At the Branch A.G.M. at the end of April, Paul Bangs retired as Branch NBSS Co-Ordinator; his contribution has gone far beyond South and North East Sussex and we owe him much gratitude. He was presented with a framed certificate to mark this gratitude by Branch Chair, Peter Adams, as seen in the picture. This is the tribute he paid to Paul.

The Branch has much to be grateful for to Paul who has been our NBSS coordinator since the system began, presenting statistics which are calculated to discount people’s bias in either direction over favourite or least favoured pubs. His thoroughness in contacting other branches in the early days to find out how they overcame this problem led to his presenting us with options and recommending a way forward which we were pleased to adopt and is still in use today. It is fitting to pay tribute to his efforts, not only on behalf of our branch which helped us become the first branch in the county to have 100% of its pubs surveyed and completed on WhatPub, but in helping other branches too on both WhatPub and with NBSS data. Also at WhatPub’s national inception his work as an ‘average’ branch member grappling with the then new database helped the developers improve its user friendliness and has led to the healthy state our pub database is in today. Paul has never been an ‘average’ branch member, but a dedicated worker for the Campaign who has given so much productive time. In Peter’s eight years as Chair, this is only the third such certificate which has been presented, which clearly demonstrates that he is truly an above average branch member.