2021-03-31-accounts - The Seahorse Trust

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The Seahor se Trust

TRUSTEES REPORT AND ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR TO 31[ST] MARCH 2021

WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NATURE

Registered Charity No. 1086027

The Seahorse Trust

August 19, 2021

Year to 31[st] March 2021

INDEX

	Page No.
Index	2
Ofcers, advisers and details		3
Report of the Trustees	4-5
General and Financial Review	6-8
Facebook and Twitter	8
Fundraising	9-10
Adoption and membership scheme		10
Website	10
Patrons	10
Financial policy	11/12
Statement of fnancial activities
13/14
Notes to the accounts	15

August 19, 2021

Officers, advisors and details during 2020/21

Trustees	Dr David Gibson (Chair)
	Allie Clark
Director	Neil Garrick-Maidment FBNA
Patrons	Kate Humble		Chris Packham
	Kirsty Jones	Mark	Carwardine
	Ellie Harrison		Monty Halls
	Sir Hugo Swire MP
Registered Charity No	1086027
Registered Address	36 Greatwood Terrace
	Topsham,
	Devon		EX3 0EB
Tel. no	01392 875930		07876513628
E-mail	theseahorsetrust@gmail.org
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/groups/theseahorsetrust/
Twitter	https://twitter.com/seahorsecharity/with_replies
Web sites	www.theseahorsetrust.org
Independent examiner	Anthony Roberts FTCA
	7 Totnes Road
	Paignton
	Devon		TQ4 5JX
Bankers	Lloyds TSB
	234 High Street
	Exeter
	Devon		EX4 3NL

August 19, 2021

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR 2020 -2021

The Director and Trustees have pleasure in presenting their Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 31[st] March 2021, which have been prepared in accordance with the Charities Act and The Statement of Recommended Practice.

STATEMENT OF TRUSTEES RESPONSIBILITIES

Charity law requires the trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year, which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charity and of its financial activities for that year which properly presents the charity’s income and expenditure for the year together with its assets and liabilities at the end of the year and adequately distinguish any material special trust or other restricted fund of the charity. In preparing those financial statements the trustees are required to:

Select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently;
Make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent;
State whether the policies are in accordance with the appropriate SORP on Accounting by Charities and the Accounting Regulations and with applicable accounting standards, subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements.

The trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time, the financial position of the charity, and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with applicable Accounting Standards and Statements of Recommended Practise and the regulations made under s44 of the Charities Act 1993. They are responsible for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud or other irregularities.

ADMINISTRATION

The Charitable Trust and its property shall be administered and managed by the Trustees under the name of THE SEAHORSE TRUST or by such other name as the Trustees from time to time decide with the approval of the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

There shall be at least two trustees and future trustees shall be appointed by a resolution of the trustees passed at a trustees meeting.

August 19, 2021

Trustees who acted during the year were: Dr David Gibson (Chair) Allie Clark

The Trust’s bankers are: Lloyds TSB 234 High Street, Exeter. Devon EX4 3NL

The Independent examiner is : Anthony Roberts FTCA. 7 Totnes Road, Paignton, Devon. TQ4 5JX

OBJECTS

The Trustees shall hold the trust fund and its income upon trust to apply them for the following objects (‘the objects’):

To promote for the benefit of the public the preservation and conservation of rare and endangered species of marine and terrestrial flora and fauna and in particular but not exclusively, seahorses and related species.
To advance the education of the public generally about wild flora and fauna.
To conduct research and enquiry into endangered species of marine and terrestrial flora and fauna, and in particular, but not exclusively, seahorses and related species and to publish the results for the benefit of the general public.

LEGAL STATUS

The charity is a registered charity No. 1086027 and governed by the Declaration of Trust dated 12[th] August 2000 as amended by a supplemental deed dated 27[th] January 2001.

August 19, 2021

GENERAL AND FINANCIAL REVIEW 2020/2021

Lockdown has had a major impact on us like so many other charities and it has affected our operations and fund raising at the same time, however we seem to have weathered it and are going forward with many projects in particular the Ecomoorings into Studland Bay with our partners at Boatfolk.

Below is a round-up of some of the news and occurrences during the 2020/21 year; there have been many more but there is just not enough space in this report to fit it all in. We would like to say a massive thank you to everyone involved and who have made this happen.

Volunteers

The backbone of the charity are our volunteers, without them we could not exist or function. Five volunteers that need a special mention this year are Kim McNeil and Teresa Sinclair who monitor and form our Illegal trade team, Beccy MacDonald-Lofts who runs most of our educational programmes and oversees our social media platforms and Kim Maidment and Paul Lott who spend many hours underwater surveying for seahorses. All of them hold down full-time work as well as helping the trust but without them we could never achieve the things that we do.

