2021-03-31-accounts - The Trussell Trust

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Annual Report and Accounts | 31 March 2021

Lockdown, Lifelines and the Long Road Ahead

The Trussell Trust Reg. Charity in England & Wales (1110522) and Scotland (SC044246). Reg. Ltd. Co. in England & Wales (05434524)

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

About the Trussell Trust

We’re here to ensure everyone can afford the essentials in life and create a future where no one needs to use a food bank.

We support a UK-wide network of more than 1,300 food bank centres and together we provide emergency food and support to people locked in poverty, and campaign to ensure everyone can afford the essentials in life, like food.

Our food bank network brings together volunteers, staff and supporters of all faiths and none to make a difference. Local churches play a vital part in this work, with at least 12,000 churches actively involved in donating food, and providing venues, volunteers and financial support for food banks.

We share our data and evidence with policy makers and politicians across the political spectrum so no one can be unaware of what’s going on and what needs to change. Our most recent figures for the number of emergency food parcels provided by our network, and our latest research, are available here: trusselltrust.org/news-andblog/latest-stats/andtrusselltrust.org/what-we-do/research-advocacy/

It’s simply not right that some of us can’t afford to put food on the table. This isn’t the kind of society we want to live in. If we work together, we have the power to create change for the better. With thousands of people involved in food banks, alongside national and local partnerships, we mobilise communities, businesses and people to campaign for change through one united voice.

You can read more about our work at trusselltrust.org

Apart from three food banks which are part of the Trussell Trust charity (for all or part of the year under review), all other food banks in the Trussell Trust’s network are independent charities or community groups, and therefore their finances and food stocks are not included in our financial statements.

Report and Accounts 2021

The Trussell Trust

Overview

Welcome from the Chair of Trustees 04 Welcome from the Chief Executive 05 2020 – 2021 Responding to the Covid Pandemic 06

Strategic Report

• • • •

Vision and Strategy 08 Challenges of Covid-19 12 Key Achievements – Our Strategic Priorities 19 Building a future without the need for food banks 28 Financial Review 30 Principal Risks and Uncertainties 34

Our Supporters 36 Our Corporate Partners 38 Our Trust and Foundations 39 Our Promise to Supporters 40 Our Volunteers 41 Our Grant-making 42 Structure, Governance and Management 43 Our Details 45 Statement of Trustees’ Responsibilities 46 Independent Auditor’s Report 47

Financial Statements

Statement of Financial Activities 52 Balance Sheet 53 Statement of Cash Flows 54 Notes to the Financial Statements 55-71

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

WELCOME

From Stephen Hicks, Chair of Trustees

On behalf of the board, I’d like to welcome you to our Annual Report for 2020/21. Many years are rightly described as periods of significant, even extensive, change. This, though, was a year like no other.

2020/21 was (and remains) epochal in how Covid-19 caused, created and was the catalyst for so much fundamental change.

Sadly, this year saw the highest ever need for food banks in our 24-year history, with 2.5 million emergency food parcels provided to people facing hardship, including 980,000 for children. This is up 33% year on year and is a 128% increase over the last five years.

This year, much of our time was spent in devising and implementing completely new ways of working at food banks, with home deliveries across the country rapidly becoming the norm. Also, forming an antipoverty coalition with JRF, The Children’s Society, CPAG, StepChange, IFAN and Turn2Us to enable joint calls for change and a more powerful, unified voice across the anti-poverty sector.

We developed a new national helpline partnership with Citizens Advice while retaining our relentless focus on data and research, enabling the report “Dignity or Destitution” to be published in February.

‘This is the first time we have given out over 2m parcels in our 24 year history’

there are so many people, families and children who cannot afford to put food on the table.

I’d like to pay tribute to all the volunteers at food banks, those long in service and those who are new to us; you each gave selflessly and unstintingly to people most in need. For you and your commitment and efforts, we and the communities you serve are truly grateful. Our staff too – they were tested and not found wanting; in fact, each stepped up way beyond the call of duty for what was not just the short haul. Adversity and challenge puts leadership into sharp focus; in our CEO we have a gifted and inspiring leader. The board is proud of everyone who has helped support people facing hardship in one way or another. We remain determined not to be deflected from ending the need for emergency food in the UK.

We will continue to work with all our supporters, partners, the churches up and down the UK, the public and so many who give so generously of their time and talents; with you we will realise our vision for a UK without the need for foodbanks.

Yours sincerely

Stephen D. Hicks Chair of Trustees

I am sincerely grateful to the board for their wisdom, insight and contributions. The board remain committed to our governance role and will continue to support the relief of the immediate need as well as creating just solutions to tackle the root causes of poverty. We stand strongly together, and alongside food banks and people experiencing poverty, to say it’s simply not right that in the fifth largest GDP globally,

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

WELCOME

From Emma Revie, Chief Executive Officer

Year after year, more people are needing to use a food bank, unable to afford the essentials we all need to get by. But the devasting economic and personal consequences of the pandemic have tipped more people than ever into financial crisis and to the doors of food banks.

Year after year, we have seen more people needing to use a food bank, unable to afford the essentials we all need to get by. But the devastating economic and personal consequences of the pandemic have tipped more people than ever into financial crisis and brought them to the doors of food banks.

This year has been difficult for many of us. Food banks have been at the frontline of the pandemic, serving their communities during the most challenging of times. Together they have provided over 2.5 million emergency food parcels, nearly 1 million of these went directly to children. This is a 33% increase on last year and a 128% increase in just five years.

As I reflect on the past year, my feelings are conflicted. I’m filled with great sadness as more and more people struggle to afford the essentials. Like many of us, I have deep concern for what’s ahead after the immense pressure this year has put on our society. But I also must be optimistic. This year has shown the power of our communities, the power of people coming together, and the power we have collectively to

instigate change. I’m filled with pride at the compassionate response of people and communities across the UK. Pride at the way our food bank network and thousands of volunteers rose to meet the enormous challenges posed by Covid-19. They tirelessly provided crucial support to people on a scale that has never been seen before. I’m proud of the way we have been able to support our food banks: working with partners to set up a national delivery infrastructure in a matter of weeks, providing quick and easy access to emergency grants, rapidly accelerating our e-referral system and establishing the Help Through Hardship helpline with Citizens Advice. In addition, we’ve campaigned alongside key partners to increase investment in local welfare assistance, which helped secure an extra £233 million for community support. We also helped to mobilise thousands and thousands of people with our Hunger Free Future campaign, helping to build understanding and empathy of food bank use on a scale like never before.

I’m hugely grateful and humbled by the generosity we have received. It’s thanks to the kindness and compassion of businesses, partners and supporters that we have been able to assist food banks to serve their communities, and ensure more people than ever could access practical assistance during such a challenging time. We really could not have responded without such an outpouring of compassion.

Looking ahead to next year, when the pressures of the pandemic will continue to unfairly impact people on the lowest income, we must

accelerate the delivery of our Together for Change strategy to ensure everyone can afford the essentials in life, and work towards a future where no one needs a food bank to get by. If this year has taught us anything, it’s that we are at our best when we stand together in the face of adversity. Food banks have shown enormous resilience, but this cannot go on. We must harness the power we have when we come together and then make the changes that are needed to prevent people from needing a food bank.

We can choose a different path for our society, and we must. That’s why we launched our Together for Change strategy in the teeth of the pandemic. Alongside supporting food banks and communities today, we must work towards a better tomorrow. By focusing on three strategic goals – Changing Communities, Changing Minds and Changing Policy – we are dedicated to making the changes that are needed to prevent people from needing a food bank in the future.

As we emerge from the pandemic, our commitment has never been stronger, our ambition never higher and our resolve never fiercer: we will do everything in our power to end the need for food banks in the UK.

Thank you for your joining us in this mission.

Emma Revie Chief Executive Officer

March

The first national lockdown is announced on 23rd March, followed by a series of lockdowns in each nation in the months ahead

Emergency grants fund opened for food banks

£222k awarded in emergency grants in March

April

Food banks see an

89%

increase in need for emergency parcels compared to the same month in 2019

As supermarket shelves empty, we create national partnerships with TESCO, Palletforce, XPO Logistics, the Entertainer and British Gas to ensure food banks have access to enough food to support their community

We launch the first stage of our Help through Hardship helpline in partnership with Citizens Advice to ensure everyone can continue to access emergency support safely when food bank centres had to close

The government increase Universal Credit payments by £20 a week a week as a temporary measure and in recognition that payments were not enough to survive on

May

Alongside Children’s Society, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Turn2Us, Step Change IFAN and CPAG, we call on the government to introduce a Coronavirus Emergency Support Scheme including increased funding for local welfare assistance schemes

British Gas

engineers work with food banks up and down the country to deliver emergency food parcels. More than

58,000

hours are

volunteered by over 1,700 British Gas employees, helping to deliver over 4 million meals to people unable to afford the essentials

June The government announces £63m in additional funding to be distributed to local authorities in England and Wales to help people who are struggling to afford food and other essentials due to Covid-19

We present evidence to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) Select Committee’s Inquiry on the five week wait for a first Universal Credit payment. We highlighted the negative impact of the wait and the subsequent repayment of advance loans to the DWP, on people’s ability to afford food and other essentials.

Marcus Rashford launches his campaign for change and helps raise child poverty up the national agenda. His tireless campaigning ensures thousands of children were protected from hunger over the school holidays, and inspires millions to care about poverty and take action towards a more just future

July

We open our first Financial Inclusion grant round. Food banks are invited to apply for funding to provide income maximisation advice at their food bank centres

£570k

awarded

ASDA organise a food collection in their stores across the UK, inspiring their customers to donate almost

18,000 kg

in food to support their local community

August

Coronavirus emergency grant awards to food banks pass the £1m mark

September October November December January February March We release Our latest food In response to We release Over We launch a new We report our Lockdown, banks statistics our campaigning Lift the Burden, report Dignity end of year Lifelines and the show that a record efforts, the a report showing 3,300 or Destitution, statistics: a record Long Road Ahead report which 1.2m governmentannounces a that almost three out of four people email theirMP calling for a calling on thegovernment 2.5m found that parcels were Covid-19 winter households on continuation of to keep the parcels were provided to grant scheme, Universal Credit the £20 uplift to £20 uplift to distributed by people in crisis including using food banks Universal Credit Universal Credit food banks in our between April over the summer for at least network between and September, £170m were repaying an We contribute to 12 months April 2020 and the highest to be given to advance payment the Social Renewal March 2021, with ever figure. councils in to the government Advisory Board’s This includes England to spend report to the 980,000 100,000 on supporting Scottish going to children households 2,600 people worst Government, received support parcels to children affected by the If Not Now, from food banks every day pandemic When? , calling for the first time in for action to the first six months We open a second deliver enough of the pandemic financial inclusion money for a grant round, decent life providing This is a £386k Successfullobbying leads 33% year in funding for Ladbaby secures to the Scottish on year increase food banks We launch Hunger a third Christmas Government Free Future , our number one in aligning its largest ever public support of our funding of advice campaign, work and helps services to the inspiring over raise awareness objective of of the increasing reducing the need We call on the 100,000 need for food for food banks government to people to join the banks invest a further movement and £250m donate their time,money or voice to Marcus Rashford donates a pair of in local welfare our cause his boots for us to assistance auction as part of our Hunger Free We launch our Future campaign food bank Pathfinder Programme to support 10% of Trussell Trust food banks to pilot new ways to sustainably reduce the need for emergency food in their communities, by providing a combination of intensive support, specialist expertise and peer learning activity 07

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

STRATEGIC REPORT Our Vision and Strategy

Our vision

Our vision is for a UK without the need for food banks.

We support a nationwide network of food banks to provide emergency support to people locked in severe poverty and work collaboratively with our network and other partners to create the change needed to build a future where all of us have enough money for the essentials.

Our values

Our values are:

Compassion:

We're motivated to stand alongside people in crisis and provide support and care for individuals.

Justice:

Community:

We are driven by the As people, we are all fact that it is not right interconnected, and that somebody should because of this we have experience hunger or a responsibility to poverty, and we take support one another. action to change this.

Dignity:

We recognise the value of every individual, prioritising other people’s needs and concerns in the spirit of friendship.

Our strategic priorities

We are working to end the need for food banks in the UK in three key ways:

1. Changing Communities

We’re helping unlock even more of the potential of food banks to become places where the underlying drivers of severe poverty are addressed, and supporting food banks to develop strategies to reduce the need for emergency food locally.

2. Changing Policy

Government decisions can have a huge impact on people in poverty. We use evidence gathered through our network of food banks to drive policy change that will make sure we’re helping shape a future where no one needs to use a food bank.

3. Changing Minds

Lasting change happens when wider society thinks and acts differently about an issue, so we’re building understanding and empathy about the drivers of food bank use and calling people to take action.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

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Our strategic approaches

At the Trussell Trust, we believe we can best deliver change by how we work, as well as what we do. To help guide how we work, we’ve identified four strategic approaches, which underpin our behaviours. These are:

Service:

we serve the work of the food banks in our network, listening attentively and seeking the good of our shared mission, rather than our own agenda.

Expertise:

we work to be the very best we can be in the areas where others rely on us to be expert.

Collaboration:

we seek, wherever possible, to collaborate with others – most especially with people who have direct experience of living in poverty.

Transparency:

we are clear and open with information and plans, acknowledge where things haven’t gone right, and demonstrate integrity and authenticity.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Our Commitment to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) are central to our work to achieving our vision of a UK without the need for food banks. We must ensure people with direct experience of poverty in their own lives shape every aspect of our work. Equally, we must do our part in dismantling the structural discrimination that cuts across our society and locks people in poverty.

We know that most people who need the support of a food bank are more likely to face obstacles that can make it harder to afford the essentials. Discrimination and health inequality can create barriers for people with protected characteristics like race, disability and gender. This isn’t right. And that’s why meaningful EDI work is core to our vision of ending the need for food banks.

