It gives me great delight to announce that the Merseyside and North Wales Region was declared ‘Region of the Year 2007’ by IMechE HQ. This accolade comes after much hard work by the committee to re-establish itself, engage with our members and align with the IMechE’s vision for the future. I would like to congratulate all committee members (Regional, North Wales Area and Young Members) on this fantastic achievement. I also hope that you have noticed a difference in what we do.

Please take a look at our exciting January – June 2008 programme of events which you will see has been structured to take account of the IMechE’s 4 theme’s of Energy, Environment, Education and Transport, with of course the annual Merseyside and North Wales Engineering Dinner thrown in for good measure. Any additions or amendments to the programme will be advertised on the IMechE Near You website: http://nearyou.imeche.org.uk/ or by contacting the Regional Secretariat MerseyNWalesAdmin@imechenetwork.org

This year’s annual dinner, held jointly with IChemE, is taking place at the Crown Plaza, Chester on Friday 7^th March with Unilever at the principle sponsor. The format for the evening is a short introduction from our sponsor, followed by a 4 course meal, after dinner speech from Geoff Miller (former Derbyshire and England cricketer) finishing with a ‘fun casino’ with an excellent prize for the person winning the most ‘fun money’. Tickets cost £40 for members and £30 for Young Members, with corporate packages for 10 or more people available at a cost of £47.50 per person. The dinner proving to be the highlight of the engineering year and last year reached its largest attendance of over 220 guests. If you don’t want to miss out this year, please fill in and return the application form or email me on merseynwaleschair@imechenetwork.org.

One of the aims for the committee this year is to try and re-establish a database of Regional members who would be willing to act as mentors or sponsors for other members in the Region. If you are interested in giving something back to you profession, by either acting as a mentor or a sponsor (or by getting involved with one of our committees) please let me know by emailing me at the above address.

Finally, our next HTML newsletter will be emailed shortly. The newsletter is distributed to all those who have registered their email address with HQ. If you would like to be included in the next distribution, then could you please ensure that your email address is registered with the subscription and data processing department, subscriptions@imeche.org or 01952 214050.

Yours sincerely

Nikki Barker BEng CEng MIMechE MIGEM

Chairman, Regional Committee