## **Minutes of the Annual General Meeting Wednesday 3[rd] December 2025 @ 7pm -Via zoom**
**Attendees:** Jayme Oxby-Appleton (Chairperson), Kelly Gadsby (Treasurer), Darren McFaul (Secretary), Josephine Ewen (Committee member), Toni Kerr (Preschool Manager), Joanne Crosby (Preschool Deputy), Sarah Williamson (Early Years Practitioner), Natalie Ackland (Early years practitioner
**Apologies for Absence:** Apologies were received from Emily Barker (EYP/SENCo)
## **Chairperson’s introduction and report**
J O-A thanked everyone for taking time out to join Welbourn Wonderbugs Preschool Annual General Meeting and explained how important it is to support preschool.
I’ve held the role of chairperson for the past year, being voted in at last year’s AGM as a parent committee member and it’s been a very interesting time.
This year has seen some significant changes at preschool, many big changes to the environment and the routine. Toni our manager continues to guide the staff team through the many changes happening to legislation and ensuring we are ready for our impending Ofsted inspection.
Natalie is a new member of staff, joining the team in September as an Early Years Practitioner. She also brings experience from a similar local setting and has found her feet remarkably quickly.
Emily is our qualified SENCo (Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator) and is responsible for assessing, planning and monitoring the progress of children with special educational needs and disabilities. Please have a
chat with Emily if you have any concerns about your child’s development during their time at Wonderbugs.
Jo is our longest serving member of staff at Wonderbugs, having been here for 29 years. Jo holds the post of Deputy Manager and works closely with Toni on the requirements of pre-school.
I’d like to thank the staff. They all work really hard to keep the children safe and the learning fun, they all genuinely care about creating a nurturing environment for the children.
As always fundraising is a vital part of enabling preschool to continue to run. Every little amount raised is a welcome contribution towards buying equipment and funding activities, in addition to paying staff wages and running costs, because as amazing it is to have free hours funded by the government, for the preschool, we receive less money from the government per child, than someone who pays. Therefore, fundraising is important to ensure our costs are covered. This is something which will be discussed at the next committee meeting.
As highlighted in the invitation to this AGM meeting, Welbourn Wonderbugs Preschool is a committee run preschool, which means it relies on parents to fulfil the majority of roles on the committee to legally remain open.
The current committee now consists of three parents following resignations from key roles, therefore we are looking for new parents to join the committee. The preschool cannot run if we can’t fill the committee roles so I hope you all can see the benefit of supporting the preschool by joining me on the committee.
## **Manager’s report**
Managers update Dec 2025
Another busy year for Wonderbugs preschool, I forgot how much we had done until I started this update! I am sure I’ve missed some bits too!
In July, 9 of our children graduated, we have heard they have settled in really well and we have received praise from one of the teachers at how ‘school ready’ our children were. Some of our younger ones increased their sessions and we have had some new families join us. Numbers wise we are full on most days with the exception of a couple of half sessions. Numbers for September are looking ok, advertisement for next September is already in the three villages booklet and is on my to do list for the new year.
We have made many changes to the way we observe and plan our next steps, with the emphasis on being more present and less time on paperwork. All parents are informed via class dojo of their child’s next steps. We had our first parent meetings in Feb/March and we plan to hold these ‘progress’ meetings every mid-year (Feb/March) to meet with families to discuss progress and school readiness for our graduates.
We have continued our termly ‘stay and play’ sessions, which the children love, we really enjoy seeing the children’s excitement at sharing their preschool with their families. It is also a great opportunity to discuss your child’s progress if you’ve not had chance to.
Despite the challenges faced to early years settings with the funding shortfall we have been successful in fundraising this year, we have had big fundraisers like the Christmas disco – this was great fun, raised some money and we have another planned for Friday!
We were also the chosen charity for Jetta’s mum and dad’s band Banter. They have an annual festival in the village in the summer, they very generously raised over £500 as well as providing us with lots of amazing new instruments- we plan to put the money towards replacing our outside play house.
Smaller monthly amounts, like from the easy fundraising app which turns your purchases into donations, have raised us £391.37p since we first set up an account. So please if you haven’t already signed up, info is on the Facebook page.