We must be honest – we haven’t been a leader in EDI. We’re at the beginning of a longer journey and we know we have much more work to do. We need to work alongside communities and people with direct experience of poverty in their own lives to ensure all of this work is meaningful, clear and adopted by everyone.

You can read more about what we have implemented over the last 12 months on page 26.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

The challenges of Covid-19

Covid-19 presented huge challenges to our food bank network, as it did to our society as a whole. More people than ever were forced to turn to a food bank for support. This increased need was met with huge operational challenges.

Our network is powered by a small army of volunteers

We were faced with six key risks:

1. Food banks not having enough food donations to support their communities With supermarket shelves empty in the early months of the pandemic and people turning to online delivery so there were fewer people in stores to donate, food banks were at serious risk of not having sufficient food supplies to serve their communities.

2. Food banks unable to reach people With millions of people shielding, and many food banks unable to safely open their centres, people were unable to get the support they needed face-to-

face. The compassionate, practical support that was provided over a cup of tea at the food bank was no longer possible.

3. People unable to be referred safely to a food bank Everyone coming to a food bank needs a prior referral from care professionals such as health visitors, staff at schools and social workers. Most of these professional services had to stop in-person consultations during lockdown periods. This left people potentially struggling to access a referral and therefore unable to access the emergency food they needed.

4. More people than ever pushed into financial crisis Food banks were already incredibly busy responding to significant year on year increases in need. Staff, volunteers and space were already stretched to the limit in many cases.

5. Volunteers needing to shield or self-isolate As we entered the year, our network was powered by 28,000+ volunteers. A significant proportion had to self-isolate or shield during the various lockdown periods. This left food banks facing increased need at a time with fewer volunteers and less resources.

6. Lack of co-ordinated response and government funding The pandemic put huge pressure on an already failing social security system. There was a real risk that a lack of co-ordination and misdirection of funding could have exacerbated the already perilous situation.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Our Response

Ensuring food banks could get support to people who needed it.

In the early stages of the pandemic, some food items were difficult to obtain locally. Tesco donated £7.5 million worth of food to support food banks in our network, building on our existing partnership with them.

Volunteers from British Gas worked alongside with other businesses, including Palletforce, XPO, and The Entertainer, to help us coordinate the rapid set-up of a distribution network which made bulk deliveries to food banks in England, Wales, and Scotland. 22 regional warehouses were established and British Gas teams delivered food to 391 food banks over a period of thirteen weeks between April and June.

We adapted our operations model and supported food banks to move to a home delivery service. Food banks were able to deliver emergency food to people’s homes in a safe, dignified way. We also explored new signposting mechanisms and other practical support to help address the underlying causes of why someone needs a food bank. With the easing of lockdown, food donations from people and communities across the UK began to pick up on a scale never seen before. A staggering 27,000 tonnes of food was distributed over the course of the year.

Thankfully, we have not needed to continue a central distribution model and no food bank has run out of food. However, around 25% of food banks are continuing to offer home delivery (often alongside a centre-based service), as it works well for their community.

Allowing people who needed emergency support to access it safely To deal with the lack of in-person referrals, we rapidly rolled out our e-referral system. To do this, we distributed over 1,000 tablets with pre-loaded bespoke software to food banks.

In March 2019, 15% of all referrals to food banks in the Trussell Trust network were e-referrals. Use of e-referrals was rapidly accelerated in response to the pandemic, such that from May onwards, over 50% of referrals made every month have been e-referrals. More than 300 food banks are now regularly using e-referrals.

We also established a national helpline – Help through Hardship – with Citizens Advice to ensure that people in crisis could access a referral quickly. Between the launch in April and the end of March 2021, the helpline team answered 47,260 calls and almost 60,000 people were provided with emergency food.

Our hope for the helpline was always that it would provide advice first, at the right time so that callers would not need to use a food bank. From May 2020 onwards, all callers could receive a full benefit check and have any wider advice need such as debt, immigration, or housing assessed. Between September 2020 and March 2021, the helpline has unlocked over £7m in financial gains for people who were facing hardship. For some people, this increase in the income they were entitled to has been the difference between needing a food bank and buying their own food.

Providing emergency grants to food banks to help them adapt to the challenging environment To address the increase in need for food banks, we immediately opened an emergency grant fund to all food banks in the network. Grants of £5,000 were available to cover PPE purchase, extra staff hours, delivery costs, warehouse space and food purchase. Grants were received, assessed, and awarded within 72 hours on average.

In total, 368 grants were awarded to more than half of the food banks in the Trussell Trust Network. The total value of the grants distributed as part of this emergency response programme was in excess of £1m. These grants ensured food banks could continue to serve their communities and react to the challenging external environment.

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Recruiting and engaging volunteers so that food banks could continue to operate

38% of food bank volunteers had to stop volunteering due to the lockdown. This came at a time of highest need for food banks. In addition to their local volunteer engagement efforts, we rolled out a new web-based volunteering platform, Assemble. This enabled food banks to easily advertise and recruit to specific volunteer roles, as well as enabling them to manage volunteers and communicate with them more easily.

We were also able to engage 6,000 people to become social media volunteers or micro volunteers through our Time for Trussell programme, enabling them to support our work from their own homes.

£233m in local welfare assistance programmes in 2020-21

Presenting evidence and influencing policy makers Together with key sector partners, we presented compelling evidence of the impact of Covid-19 on the ground to UK government. In response to this robust evidence and targeted influencing, the government announced an additional £233 million in local welfare assistance programmes in 2020-21. You can read more about this in the Changing Policy section of this report, on page 22.

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Responding to increasing need: Key Facts

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Shetland
Shetland
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In the midst of these challenges, more people than ever have needed the support of food banks in the Trussell Trust Network over the past year.

Number of Scotland emergency food 221,554 parcels given by food banks in the Trussell Trust network in 2020-2021

Food banks operate out of more than 1,300 centres across the UK to provide a minimum of three days’ emergency food and support to people in crisis.

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North East
Northern Ireland 124,224 UK breakdown
78,827 North West
313,015
Yorkshire
& Humberside
122,726
East Midlands
133,890
West Midlands
226,237 East
244,595
33% Wales
145,828 London
421,426
South East
South West 302,905
201,971
50%
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In 2020/21, food banks in our network distributed 2.5 million three-day emergency food parcels. 980,000 of these were for children.

Emergency food parcels provided by our network increased by 33% on the previous year.

Total tonnage of food distributed was a 27,000 , an increase of 50% .

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Stories from the Covid Front Line

‘It has been wonderful to see the support from the local communities across the North West’

Gareth Duffield, Area Manager

It has been a privilege to work alongside our food banks in Lancashire, Merseyside, Warrington and Halton. The pressures have been immense. Need has increased across the region. Covid-19 has also meant that the normal way of doing things at food banks has been turned upside down. Many food banks have had to set up a home delivery service from scratch for people who couldn’t leave their homes. They have had to move their whole referral process online as people couldn’t access frontline referral partners in person.

It has also been wonderful to see the support from the local communities across the North West. People have been so kind, donating food, offering to volunteer, giving financial support.

I’m so proud of all the food banks in my area, and across the UK. The road ahead will not be easy but I’m sure that together we’ll be able to meet the challenge and ultimately see an end to the need for food banks.

Burngreave Foodbank

At Burngreave Foodbank, volunteers Mark and Trish were unable to do their normal volunteering at the centre. Instead, they volunteered from home, supporting every local organisation that normally refers people to the food bank to move from paper vouchers onto the digital system.

Their hard work and dedication in helping these organisations understand the new system meant local people could still access emergency help from the food bank safely throughout the outbreak. Rachel Snow, Project Manager at Burngreave Foodbank said:

“I honestly don’t know what I’d have done without their support in this way in the midst of all the chaos of the last few weeks. We moved to delivering all food parcels and using e-referrals only, and it’s mainly been down to their handling the entire e-referral transition for me that has enabled it to go as smoothly as it has.”

The Trussell Trust

Helpline

*Rachel had experienced domestic abuse for over 11 years. The relationship with her ex-partner ended last year. She now lives in rented accommodation, but she is suffering from the consequences of the abuse, including anxiety and panic attacks which have left her unable to work. Rachel called the Help through Hardship helpline as she was struggling to make ends meet. During the call, the advisor provided advice on her energy costs and discretionary housing payments, reducing the money she needed to pay for rent by £40 per month. The advisor was also able to provide information about Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and healthy start vouchers for her daughter.

Following the call, Rachel said ‘You were the light in my darkness today. I felt so comfortable talking with you and you never made me feel embarrassed or ashamed. Thank you so, so much.’

‘You were the light in my darkness today. Thank you so, so much’

*Names have been changed

Report and Accounts 2021

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Hugh
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‘People found significance in making a tangible difference to the lives of people in need’

Hugh McNeil, Project Manager Coventry Food Bank When the pandemic hit, it came with the force of a tsunami. Overnight everything about the food bank changed. It felt like we wouldn’t be able to cope. However, help arrived in the shape of new volunteers, businesses, corporate partners and organisations, turning up to help us tackle some of the issues facing our communities.

Throughout the pandemic, my heart was warmed by seeing more people than ever volunteering and supporting food banks right across the country. People found significance in making a tangible difference to the lives of people in need.

As we enter this new season, let us not forget why we did this, we did it because there was a need. This need has not gone away, if anything, things will probably get worse before they get better. Now is the time to go the extra mile, let’s not look backwards at the things that were, but forward to a “new norm” where serving becomes part of our everyday lives.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Edel Diamond and her team at South-West Belfast Foodbank.

How have local churches been involved?

Food Bank Focus: South-West Belfast Foodbank Edel Diamond, Manager of South-West Belfast Foodbank tells us about their work over the past year:

We’ve had some great support from local churches. The building we’re based in is an inter-faith building. West Belfast is a majority Catholic area and there is a small Protestant community that lives near the building. We’ve seen so many churches – from both communities – stepping up and supporting us practically. We’ve had really good prayer support too, which is really important.

How did you adapt to the impacts of the pandemic? We’ve been able to stay open throughout. We changed the way we were getting food to people. At the food bank centre, we installed a perspex hatch, so that we could serve people safely. We introduced a delivery model too and run deliveries three times a week. We’ve been doing more over the phone, including triaging people and providing basic welfare advice.

What about other groups in the community?

We are based in a very close-knit community. The amount of kindness that has been shown has been incredible: the food donations, the finance, and the support has been brilliant. Typically, people who come to us in need of emergency food are being well-supported on other issues by organisations.

What changes in needs have you seen over the past year?

Things have changed significantly in terms of the issues affecting people using the food bank. People are increasingly facing multiple challenges – not just one thing, and are often needing more extended support. People on zero hours contracts are facing real difficulties at the moment.

The amount of kindness that has been shown has been incredible: the food donations, the finance, and the support has been brilliant.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Our strategic priorities

Our Together for Change strategy (2020 to 2025) is based on three key themes: Changing Communities, Changing Policy and Changing Minds.

Changing Communities

Our changing communities work supports food banks to actively reduce the need for emergency food in their communities.

To achieve this, we aim to:

Improve access to support that helps people increase their income
Ensure that people can easily access services, such as debt advice, mental health support and relational support directly from statutory agencies or civil society groups
Mobilise people to make a difference through volunteering and activism

By supporting food banks to work towards these outcomes, we aim to reduce the number of people who will need to use a food bank, as well as preventing repeat visits.

Changing Communities:

Financial inclusion programme

Low income and problems with benefits are two of the main reasons why people end up needing emergency food. Helping resolve these problems and increasing people’s incomes can play a huge part in reducing the need for using a food bank. Our financial inclusion programme has a particular focus on maximising income from the social security system and enabling access to debt advice.

Mapping of financial inclusion provision found that 28% of the network (119 food banks) were offering financial inclusion services of some kind. This figure is increasing steadily and many food banks who don’t provide this inhouse have close working relationships with local advice agencies, to whom they can refer people for support.

We have supported more than 50 food banks with grants for financial inclusion work over the past year. These have mainly been used to provide income maximisation through welfare benefit advice and debt advice.

Financial inclusion in practice

At Hammersmith and Fulham Foodbank, with grant funding from the Trussell Trust two full-time advisers were employed, assisting 130 people on hundreds of advice issues in the first six months of the project. These advisers were able to support people with a range of issues including welfare benefits, debt, utilities and housing. This local partnership with Citizens Advice secured £73,326 in financial gains for clients between October 2020 and March 2021, averaging £564 per client.

Help through Hardship helpline

During the first lockdown, many agencies who usually referred people to food banks became difficult for people to access. To ensure people could get the support they needed, we partnered with Citizens Advice to set up Help through Hardship, a free helpline for people struggling to afford the essentials across England and Wales. In line with our aim of improving access to support that helps people increase their income, the helpline ensures that this support is offered at the earliest stage possible – before a food bank referral is made. Callers to the helpline can receive benefits advice, signposting to other specialist advice (e.g. debt, housing, immigration), and a referral to a food bank, if needed. The helpline hopes to increase people’s incomes by ensuring they are receiving all the benefits and any other income they are entitled to, so they do not need to use a food bank at all, or can avoid a repeat visit. Since the helpline opened in late April 2020, by the end of March 2021 more than 49,000 calls have been answered and over 21,000 unique people have spoken to an adviser. Almost 60,000 food bank parcels have been issued.

In September 2021, we began collecting more data about the impact of the helpline. By the end of March 2021 2,347 people had identified financial gains as a result of the support provided. The average identified increase in annual income per household was £3,131.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Help through Hardship Impact

Rob* lost his job during the pandemic and his partner had been furloughed. Rob called Help through Hardship because he was not able to afford food and was concerned about paying his rent. A benefit check was conducted, and Rob was advised to apply for Universal Credit and to request a council tax reduction. The adviser also issued a food bank voucher. The Universal Credit award and council tax reduction meant that Rob did not need help from the food bank again.

