Furnichurch
Receipts and Payments Year end 31 March 2025
| Total Funds Payments Receipts Furniture Donations 26807 Evan Cornish Award 5000 Nuclear Waste Grant 19671 East Lindsey DC 20300 Neighbourly Forum 230 Lincs Lotto 4450 Refunds 0 Food Larder- Donations 8031 Food 23976 Food packaging 218 Small Equipment 229 Salaries & Wages 21803 Pensions 1371 PAYE 6270 Training 0 Rates 170 Rent 6996 Heating & Lighting 2705 Repair & Maintenance 1973 Insurance 415 Telephone & Internet 808 Van - Fuel 1419 Van - Servicing 2149 Van - Insurance 421 Postage/Printing/Photocopier 307 Sundries 70 Equipment 368 Subscriptions 110 NWS Grant - Salaries Paid 7000 Less Opening unpresented pa -525 Transferred to Food Larder Surplus / (Deficit) for year |
Restricted Funds Payments Receipts 5000 19671 20300 230 4450 0 8031 57682 23976 218 229 7000 31423 57682 26259 |
Unrestricted Funds Payments Receipts 26807 26807 21803 1371 6270 0 170 6996 2705 1973 415 808 1419 2149 421 307 70 368 110 -525 46830 26807 -20023 |
|---|---|---|
Furnichurch
Balances as at 31 March2025
| Bank Balances Furnichurch Bank 31/03/2025 Food Larder Bank 31/03/2025 Total Bank Balnces Fund Balances Funds Balance at 31/03/2024 Surplus for period Fund Balance at 31/03/2025 |
10360 21711 |
|---|---|
| 32071 | |
| 25837 6234 |
|
| 32071 |
FURNICHURCH
Independent examiner's report on the accounts
Section A Independent Examiner’s Report
Report to the trustees/ Charity Name FURNICHURCH members of On accounts for the year 31 MARCH 2025 Charity no 1110984 ended (if any) Set out on pages 1 AND 2 1)
I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity (“the Trust”) for the year ended 31/03/2025.
As the charity trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation Responsibilities and of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act basis of report 2011 (“the Act”).
I report in respect of my examination of the Trust’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination, I have followed the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Act.
Independent examiner's statement
I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention (other than that disclosed below *) in connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that in, any material respect:
-
accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Act or
-
the accounts do not accord with the accounting records
I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.
- Please delete the words in the brackets if they do not apply.
Signed: J R Truss Date: 29/01/2026 Name: J R TRUSS ~~Co~~ Relevant professional CTA qualification(s) or body (if any): Address: 28 West End Burgh Le Marsh Skegness
1
October 2018
IER
Section B Disclosure
Only complete if the examiner needs to highlight matters of concern (see CC32, Independent examination of charity accounts: directions and guidance for examiners).
Give here brief details No comparatives are shown as accounts for previous were in different format of any items that the examiner wishes to There is no split of fund balances between restricted and unrestricted funds disclose . as there has not been a split in previous years to give the balances at 31 March 2024.
2
October 2018
IER
Furnichurch AGM Chairman’s Report
What a change! What an achievement!
Outside:
Behind the buildings waist high in weeds (complaints from neighbour) Now all cleared.
Behind and alongside the buildings – old mattresses, glass, tyres……..Now all cleared.
Inside the rear building – beds, more mattresses, wardrobes, all sorts of furniture, out of date food, all waiting to be taken to the tip – we have 2 passes a month for the tip.
Now all cleared – but we had to get a professional company to clear it – we could never have shifted it all ourselves without shutting down and probably using all the tip permits for the year.
This led us to decide that we did not need the rear building, so we negotiated to hand it back to our landlords, reducing our overall cost of rent and utilities.
Inside: We are open! We aim to be open every weekday, 9.30 – 4.30.
Walk through the front doors – an alarm sounds to alert anyone in the 2 offices. There are, functioning and checked, fire extinguishers, smoke alarms, a carbon monoxide detector.
The furniture is all labelled with a “suggested donation” card.
As you go into Tracey’s office you will see the shelving all neatly stocked with food, all in one place, and not shelved according to which food parcels they go into; Tracey’s office has all been re-arranged: she has a “new” desk; the shelving has been moved around; as well as the chest and upright freezers there is a new tall larder fridge; there are more electrical sockets for the various appliances, including a heater for Tracey as it can get quite cold in the warehouse with the doors often being open for furniture going in and out and for people coming in to browse.
As you go out again look to your right – a brand-new fire exit door (the old one was falling to bits and not fit for purpose) and there’s plenty of signage.
Then into the kitchen – it now has a healthy clean look about it, thanks to Stacey, one of our newer volunteers, who comes in once a week to clean for us. The fridge had a major deep clean and the cupboards turned out and sorted out.