By asking for donations for graduation or mince pies at Christmas we have been able to balance the government funding and still manage to provide fresh and exciting resources for our Wonderbugs.
Thanks to these and some lovely donations from some of our graduates in the summer we have been able to avoid asking for a consumable charge so far. We are one of only a few early years settings which is able to do this.
We have had many environment changes, as educators we are passionate about the learning environment and seek to provide the children with awe and wonder in the resources we provide. The staff have enjoyed updating the back play area, enhancing the construction area with free items from neighbours and creating a sand kitchen area. The front garden has also had a little tweak with the removal of our very well-loved pirate ship and of course our new boat ’bluey’, we have more enhancements to come in the spring..
The quiet room has gently transitioned into the calm room, offering a space for the children to relax and reregulate. With the addition of lots of new sensory items the room is used regularly through the day.
We continue to enjoy outings in our local environment, trips to the park, the library van and church for special events. We are very lucky here in Welbourn to
be able to pick our own fruit from the allotments, pumpkins at Halloween and veg for our soups and smoothies!
We have just signed a new contract with BT for the next couple of years, all our equipment will be updated in the next couple of weeks and hopefully this will sort the internet and phone issues we have been experiencing.
Staff training- staff have taken part in Makaton training just last week, we hope this will strengthen our provision, speech and language is consistently an area for development in Lincolnshire. A new pilot of a speech and language drop-in session at the children’s centres means families can now gain support much earlier than if they were referred to the therapy service.
We also have 2 staff signed up to a new maths program and will begin the training for this in February, more information on this when it begins.
All staff are up to date on mandatory training with safeguarding being next on the agenda- changes to the requirements mean the training needs updating every 2yrs now instead of the previous 3yrs.
CIO update, since the EGM we have had a change to trustees, 2 of our trustees changed their minds meaning we needed to recruit again, this was not a quick process, but we have had 2 others volunteer for the role! Registration with the charity commission has taken place- this was completed in October. We are now in the process of doing our OFSTED reregistration- this requires us to effectively register a new preschool. We are just waiting on the final bits of paperwork; this will then be submitted. The next step will be to have a registration visit from OFSTED.
Once we are registered, we can then effectively ‘close’ the current preschool and transfer all staff/bank accounts over to the new Wonderbugs. At this point the new trustees will take over from the committee.
OFSTED have recently overhauled their whole inspection process and there have been many changes to the policies including, safeguarding and healthy eating, our website has the main policies on there and we have paper copies of all the policies on site. Please if you have any questions or queries around this get in touch. Ofsted will ask if our families know where to find these.
I also just wanted to thank you all for your support around the healthy packed lunches initiative. We have noticed the children are much more open to trying new foods since we have incorporated this within our learning. They have enjoyed making and trying, quiches, vegetable soups, eggy bread and fruit smoothies.
As many of you are aware we have a work experience student with us this year, Bethany is in her second year at college and has worked in a couple of different settings as well as offering us support in some of our busiest periods, Beth has a real interest in child psychology and is a favourite with the children.
We are very lucky here at Wonderbugs to have staff that are so passionate about early years education, they spend hours googling activity ideas in the evening, thinking of each individual child and how to enhance their preschool journey. We work hours above those we are contracted for, we don’t switch off and deeply care about each child that attends. Staff have jumped in and covered each other without question when illness or family emergencies crop up.
Personally, I just want to say a big a thankyou, with my own ‘hiccup’ this year, the staff led by Jo, have ensured everything has continued to run smoothly, and our wonderful preschool has continued to flourish. With many plans for training and changes to our environment, as well as an Ofsted inspection to prepare for, it is set to be another busy year in 2026!
## **Treasurer’s report**
Financially its been a good year for preschool, ending the year with a profit of over £6000, meaning we have clawed back the previous years deficit. At the end of the financial year the current account held £18,000 and the savings account £31,500. For those of you who are new to preschool we have a legal requirement to hold money in a separate account should any redundancy pay ever be required and we hold more than enough in this account to cover this and around three to six months running costs for emergencies.
