Your money and how we spend it

A formal annual return is made to the Charity Commission each year, for the year to 1 April. Click here to see the Annual Report and click here to see Statement of Accounts for the most recent year, to April 2018.

That statement shows that we ended the year with £8,754.50 in cash in the bank. £250 of this was reserved for an organ repair inspection and the rest is kept in an unrestricted general fund. To this we were able to add £656 in Gift Aid – making a net total raised by the end of our first financial year of £9,410.50. It is the Trustees’ policy to retain a reserve of 10% or £2,000 (whichever is the higher) of total unrestricted funds for unexpected calls on funds. The rest can be spent in line with our charitable purposes (see here for more on this).

For the year to April 2018 a total of £11,479 was raised from events run in the village, the sale of Christmas Cards and some additional small donations. From this £2,349 was spent on expenses directly connected with putting these events on. A further £376 was expended on communications support – such as printing of the regular updates.

These costs are significantly understated because so much time and, sometimes, other resources are donated free of charge. For example – all photography, copy writing, editing and setting are provided free of charge, as is all distribution. And this applies to all the luscious food provided over all our events – all prepared by local people. We actively encourage everyone to claim back the ‘material’ costs they put in but their time is always given freely.

For this first year we concentrated on raising funds and supporting the Church Council to get some very urgent repairs done – all of which were paid for out of their dwindling Fabric Account. From now on all repairs, aside of day to day maintenance, will be covered by fundraising from our local community (led by HCCF and by the regular donations from the Friends scheme) and grants (led by the Church Council). For information on the Friends scheme please contact Alicia Stolliday (stolliday@btinternet.com).

In the coming year we expect our funds to be provided to the Church Council for their agreed expenditure. The first amount will be for £2,000 towards the costs of very immediate and urgent repairs to parts of the Tower, completed in September 2018. We have also set aside funds to contribute to the costs of repairing the windows (a minimum of £2,500). Once the Tick Tock Appeal has completed, all those funds will be available to the Church Council, through requests from their Fabric Sub-Committee, for the works covered by the Appeal: to repair the structure of the tower and some windows, to restore the bells to full working order and to bring the clock back and get it telling the time again. If works can start earlier then funds will be made available earlier too.