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Annual Report and Financial Statements

The Parochial Church Council of the Ecclesiastcal Parish of St Wilfrid Cowplain

Registered Charity No. 1130601

APCM 2024

Annual Report of The Parochial Church Council (PCC) of the Ecclesiastcal Parish of St Wilfrid, Cowplain (Registered Charity No. 1130601) From 1[st] January 2023 to April APCM 2024

Administratve informaton

The parish of St Wilfrid is situated in Cowplain. It is in the Deanery of Havant, the Archdeaconry of Portsdown and the Diocese of Portsmouth.

PCC correspondence: c/o The Vicarage, Padnell Road, Cowplain, Waterlooville, Hampshire, PO8 8DZ

Website:

www.stwilfridscowplain.co.uk

PCC members who have served from the APCM in May 2023 until this report are:

Priest in Charge Reverend Christopher Spencer (Chair) from September 2023 Curates Reverend Julie Jackson Reverend Derek Johnson Churchwardens Steve Day Jan Smith (Vice Chair) Representatives to Catherine King the Deanery Synod Elaine Hoey (PCC Secretary / Electoral Roll Officer) Elected members Sara Bolton (Until 2026) Derek Baker (Until 2025) Helen Couper (Until 2025) Margo Farmer (Until 2026) Denise Williams (Until 2026) Maria McGannan (Until 2024) Yolanda Cawdeary (Until 2026) William McGannan (Until 2026) Jo Mead (Until 2025) Sonia Passingham (Until 2024) Hazel Watson (Until 2026) Shirley Rumgay (Died December 2023) Co-opted Members Colin Mason (Treasurer) Val Strutt (Safeguarding Officer) Independent Allan Brawn Sue Rodgers

Day-to-day management is the responsibility of the Incumbent and Churchwardens, the Parish Administrator, Mrs Maria McGannan and Mrs Sara Bolton, assisted by Mrs Valerie Strutt, Treasurer Mr Colin Mason ACMA and the many other volunteers who willingly give of their time.

The PCC thanks them all for their time and dedication.

Banking:

Barclays Bank PLC, PO Box 6, Portsmouth, Hampshire, PO6 3DH

Lloyds TSB Bank PLC, 272 London Road, Waterlooville, PO7 7HN

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PCC Report for the APCM January – September 2023

During the months January – June 2023, the PCC met 5 times (including the section 11 meeting) with an average attendance of 12 people.

Jan Smith (Vice Chair) chaired the meetings and Elaine Hoey (Vice PCC Secretary) kindly recorded the minutes and dealt with correspondence.

Our agenda inevitably included factors relating to the vacancy – electing our Representatives, agreeing the advert, and groups developing our Parish Profile.

The Archdeacon, Jenny Rowley, attended the Section 11 Meeting and Andrew Sheard, Area Dean had let us know that he was able to advise us as needed.

We took the documents from our Re-Connect meeting in February to create an outline for a Mission Action Plan.

A group, led by Derek and Lesley Baker, took the lead in planning the Centenary Celebrations.

Other usual activities for the PCC continued, with reports from Treasurer, Safeguarding Officer, Maintenance Manager and the eco team, at each meeting, with other reports coming to the meeting when appropriate.

The APCM took place in church on 21st May. This was the first time that St Wilfrid’s had met for an APCM on a Sunday, and with 59 attendees, it was deemed a success.

There was no need to meet between our June PCC meeting and the arrival of our new Priest-in-Charge, Chris Spencer, in September.

Steve Day and Jan Smith – Churchwardens

September to March 2024

This report covers the time from September 3rd 2023 – the date of my licensing up to now.

The PCC (Parochial Church Council) has held 6 full meetings during 2023/2024 in September, November, January and March. The Churchwardens had led these meetings whilst in the vacancy of a priest in charge. There is one sub-committee that reports to

the PCC (Finance) each meeting, together with a variety of further reports from Deanery Synod to Community Coffee Cup. The variety of teams present a report and carry out the activities in and around the church. For matters which require a full PCC decision, these groups bring reports with proposals to the meeting. Each church member can read what happens at each PCC meeting from the minutes that are published and placed in the church.