Imogen* had recently separated from her partner and was worried about how she would pay her bills once her maternity pay ended as she was not going to be able to return to work due to childcare commitments. The adviser completed a benefit check which established Imogen’s eligibility for Universal Credit. A food bank voucher was also issued to support Imogen in the short term. After receiving Universal Credit, Imogen was able to afford the basics for her family.

Rachel* received support from the helpline, and got back in touch to say:

“ You were the light in my darkness today, I felt so comfortable talking with you and you never made me feel like I was embarrassed or ashamed thank you so so much.”

*Names have been changed

80%

of food bank volunteers said that volunteering at the food bank had a positive impact on their connection with others in the local community.

63%

of food bank volunteers said that volunteering at the food bank had a positive impact on their sense of being able to change society for the better.

Changing Communities: Expanding volunteering

Our food bank network would not exist without the support of thousands of volunteers across the UK. During the pandemic, we’ve seen thousands more volunteers coming forward to join the Food Bank Network’s strong volunteer base increasing to 36,000+. We’ve also supported food banks with managing their existing and new volunteers by rolling out a new digital platform to help with rotas, communication and access to training.

Here is what a few of them had to say about it:

Anthony, Middlesbrough Foodbank:

“I had to use a food bank myself a few years ago and decided to repay them by bringing a tray of canned tomatoes to donate, as well as asking if they needed volunteers – to which they quickly replied yes! I have found it an enjoyable and rewarding experience.”

Marian, Norwich Foodbank:

“As a result of my work with children in schools, nurseries and in their own homes, I have met families who struggle to meet the basic needs of their children. I am ashamed to live in a wealthy country where so many children are inadequately fed. I have learned a bit about gratitude, humour and positivity from folk who are a lot less privileged than I am.”

78%

% of food bank volunteers said that volunteering at the food bank had a positive impact on their understanding of poverty

18%

of food bank volunteers have direct experience of living in poverty

Source: Trussell Trust survey of food bank volunteers and staff, conducted July 2020.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Changing Communities: Supporting food banks to form local strategies for change

In Autumn 2020, we officially launched our new Together for Change strategy, which had been cocreated with food banks in our network during 2019-20.

Throughout October 2020, we ran a series of virtual events to launch the strategy with food banks in the Trussell Trust Network. To support this new strategy, we also set up a new grants stream to provide food banks with the strategic resources needed to deliver Together for Change in their community. These grants have since been used to help food banks develop and deliver comprehensive strategic plans, provide immediate access to specialist debt or welfare benefits advice, relocate to fit-for-the-future premises, increase participation of people with recent direct experience of severe poverty, engage partners and communities in changing local policy and attitudes, implement advanced signposting, enhance inter-agency working, volunteer development and schools liaison.

‘we ran a series of virtual events to launch the Together for Change strategy with food banks in the Trussell Trust Network.’

During the remainder of 2020-21 and into 21-22, every food bank will continue to receive bespoke support from their area manager to help them consider the opportunities of Together for Change in their locality, and how they can start to build a plan for long-term solutions to increased food bank use.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Changing Policy

Government decisions can

have a huge impact on people in poverty. We’re using the evidence gathered through our Foodbank Network to drive policy change that will make sure we’re helping to shape a future where no one needs to use a food bank.

Specifically, our Changing Policy work aims to:

Build strong cross-party support for social and
economic policies that protect households from poverty and destitution
See people with lived experience of poverty
playing an ongoing part in informing national and local policies to alleviate destitution
Ensure that the social security system provides
timely and sufficient financial support and is available to all households who need it.

Over the past year, we have engaged with politicians and policymakers in each UK nation, sharing data and research findings to make the case for policy changes that will reduce the need for food banks.

Changing Policy:

Working together to call for change

We know that we can only see an end to the need for food banks if we work together within the anti-poverty sector and beyond. In May, we formed a new coalition of charities including Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), Children’s Society, Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), StepChange, IFAN and Turn2Us to call for a temporary Coronavirus Emergency Income Support Scheme to ensure people facing financial hardship can access the resources needed to stay afloat.

Throughout the last 12 months, we’ve worked closely with these partners to continue to call for changes that will help end the need for food banks.

Changing Policy:

Providing robust data, evidence and research

Over the last year, we have released regular data to help raise awareness of the increasing need for food banks, and to share insight on the solutions that can ensure everyone can afford the essentials.

Data from food banks showed the devasting impact of the pandemic with:

an 81% increase in emergency food parcels during
the last two weeks of March 2020, compared to the same period in the previous year
an 89% increase in need for emergency food parcels
in April 2020 compared to April 2019.

In September 2020, we released ‘Lockdown, lifelines and the long haul ahead’ charting the existing and likely future impact of the pandemic on food bank use. The following month, we released our ‘Local Lifelines’ report to highlight the vital role that local authorities’ local welfare assistance schemes in England have played during Covid-19, calling for the extension of the additional funding, as well as long-term investment.

In October, we released our mid-year stats, revealing that more people than ever have needed to use a food bank and highlighting that 2,600 food parcels were provided to children every day on average for the first six months of the pandemic.

At the end of 2020, we launched ‘Lift the Burden’, a report showing that almost three in four households on Universal Credit using food banks over summer were repaying debt to the government.

Our report ‘Dignity or Destitution’, which launched in February 2021, made the case for keeping the £20 uplift to Universal Credit, showing how it helped people afford the essentials and highlighting people’s fears about the impact its removal will have on their lives.

Changing Policy:

Influencing policy makers

Using this data and research, and working alongside partners, we called for policy changes that would help create a more just future, and ensure that more people can afford the essentials.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Thanks to our campaigning alongside partners, in June 2020 the government announced £63 million in additional funding to be distributed to local authorities in England to people struggling to afford food and other essentials due to the pandemic. Following our successful lobbying, the Scottish Government aligned its funding of advice services to the objective of reducing the need for food banks.

We called on the government to lock the £20 weekly increase to Universal Credit brought in at the start of the pandemic and invest further funding in local welfare assistance. In response the government announced a Covid-19 Winter Grant Scheme, in November, including £170 million for councils in England to support people worst affected by crisis.

In March 2021, in line with our recommendations, the UK government brought forward plans to ease the impact of debt deductions and extend the repayment period. The UK government also agreed to a six-month extension of the £20 weekly increase to Universal Credit. To achieve our Changing Policy goals, we recognise the need to work with government and elected officials across all four nations. In Scotland we contributed to the Social Renewal Advisory Board’s report to the Scottish Government, ‘If not now, when?’ which called for government action to deliver enough money for a decent life from paid work and social security and to reduce poverty. Building on this, successful lobbying efforts led to the Scottish Government aligning its funding of advice services to the objective of reducing the need for food banks.

Furthermore, at a hustings hosted by a Trussell Trust food bank in Glasgow in advance of elections to the Scottish Parliament in May, Nicola Sturgeon gave a commitment to work towards the end for the need for food banks in Scotland. In Wales, we worked with partners in the anti-poverty coalition to highlight the impact of the five week wait for Universal Credit and the need for cash first solutions to mitigate the impact of welfare benefit changes.

The Trussell Trust supports measures to reduce the need for food banks across all parties and levels of government.

In May 2020, the Welsh government announced an additional £11m for the Discretionary Assistance fund along with increased flexibilities which allow people to make claims up to five times a year. The coalition also successfully called on the Welsh government to ensure local authorities were able to offer direct cash payments to children entitled to free school meals during school closures and through school holidays.

Changing Policy:

APPG on Ending the Need for Food Banks

The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Ending the Need for Food Banks held its inaugural AGM in December 2020. Chaired by Labour MP Neil Coyle, the group brings together parliamentarians from all parties who have an interest in, and commitment to, ending the need for food banks. The Trussell Trust serves as the secretariat to the APPG, which provides a forum for discussion, scrutinises government policies that affect food bank use, and works to build support for measures to reduce the need for food banks across all parties and levels of government.

We held a joint event with the APPG for Universal Credit on retaining the £20 Universal Credit uplift, as well as events focusing on strengthening local welfare assistance. This work is playing a strategic and vital part in our efforts to build strong, cross-party support for social and economic policies that protect households from destitution.

50 Meetings with MPs and UK Government ministers and officials

£233 million in additional funding for local welfare assistance committed by UK Government

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Changing Minds

We know that lasting change happens when wider society thinks and acts differently about an issue. Our Changing Minds work is about

influencing attitudes and beliefs about UK poverty, and building support for solutions.

We aim to:

Increase public will for long-term solutions to end the need for food banks
Increase understanding of, and empathy with, food bank use
Mobilise people to take action to help bring about long-term solutions to end the need for food banks

We’re working collaboratively with food banks and people with experience of living in severe poverty to build greater public awareness and understanding about the drivers of food bank use, and to call more people to take action to create change.

Changing Minds:

Forming a movement for change

In November 2020, we launched an ambitious campaign to build a movement of people who will work alongside

us to create a hunger free future. This campaign, ‘Hunger Free Future’, helped to build awareness, understanding and consideration of hunger and poverty in the UK. Together we called for a future where everybody had enough money for the essentials, asking people to stand with us and

make this future a reality. The campaign gained support from Marcus Rashford, Liam Payne, Ladbaby and many more influencers, as well as partners like Facebook, Asda and New River. In the first phase of the campaign, it achieved over 34 million social media impressions, engaged over 100,000 people to join the movement for change and raised over £4 million to work towards a future where no one needs the support of a food bank to get by.

Changing Minds: Putting people with experience of severe poverty at our heart

We are committed to putting people who have needed to use a food bank at the heart of our decision making. We define ‘participation’ as the process of building relationships and collaborating with people who have lived experience of struggling with severe financial hardship. From helping us design and deliver our services to helping a wider audience understand the impact of hunger and destitution, we want people with personal knowledge and experience of severe poverty to be involved in every part of our work, as frequently and meaningfully as possible.

Every week, food banks across the UK welcome people with this experience of severe poverty with hospitality, respect and care. Together, we stand in solidarity with one another. But we also recognise there’s much more we could and should be doing to move towards the full participation of people who need to access a food bank’s services in every aspect of our work together.

To support this ambition, during 2019-20, we worked with a specialist advisor to help identify key opportunities for the further embedding of this experience in every aspect of our work. This project highlighted a range of ways in which we should improve access, representativeness and involvement – including by forming a new team at the Trussell Trust to focus specifically on helping us as an organisation and a network of food banks improve our work in this area.

We look forward to sharing our progress in this area in next year’s annual report.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

100,000 people sign up to be part of this movement for change and £4 million raised.

Changing Minds: Highlights of media coverage

April 2020 Liam Payne donates to Trussell Trust and tweets about his visit to a food bank reaching an audience of 34m.
November 2020 We release our mid year statistics showing that 2,600 emergency food parcels were provided for children every day on average by food banks in our network during the first six months of the pandemic.
December 2020 Ladbaby reaches number one in the charts for the third consecutive Christmas in support of Trussell Trust.
January 2021 Hastings Foodbank features on Newsnight, highlighting the impact of Covid-19.
February 2021 Emma Revie features in an ITV special ‘On the Breadline: Foodbank Britain?’

We aim to:

Increase public will for longterm solutions to end the need for food banks

Increase awareness of the problem of destitution and its structural causes

Mobilise people to take action to help bring about long-term solutions to end the need for food banks.

l k

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Our commitment to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)

You can read more about why we are committed to EDI on page 11. We are at the beginning of our journey, and we know we have much more work to do. But we are proud that we’ve made some positive steps over the last 12 months.

Over the last year, we have:

Appointed a Director for Diversity and Inclusion and
Director of Participation to drive forward and embed our approach across the organisation and network.
Launched our EDI Strategy Activity Plans embedding EDI across all of our work and tackling structural inequalities and discrimination.
Implemented an online recruitment platform that reduces unconscious bias from our recruitment processes, and supports our managers to be diversity-confident in how they recruit.

We’ve Gained accreditation as a Disability Confident Employer.

We’ve also supported Trussell Trust food banks across the UK with resources and EDI advice including:

Providing translation and interpretation services, focusing on the translation of packing lists into a range of languages.
Launched several safe spaces focusing on race, disability LGBTQIA+, and faith.
Building links with support groups for asylum seekers and refugees in Glasgow.
Implemented EDI training for our trustees, senior leadership team and managers including induction for all new starters.
Run EDI challenges for teams to reflect and strengthen their EDI learning, run smaller knowledge hubs, created EDI guidance and best practice resources.
Continued to provide opportunities for staff and volunteers with a disability, throughout the organisation including our charity shops.
Gained accreditation as a Disability Confident Employer.
Working with the Roma community in partnership with a local Roma community centre, in particular their translators, who help the food bank make sure they understand what support someone might be looking for from them.
Supporting food banks in Northern Ireland which have been building equality, diversity and inclusion into food bank activity through sessions run by the South Belfast Roundtable against Racism.
We have identified gaps in our work across communities in Northern Ireland and have developed a strategic plan to begin to address these gaps in 2021/22.

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Over the next 12 months, we will:

Continue to challenge inequalities and structural discrimination for people experiencing barriers
Continue to ensure that diverse groups of people with lived experience of poverty are included and central to informing our work.
Continue to ensure that EDI is embedded through all our work and be able to articulate the impact that this has had.

We have launched several safe spaces focussing on race, disability LGBTQIA+, and faith.

Roll out an equality impact assessment to ensure that our policies, practices and key projects are fair and do not present barriers to participation or disadvantage any protected groups from participation.
Provide further learning and development around EDI across our board of trustees, senior leadership, staff, volunteers and the network.
Continue to create psychologically safe spaces where all of our employees and volunteers are celebrated for their diversity, experience equity, feel included and have a sense of belonging, launching additional safe spaces for carers and menopause in 2022.
We aim to be an exemplar of an inclusive employer of choice within the charity sector.
Co-create, where requested, EDI approaches that take account of local context.
Ensure that we have robust equality data that can help monitor progress across our employees and the impact that we are having in local communities.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Looking forward: Building a future without the need for food banks

In the months following this annual report, lockdown restrictions and social distancing measures continued across the UK. The focus of our operational service continued to be supporting food banks to operate safely and securely, responding appropriately to distinct national guidelines across the four nations.