British Seahorse Survey

We extended our license from the Marine Management Organisation in 2019 so that we can expand surveys throughout the country. We still continue our main projects in Studland Bay, Weymouth Bay, Torbay now Selsey Bill and Hounds. By having this wider license, it allows us to do so much more and crucially we can react quickly to reports of seahorses in different areas as we have done several times since the license was extended.

The extended license is already helping as we now monitor 4 main sites and dive on others.

World Seahorse Survey Database

The World Seahorse online portal and database is fully funded by the Sea Life Centres and it is now up and running and already gathering sightings from around the world. There is an online portal so that we can receive sightings directly into the database and it has been used by CEFAS to analyse the sightings for the effects on global warming and a second project to look at predicting habitats for seahorses.

August 19, 2021

Studland Bay Seahorse Project

We can happily announce that the Studland Bay is now formally a Marine Conservation Zone as a direct result of the work and campaigning The Seahorse Trust has undertaken with its partners, A notable success for all our volunteers since 2008 and many thanks to Michael Gove and especially our patron Hugo Swire for all their help.

As part of the MCZ we hope to be invited to sit on the management committee that will be set up to monitor this site.

Following our success in getting Studland Bay made into an MCZ, the Marine Management Organisation are planning on taking action to conserve this unique site and they intend to form a stakeholder’s group to gauge public feedback on it.

Studland Bay Ecomoorings

Trust founder Neil has been in conversations with Michael Prideaux the MD of Boatfolk marina and boating services about installing Ecomoorings onto the site. They met in August 2020 and Michael has kindly offered to underwrite the cost of installing 10 Ecomoorings onto the site.

In early 2021 a great deal of work has been undertaken to design the Ecomoorings and the graphics that will go onto the mooring buoys, Licenses have been applied for and a long-term plan of action is being put into place. This will mean that a not-for-profit (NFP) organisation will be established with an advisory board overseeing its work. The NFP will be tasked with fund raising for the installation of up to 100 Ecomoorings in Studland Bay (including the existing 10), alongside these licenses and permissions will need to be sought and

Selsey Bill and Hounds Seahorse Survey Project

Trust volunteer Ali Mayor is setting up a seahorse survey project at Selsey Bill and Hounds in West Sussex. She has gathered a team of volunteers to help her and they come under The Seahorse Trust license to survey for seahorses here in the UK. Ali and some of the team, have been on our Seahorse Survey Course and we wish them luck as they start work in spring 2021

Selsey Bill and Hounds was chosen because they have had a number of seahorse sightings there in the past and Ali had kindly sent them into the trust to be added to the World Seahorse Database.

Devon Environment Foundation

The trust Director Neil now sits on the advisory panel of the Devon Environment Foundation. He was asked to sit on this panel to look into projects for conserving the coast and sea of Devon. It is a great Honour to sit on this team and it makes a major difference to his native Devon.

Seahorse City builder

August 19, 2021

Our work stretches into many countries and one of note is Roger Hanson and his Seahorse city building in California. Roger has been a friend and colleague of the trust for 5 years and we have been advising him and overseeing his research work during this time. Crucially he makes a massive difference by building habitats under the sea for seahorses. It is a great project and is being copied all over the world.

Steve Backshall

Steve Backshall, adventurer and TV presenter came down to Studland Bay in the autumn of 2020 to film a piece about Studland Bay for the One Show, when it was aired it attracted about 5 million viewers and Steve has since shown a great deal of interest in our work since.

Online courses

Beccy and trust director Neil have been busy writing and developing an online Seahorse Ecology Course, which was kindly funded by Sea Changers marine charity. They also funded a number of free places on the course for people that would not normally be able to afford to undertake this type of education. A massive thank you goes to Sea Changers for making this happen.

Beccy has also adapted our Seahorse Survey Course to be online and we envisage that both courses will continue to stay online as we come out of lockdown, due to the COVID crisis.

E-bay and the illegal trade

Due to the hard work and persistence of trust volunteers Theresa, Kim and trust Director Neil they were successful in persuading E-bay to ban the sale of seahorses on its site (in line with country-by-country legislation). We estimate that tens of thousands of seahorses have been saved because of this.

Although E-bay has been joined by Amazon, Sphock, Preloved, Facebook and a host of others, frustratingly other sites still allow the sale, if we can shut down all avenues of trade online this will give seahorses a much better chance of survival.

We now have a direct contact in the Metropolitan Police who is assisting us in getting various companies and individuals prosecuted for trading in Seahorses here in the UK and they are assisting us in working with other police forces to try and stop this trade.