The biggest challenge throughout my time has been the PCC structure and governance. My hope is to rebuild the structure. God gave me a picture of a vine and trellis to rebuild the trellis to support the vine and to allow it to grow. For me it feels that we need to develop new ways of working together, especially listening more to each other and listening more for God’s guidance, during our PCC meetings as well as shortening the meetings.

I have already seen glimpses of God at work in prayers of unity, love and growth in PCC meetings, where recruitment has taken place and where others’ needs and concerns have been thought about, thus enabling the PCC and St Wilfrid’s Church to move forward.

Moving forward the PCC needs to be restructured as this is not a good model we practise and not one I think is sustaining so I have started to change the PCC by introducing cards for voting, a timed agenda and food at meetings. This has helped but the PCC structure needs to be replaced and so the PCC went on an away day to change the way we do governance at St. Wilfrid’s Church.

Administratve Informaton

St. Wilfrid’s Church is situated on Padnell Road, Cowplain. It is part of the Diocese of Portsmouth within the Church of England. The registered charity number is 1130601

Governance

The method of appointment of PCC members is set out in the Church Representation Rules dated in 2020. All Church attendees are encouraged to register on the Electoral Roll and stand for election to the PCC.

Objectves

The PCC of St. Wilfrid’s Church, Cowplain has the responsibility of co-operating with the Priest-in-Charge in promoting in the ecclesiastical parish, the whole mission of the Church, pastoral, evangelistic, social and ecumenical. It also has maintenance responsibilities for the church building and grounds.

Reverend Chris March 2024

Structure, Governance and Management

The Parochial Church Council (PCC) is a corporate body established by the Church of England, a registered charity and operates under the Parochial Church Council Powers Measure.

The method of appointment of PCC Members is set out in the Church Representation Rules. Regular church attendees are encouraged to register on the Electoral Roll and to consider standing for election to the PCC. PCC members are required to undertake safer recruitment procedures such as DBS and confidential self-declaration forms and relevant training. New members are encouraged to attend an induction course provided by the Diocese. Representatives of the PCC are asked to attend other relevant training events, report back to the PCC as a body and disseminate printed information where appropriate.

Sub-commitees

The PCC operates one sub-committee (finance) which meets between full meetings of the PCC and oversees the general finances of the church and makes recommendations to the PCC.

Atendance at Services :

St. Wilfrid’s Church attendance has fallen by 40% due to people not returning back from church from the pandemic, many people becoming to frail and the fewer people being committed to coming every week. A review of attendance during January supports this observation.

Comparing attendance at St Wilfrid’s in January 2022, January 2023 and January 2024

The total number of people who attended at least once during the month

	2022	2023	2024
Adults	124	127	*130
Children	14	23	*30

*Including the Christingle Service

Average attendance at individual services during the month

	2022	2023	2024
9.00 Sunday	30	30	29
11.00 Sunday: excluding those who had already attended at 9.00 (usually 3-5 people)	36	39	36
Children	10	10	10
10.30 Thursday: including those who had already attended onSunday	23	28	27
10.30 Thursday: excluding those who had already attended onSunday	14	20	16

Some people, as we see here, attend more than once a week – Sundays and Thursday

Baptsms, Weddings and Funerals held in 2023

Baptisms: 3 compared with 2 in 2022 Confirmation: 0 compared with 0 in 2022 Marriages: 1 compared with 2 in 2022 Funerals in Church: 3 compared with 3 in 2022 Funerals at Crematorium: 8 compared with 9 in 2022

Electoral Roll

At the APCM in 2023 there were 158 names on the Church Electoral Roll, compared with 179 in 2022.

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Priest-in-Charge (Vicar’s) Report for the APCM 2024

God is doing something new in His church. This is evident in our very own parish, and more widely across our Diocese and in the Church at large. Change is seldom comfortable. Especially when it is imposed upon us. We have had several changes that we have had to adapt to. For many, that change took place from September 2023 when I was licensed.

