The annual meeting was held on 13-15 April and was hosted by Liverpool University. The meeting venue unfortunately had to be moved at the last minute because of difficulties in getting suitable accommodation and venue sorted in Portsmouth. Thanks go to David Copplestone for stepping in at the last minute to arrange a very successful meeting in Liverpool attended by 41 participants.

The Annual COGER Lecture was given this year by Dr. Barry Smith, head of the Environmental Protection Programme at the British Geological Survey. The title of his lecture was: "Depleted Uranium in the environment". In a very interesting and informative lecture, Dr. Smith discussed approaches to assessing the implications of the use of depleted uranium within the context of its military use and explored the questions that are yet to be answered.

Two members of Steering Committee stepped down this year. After six years as Chairman, David Rimmer stepped down to become President of the British Society of Soil Science. I took over as Chairman from David in May of 2004. David will continue as a member of the Steering Committee. Irene Zinger of the Environment Agency has stepped down due to a move to Sweden. Paul McDonald from Westlakes Scientific Consulting has agreed to replace Irene on the Steering Committee.

The Committee have also decided to move to a two year planning cycle to ensure that everyone has access to information on the dates and location for the next two meetings to avoid last minute announcements in the future.

As most people are aware, there have been changes to the way the activities of COGER are financially supported and the committee would like to thank again the current sponsors of COGER: the Food Standards Agency, the Environment Agency and UKAEA.