Wildwood Trust

Thank you so much to Wildwood Trust who kindly hosts our office free of charge at their centre near Ottery St Mary in Devon. Wildwood Escot has a number of native British and European species such as Wild Cat, Lynx, Red Squirrel, Boar, Fox, Beaver and now Wolves.

They are a progressive charity that supports Rewilding projects throughout the UK and are involved in bringing back former native species to our

August 19, 2021

countryside, such as Red squirrel and Beavers and hopefully in the future Lynx.

Facebook

Spreading the word about Seahorses, the natural world and the work of the trust is very important and we have a website with a news page and also a highly interactive Facebook page which now has over 4,000 members, almost double again on the last year, which was double of the previous year and goes from strength to strength.

Thanks go to Beccy, Dave and others who kindly administer this site for us as well as holding down full time very busy jobs.

Twitter

The Seahorse Trust is now into its fourth year of Twitter and already we have well over 1116 followers (up from 900 last year) thanks to Beccy who kindly monitors the site. This is a relatively new technology for us and it will take some time to get used to it but like all new technologies it has its place and has proven to be a very useful form of communication already.

Fund raising

Following several years of low income and intense competition for the few grants available, like so many charities we took a completely different approach to fund raising in 2018/2019 and set up a SPONSORS SHOPS page on our website.

This page is comprised of commercial organisations that either donate a small percentage to our work from sales of their products or offer services free of charge for us and to date we have quite a number signed up, such as Beauty Kitchens, Wildflower Favours and Salcombe Brewery to mention just a few.

This combined with the Sea Changer grants has seen a more positive direction in the funds of the charity and we look forward to the future with more confidence than we have for many years.

These are a few of the key funds we have received money from . Beauty Kitchen £13,000 Sea Changers £1,250 Sealife Centres £5,000 Donation tins £334.41 GoFundMe £85.90 CAF £103 Amazon Smile £57.76 Ecology Course £450

August 19, 2021

Gift Aid £1,523.88 PayPal £1,966.79 General Donations £12,309.93

General donations have been up again this year and we managed to generate £12,309.33 (£4,487.71 in the previous year). We think this rise in our donations is directly in correlation with the extra publicity and improved website we now have and are receiving.

Adoption and membership schemes (UK only)

Our adoption and membership scheme has increased considerably this year in numbers mainly because we are becoming internationally recognised now for our work with seahorses.

The figures for Adoption and Membership are encouraging, in 2018-2019 it was £7,316 whereas in 2020-2021 it was up to £8,545.51 which is up by £1,229.51.

It shows that it averages at £712.13 per month (up from £609.67) and the average donation per month is £6.94 (down by 13p from £7.12), however the average number of adoptees and members has risen per month to 103 (up from 86)

It shows that although the scheme has been and is successful and we need to look at increasing the financial turnover per month, more work needs to be done on this.

Website

GLS have kindly switched our website to a different system which gives us more control over it and they have continued to be supportive of our work.
It is now brighter and more modern looking and certainly easier to use

August 19, 2021

The different look of the site seems to have generated more interest in it and feedback seems to be positive

We would like to say a special thank you to Gavin who often does work for us for free and without his input we would not have such a great website. Here at the Trust we highly recommend him and he can be found on his website at http://www.gslsolutions.co.uk/

PATRONS

We are very lucky here at the trust in having the support of some well-known names as patrons and I would like to thank one and all for their superb help and support over the last twelve months.

Kate Humble http://www.katehumble.com Chris Packham http://www.chrispackham.co.uk Kirsty Jones http://www.kirstyjones.com Mark Carwardine http://www.markcarwardine.com Ellie Harrison http://www.ellie-harrison.com/ Monty Halls http://www.montyhalls.co.uk/ Sir Hugo Swire https://www.hugoswire.org.uk/

Poem by Gabrielle (aged nine) If Stars Were Fish by Gabriela Cunha-Molina

If stars were seahorses they would be so special! They would travel from planet to planet gliding, riding.

It would be so much fun to watch them blend with the skies Through black holes in the black sea

If stars were seahorses they would never stop, I know! August 19, 2021 11 They would keep on riding, gliding

FINANCIAL POICY

RESERVES POLICY

It is the intention of the Charity only to maintain reserves at the level required to fund its ongoing commitments.

RISKS ASSESSMENT

The Trustees have reviewed the major risks to which the Charity may be exposed and consider measures have been taken to mitigate such risks.

INDEPENDENT EXAMINERS REPORT TO THE TRUSTEES

I report on the accounts of the trust for the year ended 31[st] March 2021, which are set out on pages 13 to 14.