For me, I have seen God at work and whilst there has been some necessary pruning (and there will be more to come), there has been plenty of planting, and already we are seeing green shouts of new life; I am reminded of Paul’s words: ‘I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.’ (1 Corinthians 3:6)

There is no doubt that we are entering a new era, where mission, maintenance and ministry have a part to play in the daily life of the church. What has been so inspiring throughout my time here already is the way in which people come together to engage in the life and ministry of the church. Yes, it has been a journey, yes, some people tell me that they are tired but there have been elements of joy, hope, peace and love in this community too.

During these initial stages of ministry, I find myself developing relationships with others. I have changed things where I felt God call me such as the way the ministry team, which formerly met monthly, now meets every week on Tuesday mornings; this has been such a good time of bearing fruit and growing together as a ministry team.

It was such an honour in October 2023, to celebrate with you the 100 years since the consecration of our church. It was great to give thanks to God for all that has happened in the last hundred years, and we continue to pray for boldness and vision for the next hundred!

Similarly, I attend meetings, spend time with individuals as well as groups, lead and present at PCC meetings and invite people to come to the vicarage or visit them in their own homes. My usual Sunday worship pattern is to be present, to lead and serve the church, so I spilt the rota with two people either preaching or leading as well as sometimes doing both. We have had guests to come and lead in our worship or preach for special services throughout the year, as well as already introducing special services during the year.

One key development has been to introduce a more informal all age service on the first

Sunday of each month and we have focused on different themes including harvest, epiphany and the Lord’s Prayer. I continue to review how all the services are going and recently decided to implement the new liturgy for Lent and beyond.

This is not to replace the white booklet for the 9am and mid-week communion services but to enhance our worship together using creative liturgy with Church of England seasonal material.

Our church has sought to step out into the wider community with the love of Jesus. I see lots of hard work and preparation by the church members and it is something I want to make a specific mention of and saying thank you to all those who serve others in this place. It is great to already see a few changes happen where the church has hosted great events for the community whether as a choir venue, Christmas fayre, school visits, prayer meetings or pancake parties but I know there is much more to do as we have been blessed with a good building to host community events in. These events create opportunities for engagement with our wider community so conversations can take place about people’s faith and their own journey with God.

I have already seen glimpses of God at work in prayers of unity, love and growth in PCC meetings, where recruitment has taken place and where other’s needs and concerns have been thought about, thus enabling the PCC and St Wilfrid’s Church to move forward.

As we all move forward, I am grateful to so many who have done so much, mostly quietly behind the scenes, to serve God, this church and the communities in which we find ourselves. I am especially grateful to our churchwardens for their support, to my colleagues in the parish as well as colleagues in the wider diocese, for their prayers, support and encouragement.

None of this is possible without each other, those who come and contribute so much to this place. We truly have a God who is alive, is awesome, holy and life giving. So, thank you all for being part of this amazing church, for your patience, your love, your generosity and your willingness to journey together.

Reverend Chris Spencer March 2024

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Churchwardens’ Report for APCM 2024

January 2023–March 2024.

We (Jan and Steve) were elected to the roles of Churchwarden in 2022, shortly before Rev Ian Snares announced his intention to move to Holy Trinity, Frome. We were reelected at the APCM in 2023.

The roles and responsibilities of Churchwardens during a vacancy were many and varied and we were helped and supported by advisers in the deanery (with constant reference to “The Church Representation Rules”) and documents provided by the diocese.

Just as importantly we were supported by the many teams within our own church.

Our Ministry Team, Ruth, Clive, Derek and Elaine (Julie was on maternity leave) ensured that all the services (including seasonal and special services) happened just as they should, for the whole time, and Ruth took responsibility for the organisation. Thank you to you all – especially Ruth. We appreciate too, those who have ensured that the 11 o’clock service is an all-age and we give special thanks to the team who lead Sunday Club twice monthly.

Other teams of volunteers came forward, especially volunteers from within the PCC, so that we completed all the formalities for recruiting a new incumbent – including creating the Parish Profile, and our special thanks go to Sara and Catherine, as well as Maria and Mollie-Ann.

2023 was, of course Coronation Year, and a team of people came to ring our bell and listen to Steve’s “proclamation”.