As a result of the significant generosity of donors throughout the whole of 2020-21, we entered the new financial year with a surplus of £49.08m carried forward. We are forecasting a full year income in 2021-22 above pre-pandemic levels although reduced from 2020-21 – recognising the commitment of many donors and partners to continue their support of our vision for a UK without the need for food banks.

Changing Communities programme boost

Our Together for Change strategy is based on three thematic areas of impact: Changing Communities, Changing Policy and Changing Minds. In response to this extraordinary level of in-year income, we have made the decision to prioritise investment in the area of Changing Communities, as a foundational building block for our wider work in public engagement and policy influencing.

In 2021/22, we are beginning this investment, through a focus on four areas of work:-

i) Increasing the availability and accessibility of services focused on maximising the income of people who are experiencing severe poverty – through expansion of our central partnerships to provide advice services via dedicated helplines, and by providing additional grants for food banks in the Trussell Trust network to fund advisors to support in food bank sessions.

iii) To increase the specialist support which the Trussell Trust provides to food banks in the network, by improving the ratio of regional staff to food banks, releasing time and specialist skills to help support food banks in bringing about longer-term solutions locally. We’ll also be increasing the range of practical tools and methods – often developed in partnership with other community development specialists – which are available to food banks to help them deliver long-lasting impact.

iv) Finally, we’ll also be stepping up our Pathfinder Programme, doubling its capacity to accommodate 60 food banks dedicated to piloting new forms of anti-poverty strategies locally.

Although we are prioritising investment in our Changing Communities area through these four strands, this investment will continue to add value into our Changing Policy and Changing Minds strands of activity. We continue to see stronger and stronger links between work that is delivered through community development work and public and policy change – locally and across the UK – building on our larger range of expertise and capabilities unlocked through new volunteers and paid staff, both in food banks and at the Trussell Trust.

ii) More broadly, to increase availability of grant funding to food banks to help them strengthen their ability to directly address the causes and symptoms of severe poverty in their locality as the UK begins to experience the longer-term economic consequences of the pandemic.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Changing Minds and Changing Policy

Specifically, in the area of Changing Minds, we’ll continue to extend our Hunger Free Future movementbuilding activity and galvanise this movement for action.

In Changing Policy, we’ll strengthen our work with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Ending the Need for Food Banks, and grow our research base to demonstrate both the scale of the problem and potential solutions.

Combining our expertise in policy influencing and public engagement, we have launched a neworganising project, which includes grant funding in the we’ll continue area of Organising and Local Mobilsation to enable food to extend our banks to galvanise change locally, and will back this up centrally with the development of a peer training Hunger Free Future network to initially enable food banks in 30 areas across the UK to employ specialist staff. movement-building It’s our intention that the deployment of our resources activity, and across these strategic priority areas, all of which are galvanise this focused on addressing the long-term drivers of food bank use, will be partially completed in 21/22 and fully movement for complete in 22/23. action.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

FINANCIAL REVIEW

Where our income comes from

----- Start of picture text -----
2%
<1%
1%
16%
Income
£57.78m
30%
----- End of picture text -----

Public donations – £29.53m Corporate supporters – £17.43m Trusts & Foundations – £8.97m

We are reliant upon the generosity of all our supporters to fund our charitable activities and work towards a future where no one goes hungry. Our income is made up of donations (including Gift Aid) and legacies from individuals, plus donations, grants, and contractual partnership payments from corporates, trusts and foundations.

Public donations

Corporate supporters Trusts & Foundations Charity retail & other trading Donated food Investments

Donated food – £1.01m

This represents the financial value of food and toiletries donated for distribution by the food banks directly operated by the Trussell Trust (Brent Foodbank and for part of the year, Salisbury Foodbank and Coventry Foodbank).

Investments – £0.01m

We received a modest amount of income from bank interest and from our small share portfolio before its closure.

Charity retail (& other trading) – £0.83m

This relates primarily to funds raised by our charity shops. As a result of government Covid-19 restrictions, these were closed for six months of the year and as such received government business support grants to partially compensate for lost income.

Food bank network fees – £nil

At the beginning of the year, in light of the pandemic, we took the decision not to charge food banks the annual membership fee. This will continue for at least the 2021-22 financial year.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Where we spend our income

Expenditure £18.72m

Food bank network support Grants to food bank network Helpline funding Advocacy Fundraising costs Charity retail

The expenditure values depicted on this page are shown after the inclusion of support cost allocations (see note 7).

Food bank network costs and benefits – £6.61m

Over a third of our expenditure relates to our provision of non-financial support to food banks in our network, to enable them to deliver their services effectively. Also included here are the running costs of the food banks directly operated by the Trussell Trust.

Advocacy – £3.18m

Costs included here relate to our research, strategy, and policy work. In order to achieve our ultimate charitable aim of ending hunger and poverty in the UK, we must identify the structural issues that drive people to food banks and influence policy makers to address these issues.

Grants to food bank network – £4.36m

Around a quarter of our expenditure consists of grants (plus a small amount of support costs needed to facilitate this) made to the food banks in our network, both to address short term need and to enable them to work towards a future without the need for food banks.

Fundraising costs – £2.12m

Like every charity, we must invest in our fundraising team to enable them to secure the funding we require to continue and expand our charitable work. For further information on the way in which we approach fundraising, see page 40.

Helpline funding – £1.42m

We partnered with Citizens Advice to establish the Help Through Hardship helpline, which acts as a referring agent to food banks, but also provides free expert advice to people experiencing acute financial difficulty.

Charity retail – £1.03m

This expenditure covers the costs of running our charity shops, including staff, buildings, and vehicles. Our shops were closed for six months of the year, and for the remainder of the year saw lower than typical footfall. Extraordinarily, this resulted in a net financial deficit.

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE & POSITION

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

For the year to 31 March 2021, the Trussell Trust generated a surplus of £39.07m, an increase from a surplus of £7.35m in the year to 31 March 2020 – our supporters, both new and existing, have responded to the demands of the Covid-19 pandemic with overwhelming generosity. This both enabled us to step up our operations during this difficult period, and also creates a strong financial platform to enable us to build upon and expand our Together For Change strategy over the next four years.

A summary of the year’s results can be found on page 52 of this report and accounts.

Income

Thanks to our generous supporters – the general public, corporates, trusts and foundations – substantially increasing their support for our work, our income rose 171% to £57.78m. A breakdown of total income by source can be seen on page 30 and further analysis seen in notes 2 to 6.

Costs

As our support increased, so did our commitment to deliver impact. As well as the direct support to the Food Bank network during this critical time, we have had the opportunity to accelerate our ambitious plans to end the need for food banks in the UK through resourcing our key strategy areas of Changing Minds, Changing Communities and Changing Policy, and as we have geared up to have greater impact this year have seen an increase in expenditure of 34% to £18.72m.

This year saw the launch of the Help through Hardship helpline, which created a new area of expenditure for the charity, primarily consisting of £1.42m in direct funding provided to Citizens Advice. A breakdown of total expenditure can be seen on page 31 and further analysis in note 7.

In 2020-21 the rate of increase in expenditure did not match the rate of increase in income. This largely reflects the fact that at the peak of the pandemic, food banks faced significant logistical and capacity challenges, preventing many of them from investing in and developing strategic services within a short time frame. However, even with these capacity challenges, we were able to significantly increase investment into the food bank network via our grant-making in year (£4.2m), which has continued into 21/22, with an anticipated grant-making support of the network of £30m.

This increase in 2021-22 and subsequent years, will enable impact delivery through our Changing Communities Programme Boost, Changing Minds and Changing policy strategic plans (see page 28 for more details).

Directly operated food banks

As of 1 April 2020, the charity directly operated three food banks: Salisbury, Coventry and Brent. Income and expenditure recognised in the charity’s statement of financial activities relates only to food donated to and distributed by these food banks and is not a measure of food donations and disbursements across the Food Bank network as a whole.

Salisbury Foodbank (on 1st November 2020) and Coventry Foodbank (on 1st February 2021) each transferred out of the Trussell Trust charity and now operate as members of the wider Food Bank network. Stock shown on the balance sheet for 31st March 2021 therefore relates solely to food held by Brent Foodbank.

Reserves policy

The purpose of the reserves policy for The Trussell Trust is to ensure the stability of the delivery of the mission, programmes, employment, and ongoing operations of the Trussell Trust, recognising that the charity has committed to long-term support of the Food Bank network.

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Unrestricted free reserves are not intended to cover a permanent loss of funds. They are intended to provide an internal source of funds for situations such as:

a temporary fall in income or increase in expenditure
as well as covering working capital requirements
one-time unbudgeted expenditure, such as
uninsured losses or emergency grants to our network partners
to allow the organisation time to respond to a
permanent fall in income or increase in expenditure
to take advantage of new opportunities in strategic
priority areas

The current target range for unrestricted free reserves is set following a risk-based approach. When calculated this equates to three months of projected operating expenditure including grants to the network.

Funds

The total funds of the charity at 31 March 2021 were £49.08m. This includes £4.28m of restricted funds, so that the funds available for use at the charity’s discretion totalled £44.81m. Of these the trustees have made the following designations:

Together for Change strategy – these three funds
(Changing Communities £18.1m, Changing Minds £6.74m and Changing Policy £1.905m) together totalling £26.75m represent funds that will be spent down over the next two years to magnify and accelerate the delivery of the Trussell Trust’s Together for Change strategic plan, enabling us to provide increased funding and support to our network and to expand our impact throughout this challenging period and during the recovery from it. This represents approximately 45% of the projected expenditure of £58.6m in 2021-22.
Pathfinder grant programme – £3m has been
designated, based on budgeted levels of grants to be awarded in 2021-22 to food banks signed up to our Pathfinder programme.
Asda and Tesco top-ups – the charity has established
the practice of distributing the top-up donations received by Asda and Tesco, after the deduction of a small percentage for the charity’s core costs, to the Food Bank Network. These monies have therefore been set aside as designated funds – the balances on these funds at 31 March totalled £0.09m.

At 31 March 2021 the charity’s free reserves, being funds neither restricted nor designated, were £14.98m – this figure is in line with the reserves policy above and is reflective of the highly unpredictable and challenging operating environment we find ourselves in. Having reserves available allows us to quickly act where needed across the network whether to take advantage of opportunities to collaborate with other organisations who share our vision and values or support the food bank network with additional resources to meet their needs. An analysis of net assets between funds can be found in Note 22.

Investment policy

In March 2021 the charity’s portfolio of shares (valued at £0.1m) was liquidated and closed, while £25m was invested in a cash deposit account with CCLA.

The Trussell Trust’s priority is to spend its resources as promptly as strategically and operationally possible and in line with its mission to end the need for food banks in the UK. On occasion and due to significant shifts in income and expenditure trends, the charity may be holding larger than anticipated reserves. At such times the overall objective is:

to operate within an ethical framework
for investment
to manage counterparty risk of cash holding

Investment decisions are sought to be made in line with:

The Charity’s values of Compassion, Justice,
Community and Dignity.
The Charity’s vision to end the need for food banks
in the UK.
The Charity’s ethical standards.

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Principal risks and uncertainties

The pandemic has inevitably created a significant amount of uncertainty and disruption. The resulting risks have been managed through our wellestablished risk management processes which have been embedded and have proved robust.

The Senior Leadership Group (SLG) assesses likelihood and impact of risks on a rolling monthly basis and review potential mitigating actions. The Finance, Audit and Risk board subcommittee reviews risk processes and significant risks as a standing agenda item and the Board of Trustees is updated on key risks at each meeting. During the early months of the pandemic the SLG met daily and reviewed key emerging risks on a weekly basis in conjunction with members of the Board. As the pandemic progressed into the summer months, the meeting reverted to monthly but with interim meetings where necessary.

At present, key risks faced by the organisation can be broadly categorised as follows:

A highly challenging and unpredictable operating environment

As detailed above, the pandemic has radically disrupted our normal operating model. The food bank network has responded with agility and creativity but there is still the risk of Covid-19 restrictions impacting food banks’ ability to support their communities. We remain particularly concerned about the impact any continued reduction in face-to-face contact might have on the ability of food banks to provide wraparound support for people referred to their services. To mitigate this, we continue to offer support with guidelines and advice around virtual signposting and socially distanced in-person meetings. Our Help through Hardship helpline has provided an effective alternative advice route as well.

In addition, economic uncertainty – caused both by the pandemic and the removal of key temporary government support such as the £20 uplift to Universal Credit – will likely see a continued rise in the need for emergency food. Supply chain issues facing supermarkets also risk affecting the amount of the food the public are able to donate via permanent collection points. We are working closely with our supermarket partners and network to monitor food flow.

Food bank capacity

The past year has been exceptionally difficult for food banks. They have been stretched to the limit and have been on the frontline, in daily contact with people who deeply affected by the pandemic. This has taken a heavy toll. As the impact of the pandemic continues, there is a risk of stress and fatigue built up over the year reducing the capacity of food banks to put in place long term solutions. To mitigate this risk, we are providing dedicated support through our on the ground area manager team, tailored easy to access grant funding, increased resources through our digital hub and helpline, and access to specific well-being support for volunteers.

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Diversity, inclusion and participation

If we are to successfully end the need for food banks, we need to design and implement effective programmes that put the perspectives of people with lived experience of poverty front and centre. Without this, our programmes risk being ineffectual. This is of particular importance in our Changing Minds and Changing Policy work where diverse voices of people with lived experience are notably lacking. We recognise the need to improve in this area and continue to make it a top priority. Practically this means we have recruited two senior level posts to drive forward this agenda and have developed robust and long term strategies which we are now in the process of implementing, both within the charity and the wider food bank network.