RESPECTIVE RESPONSIBILTIES OF TRUSTEES AND EXAMINER

As the charities trustees you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts; you consider that the audit requirement of s43(2) of the Charities Act 1993 (the Act) does not apply. It is my responsibility to state, on the basis of procedures specified in the General Directions given by the Charity Commissioners under s43(7) (b) of the Act, whether particular matters have come to my attention.

BASIS OF INDEPENDENT EXAMINER’S REPORT

My examination was carried out in accordance with the General Directions by the Charity Commissioners. An examination includes a review of the accounting records kept by the Charity and a comparison of the accounts presented with those records. It also includes consideration of any unusual items or disclosures in the accounts, and the seeking of explanations from you as trustees concerning any such matters. The procedures undertaken do not provide all the evidence that would be required in an audit and. Consequently, I do not express an audit opinion on the view given by the accounts.

INDEPENDENT EXAMINER’S STATEMENT

In connection with my examination, no matter has come to my attention:

That gives me reasonable cause to believe that, in any material respect, the requirements:

To keep accounting records in accordance with s41 of the Act; and

To prepare accounts which accord with the accounting records and to comply with the accounting requirements of the Act.

August 19, 2021

Have not been met; or

To which, in my opinion, attention should be drawn in order to enable proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

ANTHONY ROBERTS FTCA

7 Totnes Road Paignton Devon.

The Balance Sheet below and annexed Income and Expenditure Account for the year have not been audited but are prepared from the records information and explanations supplied to us and are in accordance therewith

Anthony Roberts FCPA - Chartered Accountant for The Tax Shop Limited 7 Totnes Road PAIGNTON Devon 28[th] June 2021

August 19, 2021

INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31st MARCH 2021

THE SEAHORSE TRUST

INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31st MARCH 2021

INCOME				2021		2020
General
Fund	Donations			21633.52		37305
	Gift
	Aid			1523.88
	Income from Adoption
	Scheme			8545.51		7511
	Fees Received	Ecology	Course	465.00		575
	Collections			334.41		112
					32602.
	Other Income			100.06	38
Restricted	Specifc Funds -	Specialist
Fund	Software		5600.00			13397
	Paid to Software writers		5600.00			-13397
			___
				0.00
			_
				___
				_		____
TOTAL INCOME			£	32602.38	£	45503
LESS : EXPENSES
Sea Horses			70.00			450
Administrator	Fees		28832.76			27726
Book-Keeping			240.00
Stationery and General Ofce		Costs &
Leafets			359.93			827
Advertising
Accountancy
Charges			348.00			348
Website Costs			273.10			287
Telephone			308.52			358
Insurances			821.94			840
Computer and Ofce Repairs						844
Sponsoring Gifts			217.20			475
Travel and Accommodation			0.00			120
Replacement
Computer			440.00
Repairs and
Renewals			116.64			107

August 19, 2021

Vehicle Running	Vehicle Running
Costs		217.69			313
Sundry Expenses		87.03			216
		___
			32332.81
		_
			___
			_		____
DEFICIT OF	EXPENDITURE OVER
INCOME		£	269.57	£	12592
Surplus Brought Forward			36452.40		23860
			___
			_		____
SURPLUS CARRIED
FORWARD		£	36721.97	£	36452
			___
			_		____
BALANCE SHEET as at 31st March
2021
REPRESENTED
BY --
Equipment			1015.33		1015
Lloyds Current
Account			36053.88		35784
Cash in
Hand			0.76		1
Less:	Creditors and Accrued Expenses		348.00		348
			___
			_		____
	0.00	£	36721.97	£	36452
			___
			_		____

The above Balance Sheet and annexed Income and Expenditure Account for the year have not been audited but are prepared from the records information and explanations supplied to us are in accordance therewith

Anthony Roberts FCPA - Chartered Accountant for The Tax Shop Limited 7 Totnes Road 28th June 2021 PAIGNTON Devon

August 19, 2021

The above Balance Sheet and annexed income and Expenditure Account for the year have not been audited but are prepared from the records, information and explanations supplied to us and are in accordance therewith.

Chartered Accountant for; Anthony Roberts FCPA The Tax Shop Limited 7 Totnes Road PAIGNTON Devon 28[th] June 2021

NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR TO 31[ST] MARCH 2019

ACCOUNTING BASIS
These accounts have been prepared under the Historical Cost Convention, applicable accounting standards and the Statement of Recommended Practise, accounting and reporting by charities.
INCOMING RESOURCES

Income is credited in the period it is received.

STAFF EMOLUMENTS Total cost of administrator’s fees inclusive was £28832.76 No employee received emoluments above £50,000
INDEPENDENT EXAMINATION Cost £348

 VOLUNTEERS

No value is placed on volunteer’s time.

August 19, 2021

 TRUSTEES

No trustee received any remuneration or reimbursement of expenses in the year.

August 19, 2021