The Foundation Stone for the building of St Wilfrid’s Church prompted us to choose 2023 as a time to celebrate our Centenary, and Derek and Lesley took responsibility for leading us brilliantly, partly by taking up people’s offers to arrange activities and events, to involve us all, culminating in the Centenary Celebration Service - HOWEVER, before that event, there were interviews and an APPOINTMENT and we were delighted that Rev Chris Spencer was licensed to the post of Priest-in-Charge at St Wilfrid’s on 3rd September.

It was great to welcome Chris, Emily, Chloe and Leah to our church and they, of course, were very much part of the centenary celebrations, when we enjoyed the company of many former members of our clergy team, and parishioners going back to the 1950s, as well as Bishop Jonathan and the Archbishop of Canterbury. We intend to produce a record of the momentous Centenary Celebrations.

All the practical preparations – preparing the church and the grounds and the vicarage for the forthcoming events, were willingly undertaken by a whole range of people and we are grateful to each one of them. The diocese provided refurbishment of much of the vicarage (an indirect benefit of our Parish Share) and Derek and Allan and others completed the work; Janet continued her care of the memorial gardens and John kept

the orchard garden ready for use by groups (and the dog show). Jan and Kim continued to keep the halls, kitchen and stairways in good order, despite the health concerns that they have experienced. Derek and Allan also undertook decoration and restoration in the church buildings (please see Allan’s report). Teams of people continue to come in to clean the church. We are much blessed.

During the whole period, Colin continued in his role of Treasurer, Norma as Planned Giving Adviser, Val as our Safeguarding Officer and Allan as Maintenance Manager, Acting Verger and Health and Safety Officer; Maria kept the admin side of St Wilfrid’s going, even after she was appointed to her new post in Emsworth. Elaine’s dual role as Electoral Roll Officer and Secretary to the PCC ensured that she too was kept very busy and we thank her for all that she continues to do.

Our eco group has continuously supported us in discovering ways and means to enable us to work together to protect God’s amazing creation – globally and locally; our grateful thanks to all members of that team too. We are also grateful to all those people and the others who stepped up to take on roles and responsibilities behind the scenes.

As well as through social and fund-raising functions, our outreach continues through the very popular Toddler Groups on Wednesday and Friday mornings and Bob and Sharon and Clive and Sue have worked with a great team of assistants; we have met families from Toddlers at Messy Church, at special services and at social events.

Messy Church has extended its programme to include even more topics relating to outdoors and eco projects. Messy Church membership includes families who come to other services, as well as people for whom it is their main church. Our sincere thanks go to Lesley and the whole Messy Church Team.

During the vacancy and still continuing, a number of families and others attend the twice monthly Community Coffee Cup at Westbrook Hall, though it tends to be just adults who attend Tea and Lovely Cakes and Warm Spaces at St Wilfrid’s. Again, we express our gratitude to Val and Dave and the teams at CCC, Brenda, Sarah and Sonia at TLC, and Brenda, Margo and Martyn at Warm Spaces and all the many, many other people who lend a hand (or two!) who provide hospitality on behalf of us all, to those who come to these social groups.

Our Fundraising Spring and Christmas Fayres took place again this year, with our thanks going to the organisers, including Jo and Niall, and those who supported them by manning stalls, arranging refreshments, welcoming on the door, and raffles. In addition we had a number of Centenary Concerts organised by Steve, Sonia and a small dedicated team, the proceeds of which enabled us to donate to the church as well as significant sums going to the RNLI and other national and local charities.

Pastoral Care, including Home Communions continued and so did PRAYER. Prayers for the vacancy were included at every service and had their own “slot” on Tuesday Mornings on Zoom.

Our Trinity Windows have gone for restoration and we shall look forward to their return at the end of February 2024; in the meantime we are enjoying Sonia’s temporary installation of windows depicting the life of St Wilfrid. Not every church is blessed with an artist in residence, as we are.

We give thanks to God for His response to our prayers.

Steve was in hospital in the summer and Jan in the winter – in these cases we give personal thanks for everyone’s prayers and for God’s gracious response to them.

It has been a period of “life in the fast lane” but we look forward to a relatively peaceful time as we discover more of God’s plans for St Wilfrid’s and our roles in them, as we support Chris and his family, and the whole family of St Wilfrid’s Church, in the coming months and years. Thank you for the privilege of having been a part of this Church in recent months.