We had some concerns as to how the new government funding would affect us, especially with lots of negativity within the nursery and preschool world but I am very pleased to say the figures show we are actually better off and I have no doubt that not many establishments can say that. However I do acknowledge that that is majorly down to Toni an her team and the care and dedication they show to preschool and the children, which ensures that their reputation proceeds them and our spaces are kept full, often with a waiting list.
As usual our biggest cost is wages and this is again set to rise in 2026 with minimum wage going up yet again. I have estimated that the 4.1% increase will cost us in the region of an extra £150 per month purely on hourly rates and not including increases in HMRC costs and pension cost. I feel that with our current financial state this is something we can manage with no concerns.
You may note that our rent and utilities looks lower than usual, this is down to NKDC not having raised an invoice for our yearly rent until after the end of our financial year.
Fundraised amounts remained steady with a summer fair in September 2024 raising a very healthy £685 and more money coming from a joint Christmas disco with Welbourn School. The easy fundraising website continues to drip between
£20 and £50 per quarter into our account just by people using the browser to do their online shopping, so thank you to all who do that, please be sure to pass this onto family and friends as this really is a very easy way for us to raise some money. It is important that we keep up the fundraised events and with the change to CIO and the dissolvement of the current committee, id like to suggest that the parents form a fundraising committee so that events can continue to happy once or twice a year.
Our equipment costs seem to be a lot higher this year, some of that is down to the purchasing of a lovely kitchen unit for the children to play on. The decision was taken to purchase a good quality solid wood play kitchen from an education supplier rather than the cheaper mdf style ones available on the high street in the hope it will withstand a lot more wear and tear last a long time, and some other essential housekeeping equipment but mainly down to me being a bit more vigilant into the categorising of payments and putting more purchases into the “equipment tab” rather than “other”.
Id like to thank Phill Kerr who I know “voluntarily” carries out an awful lot of maintenance at preschool which saves us a considerable amount of money.
So finally Thank you to Toni, Jo, Emily, Sarah, Natalie and Bethany for the amazing job that you do and for not spending all the money this year, with the agreement of the committee and everyone here today id like you to pass over your wish list and we will see what we can purchase to the value of £1000 to improve things further for 2026
## **Election of the Committee**
The committee chair person remains Jayme Oxby-Appleton and Secretary remains Darren McFaul. We welcomed two new committee members; Josephine Ewen and Lianne Taylor. KG remained as Treasurer and was nominated by FP and JC.
The Preschool Constitution was adopted for the next year.
## **CIO (Charitable Incorporated Organisation**
Still undergoing this process, just waiting on the final trustees to input their EY2s
## **AOB**
TK thanked everyone for attending the meeting and for giving up their time. Their support was much appreciated.
## For the year ended 31 August 2025
||£ 2,025.00
2024
2023|
|---|---|
|**Receipts**||
|FEES/FUNDING|£ 84,239.25 £ 69,150.00 £ 65,840.12|
|Fundraising|£ 1,150.83 £ 1,465.57 £ 1,212.03|
|Donations||
|Other receipts||
|Interest from deposit account|£ 287.17 £ 200.57 £ 19.45|
|Total Receipts|£ 85,677.25 £ 70,816.14 £ 67,071.60|
|**Payments**||
|Wages and salaries (inc. pensions)|-£ 68,945.85 -£ 55,545.74 -£ 47,180.15|
|Rent, utilities etc|-£ 2,148.24 -£ 8,065.17 -£ 4,500.99|
|Equipment|-£ 1,051.97 -£ 2,987.63 -£ 719.50|
|sundries|-£ 1,224.31 -£ 813.42|
|Courses|-£ 330.00 -£ 180.00|
|Other payments|-£ 1,981.25 -£ 5,069.16 -£ 4,168.25|
|Total Payments|-£ 75,681.62 -£ 72,661.12 -£ 56,568.89|
|Net of Receipts/(Payments)|£ 9,995.63 -£ 1,844.98 £ 9,243.93|
|Balance of current account|£ 18,010.33|
|Balance of savings account|£ 31,510.15|
Transfer from Current a/c to Savings a/c - £5000.00 on 01.10.24.
