I would like to thank all those owners who gave their support to me yesterday at our EGM.

It must have been most confusing for people who thought I had resigned after three years as president and then suddenly putting myself forward for election at the last minute.

Two reasons – one was that it became abundantly clear that for the last three years I had been taking on much of the job of an administrator, putting tremendous strain on my wife and me and 95% of the work I was doing could and should have been done by the administrator. Also the constant bombardment of emails (some of which were bordering on hate mail) had to stop.

Secondly I was strongly of the opinion that the urbanisation deserved a choice.

There is now much work for Maria, the administrator and me to do. We have to get the bank details sorted and the six-monthly fees to be invoiced.

We have a new gardener/cleaning company and a pool maintenance company to be engaged and I am going to take this opportunity to write a work schedule for the cleaning company so they know exactly what we expect of them. This is because many owners think the street cleaning has been poor. I shall examine whether we can have a general clean after the market (say on Monday) and a clean concentrating on litter and animal poo on streets, passageways, walkways, etc., midweek.

We will have to have both pools re-grouted before late spring – both of which are under guarantee and we have a capital works programme agreed at the AGM.

My priority, as always, will be to try to maintain a clean, tidy and smart urbanisation – because that enhances the value of our properties.

Finally, it is my hope that we can put differences behind us and make this a friendly community. If anyone would like to join an informal small group of owners to organise events – that would be brilliant. Perhaps we could have a post-New Year lunch at the Chinese (or other nearly restaurant) and a resumption of street parties.