The ninety-sixth Annual General Meeting of Bideford and North Devon Building Society was held on Thursday of last week.

In moving the adoption of the Directors’ Report and Statement of Accounts for the Year ended 31st October 1949, the Chairman (Mr C J Martin) said: “At the end of the previous year the Mortgage assets of the Society amounted to £189, 916 and this has risen, at the 31st October 1949, to £218, 435 – an increase of £28,519. During the past Financial Year a total of £65,290 was advanced on Mortgages, as compared with £61,765 in the previous year, and I would like to mention that a considerably greater sum could have been advanced, but it is the settled policy of your Directors to have full regard to possible future conditions and to make advances based on prudent valuations only.”

“The passage of years inevitably brings losses in our friends and it is with the deepest regret that I have to refer to the loss suffered by the Society, during the past year, by the death of Alderman H A Willett Huxham.”

The report and the Statement of Accounts were duly adopted, following the seconding of the motion by Alderman T Burton, who referred to the sound policy of the Society in again carrying the surplus for the year to the Reserve Fund.

Mr C J Martin, Mr C J Smith and Mr J W Ward, the Directors retiring by rotation, were re-elected and Mr C M D Mountjoy, the Members’ Auditor, was also re-elected.

Tributes to the work of the Officials and Staff during the past year were expressed and a vote of thanks to the Chairman for presiding concluded the meeting.

The full Gazette article is dated 3 February 1950