House Martin Conservation UK & Ireland
Annual General Meeting
Sunday 14th December 2025, 5pm by Google Meet
Attendees: Ian Donovan (Chair/Trustee), Ben MacDonald (Trustee), John Feltwell (Trustee), Nigel Matthews, Dean Cornish, Jill Warwick, Karin de Rijick, L Beattie, Peta Sams, Sheila Penfold, Tom Parsons, Helen Schneider, Malcom Burgess, Becky Jones, Bill Grayson, Sian Clare, Kate Spratt, Mary Kidson, Ruby Colley, Sheila MacKenzie, Aneurin Lloyd, Sarah Warren, Ben Ward, Kate, Member (name not available), Duncan Streeter, Sophie Streeter (Minutes),
Apologies: Heather Bland, Alan Harmer, Paul Stevens, Louise Bentley, Mike Priaulx, Martin Tickler, Paul Reynolds
Welcome:
Ian welcomed everyone to the meeting, and gave a brief overview about how the charity was formed, and then introduced some of the committee members present to the membership group, and thanked committee members for their work, and members for joining the AGM.
Chairperson: Year in Review – Ian Donovan
Ian provided an overview of in year work and achievements of the charity, under four main areas: finance & administration, operations, conservation, & rescue and rehabilitation.
Finance/Administration (charity accounts reported separately)
At present we have 570 individual members, and continue to look to increase membership, intermittently using social media to encourage people to join. Charity status and membership gives strength to lobby and push forward, and increase our profile for house martins.
In addition to individual membership, we have 11 House Martin Havens signed up; these are organisations, or public bodies that have house martin colonies nesting on their buildings.
Operations
We now have 9000 members on Facebook, and we work with other groups such as Swift and Swallow SOS, and All Things Swifts who are our main partners on social media. Our profile on Twitter had a slight drop in followers when it moved to become X, the charity joined Bluesky where we now have 291 members, but it is more difficult to use and manage, so out main attention and focus is Facebook.
In year we had a small scale fundraising campaign via Facebook to assist with transporting a house martin casualty to rehab facilities. £60 was raised.
New pages were added to our website this year as we launched two important projects. First was our educational pack, to increase awareness, and to engage the younger generation as we recognise the importance to bring them along with us to carry on into the future to protect house martins. The second was our House Martin Haven page to showcase haven sites.
Conservation
Our charity has been engaged in community activities, a summary was provided for projects both Paul Stevens, our conservation lead, and Becky Jones a conservation committee member, have been involved in and some particular results:
Paul has been working with Peak boxes to develop a better designed house martin tower on his own version, and supported Plumpton college with surveying the house martin colony there, raising awareness, and suppling 12 artificial nest cups, which were funded by Sussex Ornithological Society (SOS). Paul has supplied multiple projects with several hundred cups, mainly in Sussex but also around the wider UK.
Paul has reported that on the large Arundel Town project, the first 2 nest cups were used this year, and also within another village locally after their second year of installation. In another local village, two breeding house martin pairs nested in artificial nest cups, where they had not nested for 10 and 20 years, both using caller systems. There is no end of enquires to Paul regarding nest provisions, which is encouraging.
Paul provided the written report for house martins for SOS again this year. In 2026, SOS will be conducting a house martin survey.
Becky who runs Nest Cup Box has been developing products and trialling methods to attract house martins, for example a house martin decoy.
Community projects included supporting a situation whereby a client who had a productive colony on their property was advised by another group to remove house martin mud nests before their house was treated with fungicide treatment out of season. Becky provided 15 artificial nest cups and all 15 were taken up that year.
Projects for artificial nests included Llangoed Village Hall, 10 cups, Bentley Wood wildlife buffer zone, supporting Alderbury Swifts and House Martins with a variety of orders including bespoke models. Providing Hampshire Swifts with 15 double and 20 single cups, and an Old Post Office in Standon with 8 replacement nests supplied.
Becky also promoted house martins and the charity by attending a Green Day event in Oswestry with Chirs Swift, attending house martin workshops with Black to Nature, and Birds Beyond Borders film in Bristol.
Next year Becky will be continuing trials on house martin decoys, and UV poo stripes to attract house martins to nest sites, and will hopefully be at Birdfair, raising awareness of house martins, and the charity. Becky will also be continuing to provide Hampshire Ornithological Society with nest cups, and also Canterbury District Swifts, where funding from South East water will provide for 30 nest cups.
Local Nature Recovery Strategies continue to be published for England, many of which have house martins as priority species and artificial nest cups as priority measures. Mike Priaulx, our planning lead is making sure comments about house martins are made for the remainder going through consultation.