Decrease in coverage and support for food banks

With the significant increase in need over the past year, food banks have been at the forefront of the national conversation. Widespread media coverage has helped contribute to a rise in financial support for the charity and individual food banks. It has provided a spur to our changing minds and changing policy work. As we emerge from the crisis there is a risk that the national conversation moves on and the issue of food banks is less salient, resulting in a potential reduction in support. To counteract this risk, we created a new Public Engagement directorate with expanded capacity and expertise. This new team will expand our media and campaigning footprint and build on the support received during Covid-19, ensuring that the cause remains high on the national agenda.

The fragmentation of emergency food provision

The past year has seen numerous community groups come forward to provide food to people within their local communities. While this has provided additional support during the pandemic, there is a risk that these ‘food-response’ initiatives become embedded and that the systemic drivers of hunger are not addressed. Our approach is clear: food is not the long-term answer to hunger and that there is a need for anti-poverty solutions that go far beyond provision of emergency food. It is crucial that new local and national foodprovision entities share and support this message. To this end, we are engaging widely with local councils and national providers, alongside increasing our on the ground support to food banks to navigate the new environment.

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Report and Accounts 2021

OUR SUPPORTERS

Thanks to our supporters

Through our fundraising, we aim to ensure the financial resilience and sustainability of the Trussell Trust and the food banks in our network by nurturing supportive relationships, raising funds, collecting food, and more.

Our fundraising approach continues to be based on the following principles:

We put supporters and food banks at the heart of everything we do.
We diversify our income mix and strive to increase our unrestricted income.
We aim to develop more predictable and sustainable income streams.
We invest for long-term returns.
We use data and insight to inform our fundraising planning.

Last year, we generated income through fundraising of £57.8m. This astonishing level of support was driven by an outpouring of support from the public.

Individual donations accounted for £29.5m alone, including community events and sponsored fundraising. We have also benefitted from huge support from corporate partners – £17.4m – and trust and foundations, £9.0m.

Our inspirational supporters

Our supporters are central to everything we do. We are acutely aware of the sacrifice supporters make to support us financially and are committed to providing the best possible experience for all our supporters, from our individual regular givers, to our community fundraiser, corporate and trust partners.

We have had thousands of people support us for the first time this year. People have displayed amazing ingenuity and creativity: from climbing the height of Everest at home, to running in fancy dress, walking the virtual length of the Thames Path and much more.

To ensure that we recognise these amazing efforts and give supporters the best possible experience, we have created a specific team focused on creating excellent tailored communications and expanded our supporter care team to ensure we are responsive to any questions our supporters may have and that gifts are processed quickly and accurately. We continue to use data insights to make sure our communications are up-to-date and personalised to each supporter.

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Report and Accounts 2021

Corporate partners

Asda

Our partnership with Asda was launched in 2018 to help tackle poverty in the UK. The transformational Fight Hunger Create Change programme worth £10 million across three years provided over one million people with food and support, as well as distributing £5.8 million in grants to food banks in the network. Grant money was provided to support the recruitment of specialist advisors, transforming services on the ground. The partnership commissioned State of Hunger, an in-depth piece of independent research into food bank use and hunger in the UK, enabling us to map referral pathways, build a demographic picture of people who use food banks, and understand the most common drivers of food bank usage. This has helped transform our policy work with government and our public campaigning to create lasting change. Asda donated an additional £2.5 million right at the start of the pandemic to help people facing hardship. This enabled us to respond quickly to the crisis and put in place key support services. This included the launch of our Help through Hardship Helpline which ensured online referrals for emergency food parcels were quickly and easily accessible.

British Gas

Our partnership with British Gas played a vital role in sustaining and strengthening the food banks’ support for people

in crisis during the pandemic. More than 1,700 British Gas engineers and staff offered their invaluable support to 391 food banks in our network by providing transport and delivery services of food from supermarkets to food banks and then home deliveries to people’s homes. We continue to work together in partnership, focusing on support in local communities.

Cadent Foundation

In December 2020, we were awarded a £1.5 million grant from the Cadent Foundation as part of a new three-year strategic partnership. The funding is being used to tackle destitution through income maximisation and debt advice services, providing support and information to help people manage existing debt and gain access to benefits and grants they may be entitled to but are not already claiming. This will support the creation of sustainable services needed locally and help make sure people have enough money for the essentials. The Cadent Foundation is funded by local gas network Cadent and has been established to support projects that help people living in vulnerable situations and disadvantaged communities.

Tesco

We have hugely valued working with Tesco for the last nine years – and thanks to the generosity of customers and colleagues, together we have provided over 50 million meals for people in crisis over that time. In the early stages of the pandemic, when some food items were difficult to obtain locally, Tesco donated £7.5 million worth of food. This was a huge boost to our network at a critical time. Tesco is committed to building stronger communities, and this year, our partnership includes both a Summer and Winter National Food Collection. With over 500 Tesco stores across the UK collecting donations and raising awareness for the Trussell Trust, these collections are vital in ensuring that food banks in our network can continue to provide compassionate and dignified support to people in crisis.

Bank of America

We launched a two-year employee fundraising partnership across their offices in the UK. Bank of America employees are raising funds in lots of exciting ways, including virtual skill sharing sessions, a graduate challenge, running, walking, cycling and obstacle events and their annual Thanksgiving auction and fundraising day. These funds will help people in crisis by supporting our food bank network through grants and operations support. The funding will also support our Help through Hardship helpline. This is delivered in partnership with Citizens Advice and provides specialist income maximisation advice for people and families in crisis. Bank of America firmly supports our long-term vision of a UK without the need for food banks and has helped secure communications coverage of our work to raise awareness and support our Together for Change strategy, and this will continue into 2022.

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Report and Accounts 2021

Corporate partners

Cadbury

Cadbury has supported us during their seasonal campaigns at Christmas and Easter through both cash and in-kind donations. Together we aim to bring a little bit of extra joy to people during the holidays.

Mars Food

Our partnership with Mars Food, Stand Against Hunger, which began in 2020, features on millions of packs of Dolmio and Ben’s Original and helps us to bring the issue of hunger in the UK to a mass audience.

Waitrose

Waitrose continued to support our work with a cash donation in the summer of this year. They also encouraged their customers to donate food in store, helping food banks in the network to support over 55,000 families in the first quarter of this year.

Morrisons

Morrisons has generously provided numerous ways for their customers to support us during the pandemic when fewer shoppers were able to go in store, including an online donation mechanism which has so far raised more than £500,000.

WW

Since the start of our partnership in 2019, WW has raised more than £500,000 through a number of campaigns, challenges and members’ generosity. We’ve been inspired by the number of members who have redeemed their WellnessWins for a donation to help support families in crisis.

New River

We are thrilled to have continued working with New River for the second year. The partnership provides vital support to food banks in our network, enabling them to collect food supplies through donation drop-off points in its shopping centres, as well as having access to storage facilities to be able to store the donated food.

Cisco

Cisco continue to support our work for the ninth year with a generous donation helping to develop stronger e-referral pathways for our network and driving forwards our Together for Change strategy.

We’d also like to thank the following companies who supported us throughout the past year, including Tropic Skincare, XTX Markets, Revolut, Experian, National Grid, and 3i.

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Report and Accounts 2021

Trusts and Foundations

Pears Foundation

We continue to deeply appreciate the long-term support of the Pears Foundation. Thanks to their core support for our financial inclusion work, we were able to launch our income maximisation programme, providing over £1m in grants to food banks to provide high quality benefits advice, free of charge. We look forward to working together over the next five years with the aim of providing high quality benefits and debt advice to everyone referred to a food bank.

Indigo Trust, Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Three Guineas Trust

Right at the beginning of the pandemic, the Indigo Trust, Gatsby Charitable Foundation and the Three Guineas Trust awarded grants of £1m each. This early support was critical in allowing us to respond quickly and confidently to the unfolding crisis. All three trusts have played a pivotal role in helping food banks to remain open and operating throughout the pandemic. We are indebted to them for their wonderfully generous and timely support.

Vertex Foundation

An incredibly generous grant from the Vertex Foundation played a key role in allowing us to launch the Help Through Hardship helpline in April 2020. Their support in the early months allowed us to rapidly expand the helpline capacity, adding the crucial advice element that has proved so successful identifying financial gains and thus tackling the drivers of crisis. We deeply appreciated their additional grant in support our food banks in London. We look forward to continuing and deepening our partnership in the coming years.

Other highlights

We are incredibly grateful for the generosity and partnership we have received from numerous charitable trusts and foundations during this most difficult of years. These grants have played a critical role in allowing us to radically increase our support of food banks during the pandemic and significantly expand our key programmes to end the need for food banks. We are particularly grateful for the transformational support from Portrack Charitable Trust, Allchurches Trust, Dulverton Trust, St James Place Foundation, Ricard Foundation, Tanlaw Foundation, City Bridge Trust, and the Scotshill Charitable Trust.

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Report and Accounts 2021

Our promise to supporters

We could not continue to work towards our vision without our amazing supporters. We deeply appreciate their support. In response to their generosity, we promise to:

Safeguard their personal details
Treat them with respect, honesty and openness
Take into account the needs of individuals who may be in vulnerable circumstances or require additional care and support to make an informed decision
Never put them under pressure to make or continue a gift
Use their gifts for the purpose for which they are given, and spend donations so they have the most impact
Respect their wishes and preferences
Listen to them about how they want to be contacted and honour their choices
Be receptive to feedback and use this to improve our processes and procedures
Take appropriate action if they are unhappy with our services, and accept the authority of the Fundraising Regulator if we cannot resolve their complaint
Never share, sell or rent their personal data to third parties for marketing purposes
Go above and beyond our legal requirements
Provide the services of a dedicated Support Care Team.

How we protect vulnerable people

We care for each and every one of our supporters and follow the Fundraising Code of Practice to ensure they are properly protected and looked after.

How we support our vulnerable fundraisers

It is important to ensure that all our fundraising is conducted in an ethical way and we are committed to fair treatment of all our supporters. Our dedicated community and events team work with our volunteer fundraisers who notify us that they are organising their own event in aid of the Trussell Trust. We provide all the appropriate support, information resources, and acknowledgement. If we have not been notified in advance, we provide a receipt and acknowledgement after the donation has been made.

Volunteer fundraisers who are appointed by the charity must provide their contact details and two references before they are able to begin their roles. All volunteers have a designated point of contact at the Trussell Trust and are supported in their role. They are also reimbursed for relevant expenses, upon proof of purchase.

Our fundraising approach

All fundraising is carried out by our in-house fundraising team and volunteer fundraisers, who are supported by our Supporters Promise.
No external professional fundraisers work on behalf of the Trussell Trust.
The Trussell Trust complies with the Fundraising Regulator and the Code of Fundraising Practice. There have been no compliance issues in the year.
No complaints were received in the year relating to fundraising.

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Report and Accounts 2021

Our volunteers

Our food bank network is powered by a small army of volunteers who give their time and talents freely each week. Coming from all ages and backgrounds, we are always astounded by their motivation, commitment and resilience, which has never been more evident than in the past year.

Research we conducted with over 2,800 volunteers during June/July 2020 shows that around 38% of existing volunteers in food banks stopped volunteering due to the pandemic, counterbalanced by around 27% of existing volunteers who are doing more volunteering, and a cohort of new regular volunteers.

In addition to this ‘on-the-ground’ volunteering via food banks, over 10,000 people came forward at the beginning of the pandemic offering to volunteer. Thankfully, most food banks had already been able to fill any shortfall in volunteer hours independently, so we offered these applicants an invitation to join our micro-volunteering programme, and around 6,000 took this opportunity forward.

Shunu, Lewisham Foodbank: “For me it’s sharing food that builds friendship. I've loved making new friends over a cup of tea as the food parcels stack up around us – a real privilege.”

In addition to this ‘on-the-ground’ volunteering via food banks, over 10,000 people came forward at the beginning of the pandemic offering to volunteer.

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Report and Accounts 2021

OUR GRANT-MAKING

Our grants programmes play a key role in the support we provide for our network of food banks, both providing emergency funding in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and assisting food banks’ work in furthering our long-term strategy.

In addition, the Help Through Hardship helpline launched in partnership with Citizens Advice was partly funded through the provision of a grant to Citizens Advice.

Examples of what we have achieved via our grantmaking can be found earlier in this Report, and the financial details have been set out on in Note 9 of the Financial Statements.

Grants to food banks – summary of our grant-making policy in 2020/21

The Trussell Trust only awards grants to the governing charities of food banks that are members of its food bank network. Grants are awarded towards the costs of food bank activity, or associated activities designed to alleviate or reduce poverty amongst people referred to food banks. Awards are determined by awarding panels, compiled of suitably skilled and experienced members of the Trussell Trust staff, and with representation from food banks in the network. Grant-funded activity is monitored by Area Managers as part of their relationship with food banks; written reports are normally required and are a condition of a grant award.

The exception to the above is top-up grants received from Tesco and Asda – after the deduction of a small percentage for Trussell Trust core costs, this money is distributed out to the food bank network in proportion to the weight of food donated by the public to each food bank at Tesco and Asda stores.

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Report and Accounts 2021

STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

Organisational structure

We have a clear and compelling programme of strategic initiatives designed to reach more people living with poverty and whilst there continues to be uncertainty in the external environment, we will continually evolve our structure to meet the needs operationally.

The CEO holds regular team meetings to monitor and control the organisation. Specific projects are managed through teams and cross-organisational programme boards. Each manager shares regular project updates which are circulated to stakeholders, including volunteers, staff, and trustees as appropriate.

Our trustees are ultimately responsible for the overall control and strategic direction of the Charity and the protection of its assets. Day-to-day management is delegated to the CEO, Emma Revie, and the Senior Leadership Group. Our Trustees meet regularly to set the vision, strategic framework, risks and budgets under which the charity operates; during the pandemic this has been by digital means. The Trustees have been chaired by Stephen Hicks since September 2018.

