For most of the people attending the annual conference of the National Association of Memorial Masons (NAMM) in Edinburgh in September it was their first opportunity to meet their new communications officer, David Glover, appointed just a fortnight before the conference (see NSS September issue).

NAMM has been without a chief executive officer since Barri Stirrup was made redundant last year, but David Glover says he is not filling that position. Rather, he will be out and about meeting the members, recruiting new members and trying to re-establish regional meetings of NAMM.

He says his brief is to improve communications with the members and other memorial masons and those who memorial masons work with, namely burial and cremation authorities and the bereaved.

There was in fact a resolution put before the annual meeting in Edinburgh that NAMM should go back to having a national executive officer, but President Mary Fairbairn of Abercorn Memorials, in whose home city the conference was being held, said NAMM had felt it was more appropriate to have a national communications officer.

Mary handed on the Presidency of NAMM on to Jenny Gregson of J Child & Son at the end of the conference.

The conference consisted of the annual general meeting and an open debate. By next year David Glover wants to get it back to what it used to be, with business sessions and an associated trade exhibition. NAMM are once again looking at Telford, where they have held previous conferences and exhibitions.

The open forum in Edinburgh centred around the British Register of Accredited Memorial Masons (BRAMM), but it was a friendlier debate than it has been for some time when the subject is raised.

The Register is being developed by NAMM, but with membership open to all memorial masons. The idea of the Register is to introduce standards to the fixing of memorials so they do not fail when they are subjected to the \'topple test\'. The test has resulted in thousands of memorials being laid flat or having yellow bags put over them as a warning that they are unsafe in the past five years.

The Register is designed to be used by burial and cremation authorities as a guarantee that the people on it have been trained and tested in the appropriate fixing of memorials.

Questions remain about the register and they were aired again at the NAMM conference: particularly who will police it and whether masons will still feel the need to belong to NAMM when they are members of BRAMM.

There was a resolution put before the AGM that, contrary to a resolution carried last year, it should not be compulsory for NAMM members to be on the BRAMM. However, the motion was defeated.

It was felt it gave a stronger message both about the importance of BRAMM and the standards maintained by NAMM members if BRAMM was a requirement of NAMM membership.

BRAMM will be administered by a board that is separate from NAMM. It includes NAMM members, but will also include representatives of burial and cremation authorities. Newly elected President Jenny Gregson said it was a great opportunity for memorial masons to be heard by the authorities. "We will be sitting down with cemetery representatives on this board as equals," she said.