2022
£ 56,733.90 £ 1,845.04 £ 10.00 £ 112.50 £ 1.84
£ 58,703.28
-£ 39,993.17 -£ 889.27 -£ 1,376.30 £ 689.83
-£ 2,923.86
-£ 45,872.43 £ 12,830.85
|MONTH|TOTAL VALUE|CREDIT|DEBIT|FEES|WAGES/HMRC|UTILITIES|FUNDRAISING|TRAINING|EQUIP & MAINT|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|September|-454.46|6960.36|-7414.82|6737.32|-6320.13|-250.89|218.26|-60.00|-238.90|
|October|-403.00|5755.95|-6158.95|5755.95|-5491.37|-271.80|||-62.98|
|November|3673.57|9906.79|-6233.22|9079.53|-5809.00|-265.95|827.26||-27.65|
|December|-7193.06|4653.15|-11846.21|4238.29|-10390.53|-263.25|7.87|-270.00|-35.00|
|January|7547.32|8318.56|-771.24|8318.56|-339.33|-267.24|||-50.48|
|February|-470.82|5584.62|-6055.44|5536.79|-5634.55|-273.00|47.83||-26.45|
|March|3422.15|9966.04|-6543.89|9946.05|-5706.50|-88.03||||
|April|435.73|6645.46|-6209.73|5972.26|-5253.24|-104.05||||
|May|1371.36|7859.29|-6487.93|7832.80|-5852.40|-91.60|26.49||-473.95|
|June|4962.74|11679.57|-6716.83|11404.57|-6090.83|-89.78|||-116.99|
|July|1774.56|7721.13|-5946.57|7711.13|-5672.36|-91.76|||-19.57|
|August|-4957.63|1729.12|-6686.75|1706.00|-6385.61|-90.89|23.12|||
|**TOTAL**|9708.46|86780.04|-77071.58|84239.25|-68945.85|-2148.24|1150.83|-330.00|-1051.97|
##
|ES||
|---|---|
|NDRI|OTHER|
|-351.72|-188.40|
|-165.19|-167.61|
|-3.68|-126.94|
|-235.89|-244.55|
|-114.19||
|-55.24|-66.20|
|-9.17|-720.20|
|-102.25|-76.99|
|-13.49|-56.49|
|-87.25|-56.98|
|-20.99|-131.89|
|-65.25|-145.00|
-1224.31 -1981.25
CHARITY COMMISSION
FOR ENGLAND AND WALES
Independent examiner's report on the
accounts
Section A
Independent Examinerfs Report
Report to the trustses
WEL6(JJQTr)
On account8 for th• year
•nded
11812015
Charity no
Ilf any)
S•t out on pag•s
ITPfnÈrriLier 10 lncjdO Ilie paye nt
I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above
charity Dhe Trust") for the year ended ',)D I MM I TT T Y.
As the charity's trustees, you are responsible for the preparation of the
accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011
(Ihe Act.).
Responsibllltios and
basls of rewt
I report in respect of my examination of the Trust's accounts carried out
under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carying out my examination. I
have followed all the applicabl8 Directions given by the Charity Commission
under section 14515Xb) of the Act.
Independent tThe charity's gross income exceeded £250,000 and l am qualffied to
•xamln•rfs statement undertake the examination by being a qualified member of linsert name of
applicable listed l)ody]l. Delele I l if not applicable.
I have completed my 8xaminatbon. I confinn that no material matters have
Come to my attention in connection with the examination
which gives me cause to believe that in. any matefial
respect..
the accounting records were not kept in acrA)rdancA with tIOn 130
of the Charities Act., or
the accounts did not accord with the a¢counling re¢ortls; or
the accounts did nol comply with the applicable requirements
concerning the fonn and content of accounts set out in the Charities
(Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 other than any r6quirem8nt
that the accounts give a Irue and fair. view which is not a matter
considered as part of an independent examinati¢)n.
I have no cmcem8 and have come aw)ss no other matters in conn8ction
with the examination to which allention should be drawn in this report in
order to enable a proper understanding of the aco)unts to be reached.
. Please delele Ihe words in the brack8ls rfthey do not apply.
Slgn•d:
D•t•:
2L
Nam•:
TALLie
Relevant professional
qualification{8) or body
IER
Oct 2018