Jan Smith and Steve Day, Churchwardens.

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Ministry Team Report for the APCM

January 2023 untl September 2023.

The ministry team met monthly on 1[st] Thursday each month. The main topic of these meetings was to discuss the service rotas and anything problems which we encountered which might impact on the smooth running of the church during the interregnum.

We invited the wardens, Jan and Steve to our meetings so that we could support each other during this time, by listening to each other’s concerns and praying into any of the situations in which we found ourselves.

We are grateful for the support of the following people who came to help us fill the rotas during the interregnum.

Revd. Sandra Beavis, who took on one midweek service every month. Revd. Judy Henning who came for one midweek service. Revd. Michael Beaver for presiding and preaching at 9am

Revd, Max Millett, Revd. Nick Ralph, who both presided and preached whenever the need arose, often for both morning services.

From the ordinands,

Jan Fuller, Kevin Jones, Polly Honeychurch, who kindly preached for us, some on more than one occasion

Rev Ruth Loveman

September 3[rd] 2023 – the date of my licensing up to now. The first thing to mention is how grateful I am to all those who went out of their way to make me feel so welcome and so quickly becoming part of the church family here at St. Wilfrid’s church. Secondly, thank you to you all who did

so much during the vacancy, which includes the ministry team here and to all those who do so much to enable the life of St. Wilfrid’s church in all its varied and many ways. When I started the ministry team met once a month. This changed back in November so that we

could gather together every week. On Tuesdays we meet as a team and that team is Clive, Ruth, Julie, Derek, Elaine, Kate and myself. We pray for each other, talk, fill out rotas, drink coffee or water, study the bible in which we are focusing on Mark’s gospel and discuss matters concerning ministry. I have felt very blessed with this change and my hope is that the team feel valued and supported.

Thirdly, I witness the gentleness of God’s Holy Spirit within the ministry team at this time. Already I have witnessed tears and laughter, sorrow and celebration, challenge and support. Gentleness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit which shows me and hopefully others that we are moving together as one team. However, that team has changed throughout my time already. We will welcome Polly Honeychurch as our third curate into the team who will start later in 2024 as an assistant curate but we also said

farewell and goodbyes to Reverend Clive and Sue Williams during February. Personally, I have felt so blessed in knowing them both for a short while and I know here in church just how much they have blessed each one of us throughout the many years of inspirational ministry support, challenge, prayerfulness and loyal service.

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Fourthly, over my many months of being installed as priest in charge here I see people’s generosity in the way they give their time, energy, effort, resourcefulness and so on to God’s kingdom. I have seen God through the action of the ministry team whether that’s hospital visiting,

bereavement visiting, visiting people in their homes, art group, funerals, baptisms, special

services, schools work, Christmas events and so much more. My hope for the team in the future is to continue to be guided by God, to ministry in his kingdom, to find opportunities to grow and strengthen our life together and to explore how best to lead and serve the church here at St. Wilfrid’s. I close with these words from 1 Peter 4:10: ‘As each one has received a special gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.’

Reverend Chris March 2024

Curate Report

I was on leave from ‘obligation and responsibility’ for the majority of 2023 (maternity leave) but not on leave from being part of the church family and community.

I want to thank you all for loving us, encouraging us, challenging us and spurring us on during this time as we would anyone else who is part of the church community.

Thank you all for welcoming me back in a leadership role in November 2023. This is an exciting time for us as a family but also a sad one as my time at St Wilfrid’s draws to a close. My license ends at the end of June 2024 (it should have been June 2022 but two maternity leaves gave me two years longer with you all).

We’re currently exploring what next. I don’t feel at this time in my life with a young family that I want to go into a Priest in Charge/Vicar role. God has given me a heart for children and families and parents to support and encourage them to catch who Jesus is and to journey with him in the everyday highs and lows of life.

In January I started a year-long national course called the Growing Faith Strategic Leadership Programme. Growing Faith, headed up by Lucy Moore, is the movement that exists to put children, young people and families instinctively at the heart of all the mission and ministry of the Church.

It involves churches, schools and households working together to help children, young people and families have life in all its fullness. My heart is especially for the household element, empowering and equipping parents to grow faith in the everyday home environment.

