privilege enough for the success of mediation or is legislation needed? As always it was a privilege to listen to David on a subject on which he speaks with such authority.

Following the summer recess, we re-assembled at Bisham in September to hear an old friend of mine, Tony Ensom, on the subject of expert evidence in arbitration and adjudication. Our September meetings are not well attended for some reason and this was no exception. Fortunately our Director General, Michael Forbes Smith, helped swell our numbers by visiting us that night and Tony gave us an excellent talk which was much appreciated by the select gathering.

Our October meeting, held in Milton Keynes, was significantly better attended. This was fortunate because once more we had a double bill. We were privileged to be addressed that evening by our President, Teresa Cheng SC. By coincidence, our speaker for that night was Niall Lawless, a branch member and a trustee. Niall spends much of his time in the Far East and his subject for the night was online arbitration and mediation. Our President was, evidently, extremely interested in the subject and played a leading part in the question and answer session afterwards.

In November, back at Bisham, we had the pleasure of hearing from one of our past chairmen, David Gilbert, on the subject of "fifty into one does go, a practical look at consolidating arbitrations". David brought us a rather unusual experience and gave us a fascinating insight into the unexpected dilemmas presented by his ultimately successful attempt to consolidate a large number of nearly identical arbitrations.

Unfortunately, 2009 began as 2008 did, with a cancellation. We were unfortunate in the timing of our February event, due to be held here at Bisham, which coincided with the worst snowfalls in two decades. We had been fortunate to secure His Honour Humphrey Lloyd QC to talk to us on the subject of essential attributes of an arbitrator. Unfortunately due to the weather conditions His Honour decided, quite rightly, that he did not want to drive all the way from the other side of Surrey and we were forced to cancel the meeting at short notice. The good news is that Humphrey has agreed to return and give his talk at some future date.

In addition to our regular events we also held, at the beginning of the year, a series of four adjudication workshops in Stokenchurch. Given the calibre of the co-presenters, Christopher Dancaster and Robert Sliwinski, and the comprehensive nature of the course material, the success of these workshops was assured. We must thank both Chris and Bob for the time and effort they put into making it such a success.

I must speak of my attendance at one further event during the year; Congress, which was held at Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia, in November last year. It was truly a privilege to attend and I thank the committee for allowing me to go. Congress is a unique opportunity for representatives from the branches to see CIArb from a global perspective, more and more important as each year goes by. We in the UK are the 'old guard' and sometimes our interests do not coincide with the need of the Institute to provide global standards of training and qualification. Whilst I do not approve of everything CIArb does, I recognise that we do have to progress or get left behind. Progress is something the Institute has done reluctantly in the past and is, even now, grappling with. Congress is an opportunity for us to put our point of view and to see our position and needs in the wider context of a global organisation. As a result of my attendance at Congress, I can assure you that CIArb is listening and we, the delegates, have left them in no doubt as to where we think they have been going wrong. All in all, it was a very valuable experience.

Finally I must register my sincere thanks to my fellow members of the Thames Valley Branch Committee, for their support and encouragement during this my third and final year in office. I shall be remaining on the committee and shall give my successor all my support during the coming year.

Last Updated: 19 May 2009