The full board formally meet at least three times a year and operate with sub committees for Finance, Audit & Risk; People & Governance and also Strategy & Impact. During the year steps were put in place to establish two additional subcommittees: Remuneration and also Nominations. The subcommittees also meet at least three times a year. An AGM is held each year and the board and senior leadership also usually attend an away day together each year; during the pandemic the away day has not been possible in person and the organisation is considering how best to do this in future.

During 2021, the charity established a wholly owned subsidiary company, Trussell Trading Limited (company 13310114, registered in England and Wales) which was incorporated on 1 April 2021.

Governing document

The Trussell Trust is a charitable company limited by guarantee, constituted under a trust deed dated 12 January 1997 and transferred into the charitable company (05434524) on 19 September 2005 and is a registered charity, number 1110522. The company also registered as a charity in Scotland on 5 September 2013, number SC044246. The company was established under a Memorandum of Association which established the objects and powers of the charitable company and is governed under its Articles of Association. In the event of the company being wound up, members are required to contribute an amount not exceeding £10.

Recruitment and appointment of new trustees

The trustees of the company are also charity trustees for the purpose of charity law.

Our governance is underpinned by the Charity Governance Code and put into action via annual appraisals for each board member and a formal process for the Chair, Treasurer and CEO whose appraisals are reviewed by our People & Governance sub committee.

The trustees set the strategic direction of the organisation and are regularly updated on grants, budgets, public relations, and fundraising campaigns. New initiatives are normally developed by project managers in consultation with the CEO, supported by an assessment of project needs. Trustees receive regular financial updates which form the basis of the routine financial monitoring. The charity works to ensure all stakeholders in the organisation are able to participate in its development. We listen to our client groups and many of the service delivery improvements come from our stakeholders.

When recruiting new trustees, we aim to attract a diverse range of candidates who have the skills the charity needs. It values the benefits of having members with different backgrounds, expertise and experience, and the board has committed to increasing our diversity in order to ensure we are benefitting from distinctive perspectives. Overall, our Trustees are appointed on merit, ensuring we have a balance of skills and experience.

During 2019 we recruited two new Trustees, making our total number nine during the year. Since the year end, two trustees have left the Board and the charity is planning to recruit new trustees during 2022. There is a robust interview and engagement selection process to ensure they understand are vision and values. Trustees are subject to DBS checks where applicable.

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Report and Accounts 2021

STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

Induction

The Trussell Trust actively promotes a learning culture and encourages development training across the charity. All new trustees undertake an Induction programme, which includes visits to our network, the roles and duties of the trustees, company and charity law and governance, and financial and risk management. Additional training is arranged as needed for individual trustees or for the trustees as whole.

The key management personnel (KMP) of the charity comprise the trustees, the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and from January 2021 the Company Secretary (prior to this the Company Secretary role was filled by the Chief Executive Officer). As noted in Note 11 of these financial statements, no trustees received any remuneration or benefits in their role as trustee; details of key management personnel remuneration can be seen in Note 12.

Remuneration policy

Our People & Governance sub-committee meet at least three times annually and its terms of reference during 20-21 included setting the CEO’s remuneration and considering staff remuneration, making recommendations in relation to setting salary scales and increments, and reviewing our current remuneration policy. During the year, steps were put in place to establish a Remuneration subcommittee to focus specifically on these items in future.

More broadly, the People & Governance sub-committee continue to be responsible for ensuring fairness, consistency, equality and objectivity in the charity’s dealings with its staff and facilitate the effective management and development of staff at all levels in the company thereby promoting an inclusive working environment.

They advise the Board on their financial and legal responsibilities to employees and to recommend measures to be put in place as required to ensure compliance with these responsibilities.

Public benefit disclosure

The trustees confirm they have referred to the guidance contained in the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit when reviewing the charity’s aims and objectives, and in planning future activities. The Trussell Trust is a public benefit entity. The trustees refer to public benefit throughout this report.

The trustees, who are also directors of the Trussell Trust for the purposes of the Companies Act 2006, present their report with the financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31 March 2021. In preparing the report, which also serves as the Strategic Report for the purposes of Company Legislation, the trustees have adopted the provisions of Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102).

They also provide updates to the Board as appropriate on significant human resources- related issues within the charity, as they arise. The lowest rate of pay is equal to the Living Wage Foundation rate and the charity is accredited as a Living Wage employer.

Our employee benefits encourage the wellbeing, mental health and financial resilience to our staff in keeping with our charitable aims.

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Report and Accounts 2021

OUR DETAILS

Registered company number

05434524 (England and Wales)

Registered charity number

1110522 (England and Wales) SC044246 (Scotland)

Registered office

Unit 9, Ashfield Trading Estate, Ashfield Road, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP2 7HL

Trustees

Mr S Hicks (Chair) Mr D Gordon Dr L Hickman Mr R Lanyon Mr D Marshall (resigned June 2021) Mr P Morrison Rt Revd J Packer (resigned August 2021) Revd B Thomas Ms N Williams (resigned November 2021)

Company Secretary

Mrs E Revie (June 2018 to January 2021) Mrs C Leeper (since January 2021)

Chief Executive Officer

Mrs E Revie (since February 2018)

Bankers

The Royal Bank of Scotland, Drummond House (BL) Branch, Customer Service Centre, Drummond House, 1 Redheughs Avenue, Edinburgh, EH12 9JN

Investment Managers

CCLA, Senator House, 85 Queen Victoria Street, London, EC4V 4ET (since March 2021)

GBIM, Chequers Court, 37 Brown Street, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP1 2AS (portfolio closed March 2021)

Auditors

Buzzacott LLP, 130 Wood Street, London, EC2V 6DL

Lawyers

Bates Wells & Braithwaite London LLP, trading as Bates Wells, 10 Queen Street Place, London EC4R 1BE

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Report and Accounts 2021

STATEMENT OF TRUSTEES’ RESPONSIBILITES

The trustees (who are also the directors of The Trussell Trust for the purposes of company law) are responsible for preparing the Report of the Trustees and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

Company 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 charitable company and of the income and expenditure of the charitable company for that period. In preparing those financial statements, the trustees are required to:

Select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently;
Observe the methods and principles in the Charity SORP;
Make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent;
Prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the charitable company will continue in business.

The trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charitable company and to enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charitable company and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

In so far as the trustees are aware:

There is no relevant audit information of which the charitable company’s auditors are unaware; and
The trustees have taken all steps that they ought to have taken to make themselves aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the auditors are aware of that information.

Approved by order of the board of trustees on ...

11th December 2021

and signed on its behalf by:

��

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Report and Accounts 2021

INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT TO THE MEMBERS OF THE TRUSSELL TRUST

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of the Trussell Trust (the ‘charitable company’) for the year ended 31 March 2021, which comprise the statement of financial activities, the balance sheet, the statement of cash flows and the notes to the financial statements including details of the principal accounting policies adopted. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102 ‘The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland’ (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

In our opinion, the financial statements:

give a true and fair view of the state of the charitable company’s affairs as at 31 March 2021 and of its income and expenditure for the year then ended;
have been properly prepared in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice; and
have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006, the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 and regulation 8 of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (as amended).

Basis for opinion

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the charitable company in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC’s Ethical Standard, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the Trustees’ use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the Trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other information

The Trustees are responsible for the other information. The other information comprises the information included in the Annual Report and Financial Statements, other than the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.

In connection with our audit of the financial statements, our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether there is a material misstatement in the financial statements or a material misstatement of the other information. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact.

We have nothing to report in this regard.

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Report and Accounts 2021

INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT TO THE MEMBERS OF THE TRUSSELL TRUST

Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion, based on the work undertaken in the course of the audit:

the information given in the Trustees’ report including the strategic report for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and
the Trustees’ report including the strategic report has been prepared in accordance with applicable legal requirements.

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In the light of the knowledge and understanding of the charitable company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the Trustees’ report including the strategic report.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Companies Act 2006 and the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (as amended) requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

Responsibilities of Trustees (continued)

In preparing the financial statements, the Trustees are responsible for assessing the charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the Trustees either intend to liquidate the charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

adequate accounting records have not been kept, or returns adequate for our audit have not been received from branches not visited by us; or
the financial statements are not in agreement with the accounting records and returns; or
certain disclosures of Trustees’ remuneration specified by law are not made; or
we have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit.

Responsibilities of Trustees

As explained more fully in the Trustees’ responsibilities statement, the Trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the Trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of noncompliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud is detailed below.

Our approach to identifying and assessing the risks of material misstatement in respect of irregularities, including fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations, was as follows:

the engagement partner ensured that the engagement team collectively had the appropriate competence, capabilities and skills to identify or recognise non-compliance with applicable laws and regulations;

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Report and Accounts 2021

we identified the laws and regulations applicable to the charitable company through discussions with management, and from our commercial knowledge and experience of the sector;
the identified laws and regulations were communicated within the audit team regularly and the team remained alert to instances of non-
compliance throughout the audit;
we focused on specific laws and regulations which
we considered may have a direct material effect on the accounts or the activities of the charitable company. These included but were not limited to the Companies Act 2006, the Charities Act 2011, Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable to the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102), those that relate to fundraising and are overseen by the Fundraising Regulator, and those that relate to data protection (General Data Protection Regulation); and
we assessed the extent of compliance with the laws
and regulations identified above through making enquiries of management, inspecting legal correspondence and reviewing Trustees’ meeting minutes.

We assessed the susceptibility of the charitable company’s financial statements to material misstatement, including obtaining an understanding of how fraud might occur, by:

making enquiries of management and those charged with governance as to where they considered there was susceptibility to fraud, their knowledge of actual, suspected and alleged fraud; and
considering the internal controls in place to mitigate risks of fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations.

To address the risk of fraud through management bias and override of controls, we:

assessed whether judgements and assumptions made in determining the accounting estimates set out in the accounting policies were indicative of potential bias; and
used data analytics to identify any significant or unusual transactions and identify the rationale for them.

In response to the risk of irregularities and noncompliance with laws and regulations, we designed procedures which included, but were not limited to:

agreeing financial statement disclosures to underlying supporting documentation;
reviewing the minutes of meetings of the Trustees, as well as the Finance, Audit & Risk Committee, and the People & Governance Committee;
enquiring of management and those charged with governance as to actual and potential litigation and claims; and
reviewing any available correspondence with HMRC and the Charity Commission.

There are inherent limitations in our audit procedures described above. The more removed that laws and regulations are from financial transactions, the less likely it is that we would become aware of non-compliance. Auditing standards also limit the audit procedures required to identify non-compliance with laws and regulations to enquiry of the Trustees and other management and the inspection of regulatory and legal correspondence, if any.

Material misstatements that arise due to fraud can be harder to detect than those that arise from error as they may involve deliberate concealment or collusion.

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

performed analytical procedures to identify any unusual or unexpected relationships;
tested journal entries to identify unusual transactions;
tested the authorisation of expenditure as part of our substantive testing thereon;

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT TO THE MEMBERS OF THE TRUSSELL TRUST

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company’s members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006 and to the charity’s trustees as a body, in accordance with Section 44(1)(c) of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 and Regulation 10 of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company’s members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company’s members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

Katharine Patel (Senior Statutory Auditor)

For and on behalf of Buzzacott LLP, Statutory Auditor 130 Wood Street London EC2V 6DL

��

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Financial Statements

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Statement of Financial Activities

(INCORPORATING AN INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT) For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

Note INCOME FROM Donations and legacies 2 Fundraising income Donated goods & services Charitable activities 3 Programme grants & contracts Food bank network fees Other trading activities 4 Investment Income 5 Other income 6 Total income EXPENDITURE ON Raising funds Fundraising activities 7 Other trading activities 7 Charitable activities 7 Grants expenditure Food bank network support Advocacy Total expenditure Net Gains on Investments 15 Net Income before transfers Transfers between funds Net Income Reconciliation of funds Total funds brought forward at 1 April 2020 23 Total funds carried forward at 31 March 2021 23	Unrestricted £’000 45,090 1,008 248 – 466 13 364 47,189 1,984 988 2,368 4,265 2,531 12,136 15 35,068 2 35,070 9,736 44,806	Restricted £’000 9,815 120 658 – – – – 10,593 138 37 3,414 2,348 650 6,587 – 4,006 (2) 4,004 273 4,277	2021 £’000 54,905 1,128 906 ~~–~~ 466 13 364 57,782 2,122 1,025 5,782 6,613 3,181 18,723 15 39,074 ~~–~~ 39,074 10,009 49,083 2020 £’000 14,675 737 4,325 131 1,438 24 – 21,330 1,622 988 4,780 4,882 1,713 13,985 1 7,346 – 7,346 2,663 10,009

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Balance Sheet

As at 31 March 2021

Note Fixed assets Tangible assets 14 Investments 15 Current assets Stocks 16 Debtors 17 Cash at bank 18 Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year19 Net current assets Total assets less current liabilities Creditors:Amounts falling due after more than one year 20 Provisions for liabilities 21 Total net assets Funds Unrestricted General 23 Designated 23 Restricted 23 Total funds	2021 £’000 603 25,000 25,603 23 4,460 23,345 27,828 (4,203) 23,625 49,228 (8) (137) 49,083 14,976 29,830 44,806 4,277 49,083 2020 £’000 377 91 468 97 1,179 12,769 14,045 (4,488) 9,557 10,025 (16) – 10,009 9,736 – 9,736 273 10,009
The fnancial statements were approved by the Board of Trustees on	: 11th December 2021
and were signed on its behalf by:

Note
Fixed assets
Tangible assets
14
Investments
15
Current assets
Stocks
16
Debtors
17
Cash at bank
18
Creditors:
Amounts falling due within one year19
Net current assets
Total assets less current liabilities
Creditors:Amounts falling
due after more than one year
20
Provisions for liabilities
21
Total net assets
Funds
Unrestricted
General
23
Designated
23
Restricted
23
Total funds

2021
£’000
603
25,000
25,603
23
4,460
23,345
27,828
(4,203)
23,625
49,228
(8)
(137)
49,083
14,976
29,830
44,806
4,277
49,083
2020
£’000
377
91
468
97
1,179
12,769
14,045
(4,488)
9,557
10,025
(16)
–
10,009
9,736
–
9,736
273
10,009

The fnancial statements were approved by the Board of Trustees on

:
11th December 2021

and were signed on its behalf by:

Company Registration Number: 05434524

��

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Statement of Cash Flows

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

Note
Cash fows from operating activities:
Cash generated from operations
A
Net cash provided by operating activities
Cash fows from investing activities:
Purchase of tangible fxed assets
Purchase of fxed asset investments
Sale of fxed asset investments
Interest received
Net cash used in investing activities
Change in cash and cash equivalents in the reporting period
Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the reporting period
Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the reporting period
B
A. Reconciliation of net income to net cash fow from operating activities
Net Income for the reporting period
Adjusted for:
Depreciation
Gains on investments
Loss on disposal of fxed assets
Interest received
Decrease/(Increase) in stocks
(Increase)/decrease in debtors
(Decrease)/Increase in creditors
Net cash provided by operating activities
B. Breakdown of cash and cash equivalents
Cash at bank
Cash deposit investments

2021
£’000
35,779
35,779
(322)
(16)
122
13
(203)
35,576
12,769
48,345
2021
£’000
39,074
227
(15)
6
(13)
74
(3,281)
(293)
35,779
2021
£’000
23,345
25,000
48,345
2020
£’000
7,925
7,925
(247)
–
–
24
(223)
7,702
5,067
12,769
2020
£’000
7,346
87
(1)
–
(24)
(12)
96
433
7,925
2020
£’000
12,769
–
12,769

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Notes to the Financial Statements

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

Note 1: Accounting policies

Basis of preparing the financial statements

The financial statements of the charitable company, which is a public benefit entity under FRS 102, have been prepared in accordance with the Charities SORP (FRS 102) ‘Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2019)’, Financial Reporting Standard 102 ‘The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland’ and the Companies Act 2006. The financial statements have been prepared under the historical cost convention except for investments which are included at market value, as modified by the revaluation of certain assets.