I’m currently exploring what this might all look like in terms of a job.

We’re also looking for somewhere to live, a school for Noah to attend as he starts in September this year and a church community that we can be part of. Please do pray for us as we discern these next steps.

We’ve all loved being part of St Wilfrid’s. Thank you for all the ways you’ve loved us all. I’ve grown in so many ways since I joined you all back in June 2018 and I’m so grateful to you all for the part you’ve played in that. We will all be sad when it is time to say goodbye. St Wilfrid’s is such a special place.

My prayer for you all is that you would know you are loved unconditionally by a God who doesn’t have favourites. I pray that you would continue to grow in love for him, for others and for yourself and pursue his Spirit wherever and however it might take you. Rev Julie Jackson

Assistant Curate Report

On the 20th of March 2024 I will have been an assistant curate at St. Wilfrid’s church for two years. The time seems to have gone bye very quickly. Rev. Ian Snares was

initially my training incumbent, then when he left, Rev. Canon Karina Green became my supervisor and now Rev. Chris Spencer is my training incumbent. We’ve been through an interregnum, Rev. Julie Jackson is looking for a new post, Rev. Clive and Sue Williams have left and Polly Honeychurch will be joining us as an assistant curate at the end of June. Life is certainly not dull at St. Wilfrid’s!

But the best part of being at St. Wilfrid’s is all you lovely people. Thank you for always being so encouraging and supportive. I must also express my grateful thanks to all those involved in any sort of ministry at St. Wilfrid’s, much of it behind the scenes and out of the public eye. You are such an inspiration to the rest of us, thank you.

But most of all, I thank God for giving me this opportunity to serve and minister in the parish and community of Cowplain. What a joy to serve in such a place and it is with great excitement that I’m sure we are all looking forward to what God has planned for the future. After all, mission is finding out what God is doing and then joining in.

Being an assistant curate, my focus is, by necessity, on my training and I have attended a number of training sessions during the last year. Some of the topics have been, moving on, holiness, generosity, giving, and stewardship, church law and church buildings. However, my training does not only take place in the classroom but is also ‘hands on’ in the parish.

Having been in an interregnum meant that I had many opportunities to minister, both as part of the ministry team and individually. I’ve enjoyed the challenge of preaching, leading and celebrating communion at the different services. During the past year I also assisted Rev. Ruth at a number of funerals and now have the privilege of conducting funerals on my own. I did a baptism at St. Cuthbert’s church in Copnor and conducted a service at St. John’s in Purbrook. I have been to Nightingale Nursing home a number of times with Elaine Andrews to see Anna Chaplaincy in action. Anna chaplaincy is such an important area of ministry, and it has been wonderful to see how people have reacted to the singing, the talks (which Elaine always makes so interesting) and the prayers. Matthew 25:40 says,

“Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of Mine, you did it for Me.”

It was also encouraging to see Julie being licensed as an “Anna Friend” in December and now taking on a greater role in helping Elaine.

Most probably the biggest challenge for me has been doing the schools work in the absence of an incumbent. I had only done a few school assemblies assisting Rev. Ian and then all of a sudden, there I was, facing all those school children (a few hundred) on my own at both Padnell Infants School and Padnell Junior School. Having grandchildren certainly helped! However, the participation, interaction and inquisitiveness of the young boys and girls was a reward in itself. This certainly stretched me, not only spiritually but, at times, physically as well! I also had the privilege of conducting a Christmas service for the Infants school and easter services for

both schools.

In addition, I attended ministry meetings, deanery synod meetings, chapter meetings, church warden’s meetings and It meetings, as well as doing a certain amount of pastoral and hospital visiting.

It is my prayer that all of us will, in the coming year, run with passion into His abundance so that we may reach the purpose that Jesus Christ has called us to fulfil and wants us to discover.

To God be all the glory.

Rev. Derek Johnston

Licensed Lay Minister (Reader) Report

During the above period, I have preached at the 9am service 10 times. I have led the 11am service 6 times and have preach at 11am service 9 times.

If feel very privileged to have had this ministry at St Wilfrid’s Church as many LLM’s (reader) are not afforded that privilege at their home churches.