We have a House Martin Mapper and data analysis lead, Dean Cornish, who joined the committee this year. Just over a year since launching the house martin mapper app, the project has already grown into a powerful resource, thanks entirely to the enthusiasm of our community.
As of 17 November 2025, the Mapper had 301 members who together contributed 950 records of 3,522 nest sites across the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. New nest records continue to be added every week as more people join the project, and existing contributors revisit their local colonies. On behalf of the committee, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has taken the time to observe, record, and share data. Your efforts are building an up-to-date picture of House Martin nesting across the UK and Ireland.
We are now in the process of sharing the House Martin Mapper dataset with Local Environmental Records Centres (LERCs). This means your records will soon be available to ecologists, planning authorities, and conservation professionals. Accurate nest information can help protect existing colonies, guide planning decisions, and ensure that mitigation measures are properly targeted.
This is exactly the impact the Mapper was created to achieve—allowing ordinary observers to contribute directly to the future of this much-loved migratory species.
Rescue and Rehabilitation
The house martin season is always busy for rescue and rehabilitation. Emergency calls and emails to the charity are personally facilitated to get house martins in need of care to rehabbers that accommodate house martins. Calls are received as soon as the birds arrive in the UK till September, with July to September being the busiest period. The charity communicates and works with colleagues from Swift and Swallow SOS whom without we wouldn’t be able to save as many house martins as we do.
In year we developed a funding policy to support rehabilitation of house martins, and a rehabber questionnaire to assess, and advise rehabber care. This follows on from the essential care guide we produced last year, providing a code of practice for quality care, and we continue to encourage rehabilitators who contact us, to adopt the guide, and join our network group. Using the funding policy, public donation were utilised this year to provide £900 to the rehabilitation of house martins.
Trustee Annual Report- Ben MacDonald
The treasurer thanked members who gave their time to the charity and provided financially. A copy of the accounts were shared on screen and an overview was provided, explaining that financially we had another stable year of fundraising to build our platform of impact against the 3 funding pillars; nest site protection and restoration, education, and rescue and rehabilitation.
The accounts shown were as at 31st of March 2025, but the treasurer confirmed that the first tranche of funding for the current FY25/26 cycle was released to good effect, with c£900 going to rehabbers and c£400 to nest cups which you will see in next year’s results.
The treasurer explained that total income was £2206, with restricted funding being funded directly by the trustee committee for overheads and the kind donation from Coreo, whereby after raising the funds for the mapper app, Coreo waived their development fees, a total of £1137.
Unrestricted donations from the wider members, including talk events and stalls, were £859. Of that, £719 was gift aid applicable, raising a further £209 and underlining what a difference gift aid can make to a charity.
Expenses sit at £609 and an increase of c£130 in the year, with the majority being website charges and email due to the larger membership.
In total the balance sheet ended the year at a healthy £4130, which is sufficiently robust to maintain activity for the years ahead and to respond to any unforeseen emergences as we have seen for this season particularly with nest sites.
Questions were invited on the accounts none were raised.
The financial statements, which were also issued to members in the AGM invite were presented for approval and were accepted by the attendees.
The treasurer will submit these to the Charities Commission.
Trustee Annual Report – Ben MacDonald/Ian Donovan
The treasurer invited any questions on the annual report which was also issued to members in the AGM invite. There were no questions on the annual report.
The trustee annual report was presented for approval and was accepted by the attendees.
The treasurer will submit this to the Charities Commission.
Proposed Resolutions – Ian Donovan
No new resolutions were being put through by the chairperson.
Questions to Trustees
Attendees were asked is they had any questions.
The Trustees were asked if the charity was signed up to Climate and Nature Bill and whether it was something we were interested in. The chair confirmed that they were aware of this Bill, and that the charity did support it, and would sign up to it.
The Trustees were asked if we were signed up with Just Giving. The treasurer confirmed that we were not signed up to Just Giving yet, but the charity would look into this and would start to look wider at funding and grants that we might be able to access.
Election of Trustees
In line with the conditions of the constitution, 1 of the trustees (the longest serving) was required to step down. Ben MacDonald, stepped down.
Ben MacDonald was nominated for re-election by Ian Donovan, and Ben was re-elected by a unanimous show of hands.
Closure of AGM
The chair Invited a round of applause for our committee, and all our members and the AGM was formally closed.
Attendees were invited to stay on the call for a presentation by Nigel Matthews. Following the presentation, attendees shared news, advise, and experiences from their own nest sites, or where they were trying to attract house martins.