The financial statements are presented in sterling, rounded to the nearest thousand pounds.

Going concern

The Trustees have considered both the charity’s financial position at the year end and the impact of future activities. The Trustees have made this assessment in respect to a period of one year from the date of approval of these financial statements. The pandemic has inevitably created a significant amount of uncertainty and disruption. The resulting risks have been managed through our well-established risk management processes which have been embedded and have proved robust; for more information please see pages 34-35.

A risk-based reserves policy has been adopted; more details of this can be seen on pages 32-33. The Trustees therefore have

a reasonable expectation that there are no material uncertainties about the charity’s ability to continue its operations, including to meet its liabilities, for the foreseeable future. As such, the charity continues to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements.

Income

All income is recognised in the Statement of Financial Activities. Once the charity has entitlement to the funds, it is probable that the income will be received, and the amount can be measured reliably. Such income is only deferred when:

The donor specified that the
grant or donation must only be used in future accounting periods; or
The donor has imposed
conditions which must be met before the charity has unconditional entitlement.

Investment income is recognised on a receivable basis.

Income from charitable activities includes income received under contract or where entitlement to grant funding is subject to specific conditions. Contract income is recognised as earned (as the related goods and services are provided). Grant income included in this category provides funding to support activities and is recognised where there is entitlement, probability of receipt and the amount can be measured reliably.

Income from the sale of donated goods via the charity’s shops is recognised at the point of sale.

Volunteers and donated goods and services

The value of services provided by volunteers is not incorporated into these financial statements.

Where goods or services are provided to the charity as a donation that would normally be purchased from suppliers, this contribution is included in the financial statements at an estimate based on the value of the contribution to the charity.

Food and toiletries donated to the charity and held as stock for distribution by food banks directly operated by the charity, are recognised as income within voluntary income when received and as stock; an equivalent amount is included as expenditure when stock is distributed.

Expenditure

Liabilities are recognised as expenditure as soon as there is a legal or constructive obligation committing the charity to that expenditure, it is probable that a transfer of economic benefits will be required in settlement and the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably. In the case of grants payable, these conditions are met when the amount of grant awarded has been communicated to the recipient, and there are no conditions attached to the grant which give the charity discretion to avoid this commitment. Expenditure is accounted for on an accruals basis and has been classified under headings that aggregate all cost related to the category. Where costs cannot be directly attributed to particular headings, they have been allocated to activities on a basis consistent with the use of resources.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Notes to the Financial Statements

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

Note 1: Accounting policies

(continued)

Provisions

Provisions are recognised when the charity has a legal or constructive obligation, but for which either the timing or the amount of the future expenditure required to settle the obligation is uncertain.

Irrecoverable VAT

All expenditure is classified under activity headings that aggregate all costs related to the category. Irrecoverable VAT is charged against the category of expenditure for which it was incurred.

Raising funds

Raising funds includes all expenditure incurred by the charity to raise funds for its charitable purposes, such as fundraising activities and events, and the costs of charity shop trading (under the sub-heading ‘Other trading activities’).

Allocation and apportionment of costs

Support costs are those functions that assist the work of the charity but do not directly undertake charitable activities. Support costs have been allocated based on staff time and the split is shown in Note 7.

Tangible fixed assets

Depreciation is provided at the following annual rates in order to write off each asset over its estimated useful life. Short leasehold improvements – over the term of the lease Fixtures and Fittings – 25% on cost Motor Vehicles – 25% on cost Computer Equipment – 25% on cost Individual fixed assets costing

£10,000 or more, plus individual assets purchased as part of a capital project costing in excess of £10,000, are capitalised at cost.

Stocks

Stocks comprise food and toiletries held for distribution by the food banks directly operated by the charity. Stocks are valued at fair value, after allowance for obsolete and slow-moving items.

Taxation

The charity is exempt from corporation tax on its charitable activities.

Fund accounting

Unrestricted funds can be used in accordance with the charitable objectives at the discretion of the trustees.

Restricted funds can only be used for restricted purposes within the objects of the charity. Restrictions arise when specified by the donor or when funds are raised for restricted purposes.

Further explanation of the nature and purpose of each fund is included in the notes to the financial statements.

Hire purchase and leasing commitments

Rentals paid under operating leases are charged to the Statement of Financial Activities on a straight-line basis over the period of the lease.

Pension costs and other postretirement benefits

The charitable company operates a defined contribution pension scheme. Contributions payable to the charitable company's pension scheme are charged to the

Statement of Financial Activities in the period to which they relate.

Investments

Investments are stated at market value as at the balance sheet date. The Statement of Financial Activities include the net gains and losses arising on revaluation and disposal throughout the year.

Realised gains and losses

All gains and losses are taken to the statement of financial activities as they arise. Realised gains and losses on investments are calculated as the difference between sales proceeds and opening market value (purchase date if later). Unrealised gains and losses are calculated as the difference between the market value at the year end and opening market value (or purchase date if later).

Accounting estimates and judgements

In preparing the financial statements estimates and judgements have been made when applying the accounting policies. These are evaluated on an ongoing basis and are based on historical experience. The only areas where estimates or judgements have a material effect on the values within the financial statements are:

depreciation on tangible fixed assets;
the fair value of food stocks;
the allocation of support costs across expenditure categories in the Statement of Financial Activities; and
the assumptions used in respect of forecasted income and expenditure for the purpose of concluding that the charity is a going concern.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Note 2: Donations and legacies Fundraising income: Donations & Grants Gift Aid Legacies Donatedgoods & services: Food (Trussell Trust-owned food banks) Services & other goods During the year the charity received free social media advertising to the value of £120,000. In the prior year the charity received IT hardware and licensing to the value of £152,000. Note 3: Charitable activities Programme grants & contracts Food bank network fees At the beginning of the year, in light of the pandemic, we took the decision not to charge food banks the annual membership fee. This will continue for at least the 2021-22 fnancial year. This comprises income earned under performance-related grants or contracts, where this is conditional upon the charity’s delivery of specifc charitable programmes. Other grants received to support the charity’s work are included within ‘donations and grants’ in note 2 above. Note 4: Other trading activities Fundraising events Charity retail – shop sales Other income	2021 £’000 51,299 3,525 81 54,905 1,008 120 1,128 56,033 2021 £’000 906 ~~–~~ 906 2021 £’000 ~~–~~ 448 18 466	2020 £’000

		13,753 892 30
		14,675 585 152
		737
		15,412 2020 £’000
		4,325 131
		4,456
		2020 £’000
		341 1,040 57
		1,438

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Notes to the Financial Statements

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

Note 5: Investment income Deposit account interest Investment income Note 6: Other income Charity retail – Covid Government support grants	2021 £’000 12 1 13 2021 £’000 364 364 2020 £’000 21 3 24 2020 £’000 – –

The Trussell Trust’s charity shops were closed for part of the year to comply with Covid-19 restrictions and as such were eligible for funding from the government’s business support schemes.

Note 7: Total expenditure

Support Costs 2021 £’000 423 106 53 1,638 660 2,351 2,880 Project Costs 2021 £’000 937 286 5,656 2,212 1,072 8,940 10,163 Ofce Costs 2021 £’000 47 74 – 166 16 182 303 Costs 2021 £’000 715 559 73 2,597 1,433 4,103 5,377 Raising funds Fundraising activities Other trading activities Charitable activities Grants payable Food bank network support Advocacy Remuneration	2021 £’000 2,122 1,025 5,782 6,613 3,181 15,576 18,723 2020 £’000 1,622 988 4,780 4,882 1,713 11,375 13,985

Remuneration costs shown above plus those included within support costs (as shown in note 8 opposite) relate to the various remuneration costs set out in note 12. Office costs include costs relating to employees, office expenditure and communications. Project costs relate to expenditure on specific activities; for grants payable this figure equates to the grants made as detailed in note 9. Support costs represent indirect costs which provide the organisational structure that enables the charitable activities to take place. An analysis of support costs in provided in Note 8.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Note 8: Support costs Remuneration IT (software, consultancy & equipment) Premises Recruitment & general consultancy Training & other staf-related costs Governance Miscellaneous Governance costs Auditors remuneration – Statutory audit Trustee costs Accountancy and legal fees Note 9: Grants payable Grants payable related to the following programmes: Together for change programmes: Financial inclusion Pathfnder Strategic resource Warehousing/facilities Food supply support Volunteering Citizens Advice – Help through Hardship helpline Corporate partnership top-up expenditure Covid response grant expenditure Other grants to food bank charities Fight Hunger, create change programme Total Grants	2021 £’000 1,238 767 415 246 80 77 57 2,880 2021 £’000 24 1 52 77 2021 £’000 967 289 55 176 77 33 1,418 983 1,146 510 2 5,656	2020 £’000
		703 774 305 191 99 35 53
		2,160 2020 £’000
		8 8 19
		35 2020 £’000
		– – – – – – – 1,706 185 53 2,784
		4,728

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Notes to the Financial Statements

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

Note 9: Grants payable(continued)
The following was a recipient of material grant funding during the year:
Citizens Advice	£1,417,589

Grants have been awarded to over 400 food bank charities across the Trussell Trust network totalling over £4.2million. The network is based throughout the UK including England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Note 10: Net Income is stated after charging: Note 11: Trustees’ Remuneration & Benefts Auditors’ remuneration Depreciation – owned assets Operating leases Defcit on disposal of fxed assets	2021 £’000 24 227 496 6 2020 £’000 8 87 482 –

During both the current year and prior year, no trustees received any remuneration or benefits in their role as trustee. The Memorandum and Articles of Association of the company permit payments to trustees where certain criteria are met.

Trustees’ expenses

During the year, two trustees were reimbursed for out of pocket expenses totalling £346 (2020: seven trustees, expenses totalling £4,437). These expenses relate primarily to travel costs incurred on behalf of the charity.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Note 12: Staf costs Wages and salaries Social security costs Other pension costs Redundancy Other benefts	2021 £’000 5,712 530 316 11 46 6,615 2020 £’000 4,005 350 225 147 34 4,761

Other benefits relates to costs of providing income protection and life assurance, and health plans, which are offered to all employees on an equal basis.

The average monthly number of employees during the year, on both a headcount and a full-time equivalent basis, was as follows:

Raising Funds Operations Advocacy Charity Retail Support Grants	2021 19 67 26 31 25 2 170 2020 14 59 17 33 17 2 142 Headcount		FTE
	2021 19 67 26 31 25 2 170	2021 16 62 25 22 23 2 150	2020 14 48 17 24 16 2
			121

The number of employees whose benefits (excluding employer National Insurance contributions and employer pension costs) exceeded £60,000 was:

£60,001 – £70,000 £70,001 – £80,000 £80,001 – £90,000 £90,001 – £100,000 £100,001 – £110,000	2021 3 – 2 – 1 6	2020 2 1 – 1 –
		4

Staff are employed in all areas of the Trussell Trust’s work, including the charity shops and associated supporting activity, to enable the charity to meet its responsibilities. The lowest rate of pay is aligned to the living wage as set by the Living Wage Foundation.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Notes to the Financial Statements

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

Note 12: Staff costs (continued)

Key Management Personnel

The key management personnel (KMP) of the charity comprise the trustees, the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and from January 2021 the Company Secretary (prior to this the Company Secretary role was filled by the Chief Executive Officer). The total employee benefits (including employer National Insurance contributions and employer pension costs) of the KMP was £349,983 (2020: £210,007).

The reason for the difference between the figures for 20/21 and 19/20 is a change in the personnel included within KMP, reflecting the current leadership structure. In particular the 20/21 figure includes a full year of costs for the Chief Operation and Strategy Officers, roles which were created near the end of 19/20 and at the beginning of 20/21 respectively.

Using available pay data for the end of the year to 31 March 2021, the CEO/median pay ratio is 3:1 (for the end of the year to 31 March 2020 – 3:1). That is to say that the CEO earns three times the rate of the median paid employee on a full time equivalent basis, accounting for all salary related benefits.