Move on into Michael’s office – it’s tidy! You can see his desktop! And there are two loos – a ladies and a gents. The gents loo used to be a general dumping ground for anything and everything – no longer. And both kept clean for us by Stacey. The cupboard in the office has also been turned out, and all the out-ofdate paperwork has been sent for shredding – bags and bags of it! We can now use it to store the paperwork for the last 6 years. The old boiler is still on the wall – it is very noisy at the moment – a gas engineer is coming to look at it next week. Hopefully it will not be condemned (he is very good at sourcing or making obsolete parts!)
Then next to Michael’s office is a cupboard which can now be accessed and inside is a safe which we managed to open and inside were the keys for it!! So cash at the end of the day can be safely stored in there rather than in piles under paperwork on Michael’s desk. Tracey has the task of banking it each week and passing all the receipts on to our Treasurer, Sandra, for recording.
None of these changes would have been possible without the help and cooperation of our employees, our volunteers and the trustees.
Employees: As well as Michael, our full-time warehouse supervisor and Tracey our part time office administrator, who works 3 days a week – Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, in April we were able to offer Jason the role of part time warehouse supervisor, thanks to a grant from Evans Cornish to cover his first three months. We have still been paying him! But we have to keep looking for more grants to do this. We would love to offer him a full-time post as he is such an asset to us, (and will be even more so once he passes his driving test – he has passed the theory test so now waiting for a date - and hoping for a cancellation!) but we do not have the funds at present. However moving forward we would like to set up some educational support schemes for people who us the food larder – specifically to help improve their cooking skills and budgeting to provide healthy but cheap meals for themselves and, where applicable, their families. Jason would like to take this on, and we could use St Clement’s church hall on Wednesdays, twice a month to do this. So our next search will be for grant funding to increase Jason’s hours to full time to facilitate this project. Further into the future we need to secure funding for Tracey’s salary once our grant from NWS (Nuclear Waste Services) comes to an
end later in 2027. We also need to keep looking for funding to supplement the part of the NWS grant which is for purchasing food for the food larder. We have just been granted £10,000 by the Household Support fund which will supplement 3 months of food purchasing as well as 10% of it which we can use for overheads. As the van has just failed it’s MOT and needed parts to pass, that will hopefully meet that need. As you can see, we have an ongoing struggle to keep the finances healthy and enable us to meet the needs of and expand our work for the community we serve – but in amazing ways we find God does provide time and again.
Volunteers: We could not function without our volunteers. Inevitable they get older; their health may deteriorate. It was very sad to say goodbye to Alan Kent in the summer, after 18 years as a volunteer. He could no longer do the “van work, which involves a lot of lifting. But he says he will still repair furniture for us whenever it is necessary. As it was a special goodbye, we invited him and his wife Liz (who had also volunteered for us in the past), to lunch at the Beck.
So we always are looking out for more volunteers.
Brenda had offered her services as a volunteer early in 2024, but it took until January this year for us to persuade Michael that we should accept her offer and ask Pam to train her. Pam has done a great job! Brenda comes in on Monday morning and Pam on Friday mornings.
Martin offered to be a trustee, and was co-opted, in February. He subsequently started volunteering on a regular basis on Mondays and Thursdays, which is a great help as he can drive the van. He also volunteers on other occasions to cover Michael or Jason’s leave.
Andrew has recently joined us as a volunteer on Wednesdays when he does a huge shopping trip to replenish our shelves for the next 7 days.
Ray and Stuart continue as invaluable volunteers on Tuesdays, helping with the furniture side.
Ray and Albert take it in turns to collect from the supermarkets three times a week. Sadly Albert’s health is now not good, and he feels is no longer able to do this so we need a replacement for him – it would have to be someone with a car!
Paddy has very recently started volunteering several times a week.
Trustees: There are now five of us – myself as chair, Ann as secretary, Sandra as treasurer, Chris Lilley and Martin, my long-suffering husband!
We are all willing to stand again (Sandra had submitted her resignation to take effect at the AGM as she felt we were fighting a losing battle to bring in all the improvements that we, as trustees, had agreed needed to be done – Sandra still works part time. However when things started to improve, she withdrew her resignation. We were all extremely thankful!)
We meet roughly every 6 weeks, or more frequently, if necessary, to discuss how things are going and plan for the way ahead. At present one of us has to apply for the grants – never the same each time and it’s very discouraging when we are unsuccessful. We had thought that someone was going to offer as a volunteer to do the grant applications, but he was unable to do it after all. Such a person would be much appreciated – any volunteers????
Thank you for attending today. Please continue to support us and spread the word about what we do and where we are.
Christine Collins.
26-11-2025