We believe that this is a reasonable ratio for our organisation and sector, reflecting our commitment to fair pay for our entire staff team and our alignment with the aims of the Good Business Charter following our accreditation in August 2020.

The Trussell Trust

Report and Accounts 2021

Note 13: Comparatives for statement of financial activities

Income from: Donations and legacies Fundraising Income Donated goods & services Charitable activities Programme grants & contracts Food bank network fees Other trading activities Investment income Total income EXPENDITURE ON Raising funds Fundraising activities Other trading activities Charitable activities Grants expenditure Food bank network support Advocacy Total expenditure Net gains on investments Net income Reconciliation of funds Total funds brought forward at 1 April 2019 Total funds carried forward at 31 March 2020	Total 2020 £’000 11,625 737 411 131 1,417 24 14,345 1,474 972 84 3,331 1,168 7,029 1 7,317 2,419 9,736	Total 2020 £’000 3,050 – 3,914 – 21 – 6,985 148 16 4,696 1,551 545 6,956 – 29 244 273	Total 2020 £’000
			14,675 737 4,325 131 1,438 24
			21,330
			1,622 988 4,780 4,882 1,713
			13,985
			1
			7,346
			2,663
			10,009

Notes to the Financial Statements

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

Note 14: Tangible Fixed Assets Cost At 1 April 2020 Additions Disposals At 31 March 2021 Depreciation At 1 April 2020 Charge in year Disposals At 31 March 2021 Net book value At 31 March 2021 At 31 March 2020	Leasehold improvements £’000 465 160 (111) 514 234 147 (111) 270 244 231	Motor Vehicles £’000 71 – (26) 45 44 11 (20) 35 10 27 Computer equipment £’000 131 299 – 430 17 64 – 81 349 114 Fixtures and Fittings £’000 22 – (22) – 17 5 (22) – – 5 2021 £’000 25,000 ~~–~~ 25,000 2021 £’000 83 16 (114) 15 ~~–~~ ~~–~~ ~~–~~ ~~–~~ during the year as shown below:	Motor Vehicles £’000 71 – (26) 45 44 11 (20) 35 10 27 Computer equipment £’000 131 299 – 430 17 64 – 81 349 114 Fixtures and Fittings £’000 22 – (22) – 17 5 (22) – – 5 2021 £’000 25,000 ~~–~~ 25,000 2021 £’000 83 16 (114) 15 ~~–~~ ~~–~~ ~~–~~ ~~–~~ during the year as shown below:	2021 TOTAL £’000
				689 459 (159)
				989
				312 227 (153)
				386
				603
				377
				2020 £’000
Note 15: Fixed Asset Investments
Cash deposits Listed investments CCLA – COIF Charities Deposit Fund The charity liquidated its portfolio of listed investments Listed investments Market value at 1 April 2020 Additions Disposal proceeds Revaluations Market value at 31 March 2021 Cash held by investment manager for reinvestment Total investments as at 31 March 2021 Historical cost of listed investments at 31 March 2021				– 91
				91 2020 £’000
				82 – – 1
				83 8
				91
				75

64

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Note 16: Stocks
Food Stocks
Food stocks relate solely to food banks controlled and operated directly by the
charity. At 31 March 2021 this was Brent Foodbank only (2020: Brent, Salisbury and
Coventry – Salisbury Foodbank and Coventry Foodbank both became independent
members of the Food Bank Network during the year to 31 March 2021).
Trade debtors
Gift Aid due
VAT
Prepayments and accrued income
Cash at bank is mainly held to meet the day to day running costs of the charity
as they fall due. The high cash balance at the year end is held in anticipation of
increased spending in the coming year, on both core costs and grant-making.
Trade creditors
Social security and other taxes
Other creditors
Deferred income (See below)
Accrued expenses
Accruals for grants payable
Note 17: Debtors
Note 18: Cash at Bank
Note 19: Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year

Total
2021
£’000
23
23
Total
2021
£’000
201
724
72
3,463
4,460
Total
2021
£’000
224
175
215
1,130
387
2,072
4,203
Total
2020
£’000
97
97
Total
2020
£’000
165
435
60
519
1,179
Total
2020
£’000
392
103
73
3,725
191
4
4,488

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Notes to the Financial Statements

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

Note 21: Provisions Note 22: Analysis of net assets between funds Other creditors At 1 April 2020 Additions during the year At 31 March 2021 Provisions have been made for the expected dilapidation costs on the property leases held by the charity. Fixed assets Investments Current assets Current liabilities Long term liabilities Provisions Unrestricted funds 2021 £’000 603 25,000 20,849 (1,501) (8) (137) 44,806 Restricted funds 2021 £’000 – – 6,979 (2,702) – – 4,277 Deferred Income: Brought forward Amount released to incoming resources Amount deferred at year end Carried forward Deferred income relates to grants received, where the funder has specifed they are to be spent during the year to 31 March 2022. Note 19: Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year(continued) Note 20: Creditors: Amounts falling due after more than one year	Total 2021 £’000 8 8 Dilapidations £’000 ~~–~~ 137 137 Total 2021 £’000 603 25,000 27,828 (4,203) (8) (137) 49,083 Total 2021 £’000 3,725 (3,725) 1,130 1,130	Total 2020 £’000
		3,318 (3,318) 3,725
		Total 2020 £’000 3,725
		16
		16 Total £’000
		– 137
		137 Total 2020 £’000
		377 91 14,045 (4,488) (16) –
		10,009

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Note 23: Movement in funds	At 1 April 2020 £’000	Income £’000	Expenditure £’000	Gains and losses £’000	Transfer between funds £’000	At 31 March 2021 £’000
Unrestricted funds General fund reserve Designated funds: Changing Communities Changing Minds Changing Policy Pathfnder grant fund Asda Top-up Tesco (top up) Total Unrestricted funds Restricted funds: ASDA: FHP Personnel ASDA: FHP Programme ASDA: FHP Regrants ASDA: Covid Response ASDA: Covid Response Grants to Network Bank of America Brent Foodbank Cisco City Bridge Trust Coventry Foodbank Cummins Food Bank Network: COVID-19 Food Bank Network: Regional funds Fuel Bank Foundation Gifts in Kind – Services Grants programme – Financial Inclusion Help Through Hardship helpline Martin Lewis Hub Trial Other restricted funds Pears Foundation PepsiCo Porticus Foundation Salisbury Foodbank Sodexo Step Change Tesco Top Up Total Restricted funds Total funds	9,736 – – – – – –	46,123 – – – – 299 767	(11,153) – – – – (220) (763)	15 – – – – – –	(29,745) 18,100 6,740 1,905 3,000 – 2	14,976 18,100 6,740 1,905 3,000 79 6
	9,736 – 1 2 44 – – – – – 1 39 11 58 28 – – – 18 4 – – – 1 – 64 2	47,189 458 170 – 800 1,000 156 83 130 92 171 – 2,685 412 30 120 1,200 1,114 – 123 1,000 469 300 45 35 – –	(12,136) (458) (108) (2) (707) (917) (4) (44) (23) (50) (172) (39) (1,622) (355) (33) (120) – (1,114) (18) (78) (88) (421) (125) (46) – (43) –	15 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –	2 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – (2)	44,806 ~~–~~ 63 ~~–~~ 137 83 152 39 107 42 ~~–~~ ~~–~~ 1,074 115 25 ~~–~~ 1,200 ~~–~~ ~~–~~ 49 912 48 175 ~~–~~ 35 21 ~~–~~
	273	10,593	(6,587)	–	(2)	4,277
	10,009	57,782	(18,723)	15	–	49,083

Notes to the Financial Statements

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021
Note 23:(continued) Comparative information for the year ended 31 March 2020	At 1 April 2019 £’000	Incoming resources £’000	Resources expended £’000	Gains and losses £’000	Transfer between funds £’000	At 31 March 2020 £’000
Unrestricted funds General fund reserve Designated funds: Food bank network 5 Year strategy fund Total Unrestricted Funds Restricted Funds ASDA : FHP Personnel ASDA : FHP Programme ASDA : FHP Regrants ASDA : Covid Response Big Lottery Fund Scotland Brent Foodbank Comic Relief Coventry Foodbank Cummins Food Bank Network: COVID-19 London Midland Martin Lewis Hub Trial Fuel Bank Foundation Other restricted funds Persula Foundation Salisbury Foodbank Step Change Tesco (top up) The 29th May 1961 Fund Waitrose Total restricted funds Total funds	1,200 207 1,012	14,345 – –	(6,017) – (1,012)	1 – –	207 (207) –	9,736 – –
	2,419 (8) 28 1 – – – 50 1 – – (1) 75 – 12 – – – 56 30 –	14,345 669 404 2,759 450 101 12 34 106 127 176 – – 82 140 50 14 100 1,651 – 110	(7,029) (661) (431) (2,758) (406) (101) (12) (84) (106) (88) (165) – (57) (54) (92) (50) (13) (36) (1,705) (29) (108)	1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –	– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –	9,736 – 1 2 44 – – – 1 39 11 (1) 18 28 60 – 1 64 2 1 2
	244	6,985	(6,956)	–	–	273
	2,663	21,330	(13,985)	1	–	10,009

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Fund Descriptions

Designated funds

Designated funds
Changing Communities, Changing Minds and Changing Policy Pathfnder grant fund ASDA Top-up & Tesco Top-up	Funds that will be spent over the next two years to magnify and accelerate the delivery of the Trussell Trust’s Together for Change strategic plan, enabling us to provide increased funding and support to our network and to expand our impact throughout this challenging period and during the recovery from it. For more detail on each part of our strategy, please see pages 19-29.
	Designated for making grants to food banks in our network which have signed up to the Pathfnder programme, one of our grass-roots initiatives to achieve our goal for a future without the need for food banks.
	From the neighbourhood food collections. The charity chooses to share this funding with member organisations of the Trussell Trust’s Food Bank Network. (Note: the Tesco Top-up was erroneously classifed in the previous year as a restricted fund and thus a transfer has been made to move the brought forward balance into unrestricted designated funds).

Restricted funds

ASDA: FHP Operating Personnel ASDA: FHP Programme ASDA: FHP Regrants ASDA: Covid Response ASDA: Covid Response Grants to Network Bank of America Brent Foodbank Cisco City Bridge Trust Coventry Food Bank Cummins Food Bank Network: Covid-19 Food Bank Network Regional Fuel Bank Foundation Gifts in Kind – Services Grants programme – Financial Inclusion Help Through Hardship helpline Martin Lewis Hub Trial Other Restricted Funds	For use under Fight Hunger Programme for Operating Personnel
	For use under Fight Hunger Programme for Implementation Activities
	For use under Fight Hunger Programme for performance related grants to food banks
	Asda Covid-19 Response Programme for Operating costs
	Asda Covid-19 Response for Grants to food banks
	Income Maximisation
	For the support of the Brent Food Bank
	IT systems development for e-referral and stock applications
	London area food bank network support
	For the support of the Coventry Food Bank
	Building an ‘evidence base’ to help end hunger and poverty in the UK
	Support and development to the Food Bank Network via Grants programme
	Support TT regional operations
	To support the delivery of Fuel Bank across the UK
	Pro-bono services provided to the Charity – see note 2
	Grants to support food banks develop a provision for ofering fnancial advice to clients, to help address the causes of food bank use
	For the development and running of the helpline, in partnership with Citizens Advice, ofering free fnancial advice to people experiencing hardship
	Funding received from the Martin Lewis Charitable Foundation for the trial provision of fnancial triage within food banks
	Relates to amounts which are immaterial individually and in aggregate

The Trussell Trust Report and Accounts 2021

Fund Descriptions

Designated funds

Pears Foundation	To support our income maximisation project work and teams.
PepsiCo	To support Covid-19 emergency response.
Porticus Foundation	For Food Bank Network & Anti-Poverty Initiatives, supporting volunteering,
	policy & research and Data Collection System work.
Salisbury Foodbank	For the support of the Salisbury Food Bank.
Sodexo	Funding from Sodexo to support the Help Through Hardship project (see above).
Step Change	IT systems development for the food weights tracker and stock applications.
Tesco Top-up	See above.

Note 24: Related party disclosures

Mr D Marshall is a trustee of two food banks within the Trussell Trust network, Dundee Foodbank and Angus Foodbank. During the year the Trussell Trust provided both financial and non-financial support to these food banks, under the same terms as other members of the network. This included cash grants of £4,642 (2020: £10,953) paid to Dundee Foodbank and £1,907 (2020: £13,616) paid to Angus Foodbank. As stated in Note 3, no network membership fees were charged to food banks during the year (2020: Dundee Foodbank and Angus Foodbank, in common with other network members, were each charged £300 + VAT).

The trustees and key management personnel of the charity donated a combined total of £355 before Gift Aid to the charity in the year (2020: £330).

Note 25: Ultimate controlling party

The charitable company is not under the control of another entity or any one individual.

Notes to the Financial Statements

For the Year Ended 31 March 2021

Note 26: Lease commitments At 31 March 2021 the charity had total commitments under non-cancellable operating leases as follows: Operating leases payable: Within one year Between two and fve years Beyond fve years	Total 2021 £’000 353 388 – 741	Total 2020 £’000
		416 741 25
		1,182

Picture credits

Page 16-17

Page 3

©Richard Haydon Page 23 Big Ben Clock Tower in London, Page 7 England Salisbury Foodbank Manager ©Tono Balaguer in PPE_1344

Page 38 Fareshare Volunteer © FareShare Morecambe Bay Foodbank Volunteers ©Morecambe Bay Foodbank Volunteers in a food bank_285 ©Alexandra Smart

Page 40 Participant looking at the ingredients of a tin of food_901 ©Alexandra Smart Foodbank manager and volunteer sorting food_259 ©Alexandra Smart

Page 42

Page 36

The Trussell Trust Reg. Charity in England & Wales (1110522) and Scotland (SC044246). Reg. Ltd. Co. in England & Wales (05434524)