I’ve also been involved in many other areas of ministry, Sunday Club, Pastoral Care, Community Coffee Cup, Prayer Ministry, Home Communion and Anna Chaplaincy.

In January this year I reached the age at which I had to make a decision, whether to remain as an LLM (reader) with Permission to Officiate (PTO) or to relinquish my licence. After much prayer and discussion with Revd. Chris Spencer, I decided to accept PTO status. I have also decided that my main area of ministry should be as an Anna Chaplain, so you won’t see as much of me leading and preaching at services.

The Anna Chaplaincy is such a vital area of ministry in the community and it is where I want to use my energy most, please refer to the separate Anna Chaplaincy report for more details of this area of my ministry.

I thank God for all the support and encouragement I have received in the last 20 years, that I have been a LLM (reader), at St Wilfrid’s Church.

Elaine Andrews

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Pastoral Care Report for APCM

Pastoral Care and Home Communion

The Pastoral Care Team has received very few “formal” referrals, but members of the team have attempted to be aware of the needs of individual members of our church and have responded accordingly.

During 2023, 35 visits by lay members of the church were made to people in their homes or care homes for the purpose of sharing Holy Communion. There have been several more visits so far this year. This is a ministry that offers a sense of great privilege to those who represent the church and is much appreciated by those who receive the sacraments.

Jan Smith

Pastoral Assistants

As reported at the last APCM, the Pastoral Care Team has been greatly diminished, with a lot of the original team needing pastoral care themselves.

We have met we together, incorporating with the Strategic Development Team (People).

Several of the team met with Revd Chris Spencer recently. To talk about how best to support the pastoral care needs within the congregation and are hoping that a new model might be developed soon.

We acknowledge that pastoral care happens informally through groups of friends meeting and supporting each other, home groups/connect groups, through hospital visiting, TLC, CCC and many other ways.

I still hold the Pastoral Care phone and this has been very useful for anyone to contact us when there have been any pastoral issues, although these contacts have been very few and far between.

My prayer is that each person at St Wilfrid’s will feel cared for, as Jesus, the shepherd, cares for his flock.

Elaine Andrews – Leader

Anna Chaplaincy

Bishop Jonathan made care for older people one of his two main priorities, in his presidential address at the April 2022 meeting of our Diocesan Synod, aiming to create a network of Anna Chaplains across the diocese.

The plan is to have an Anna Chaplain in every parish, benefice and cluster in our diocese. They are named after Anna, the widow and faithful older person who – together with Simeon – recognised the infant Jesus as the Messiah in the temple at Jerusalem.

The Anna Chaplain for St Wilfrid’s is Elaine Andrews. Elaine was licensed as an Anna Chaplain in November 2022. Julie Brown supports Elaine as an Anna Friend. Sadly, just after Shirley Rumgay was licensed as an Anna Friend too, she passed away. Shirley was helping Elaine at Woodlands Nursing Home and was well loved by all there.

Anna Chaplains minister to older people in the community. These may be older people who have a faith, little faith or no faith at all. Elaine visits the Borrow Centre (Age Concern) lunch club and also helps at their Social Afternoon.

Along with Julie, Elaine also visits Nightingale Court Nursing Home, Woodlands Nursing Home and we are about to start visiting Bayith Rest Home. We take a service once a month at each of the homes and always conclude by praying for each person individually, if they want us to.

The visits seem to be valued by all

In 2023 Elaine lead the Remembrance Day Service at Age Concern too.

Elaine Andrews

Bereavement support group

The group is led by Revd. Ruth Loveman and Mrs Shirley Henley.

The purpose of the group is to provide a time and space for anyone who has been bereaved to come and meet with others who are experiencing similar feelings, supporting each other through talking and listening and working through their grief. Those who attend really appreciate this time which is in complete confidence, and things spoken about are not discussed outside the meeting.

The group continues to meet on the 3[rd] Tuesday each month in the upper hall at 2pm. The numbers attending fluctuate month by month as the needs of those attending vary. Usually in single figures, these people are from within the congregation and from outside of the congregation.

We consider this to be a worthwhile support group and are ready to support anyone who wishes to attend. You do not need a special invitation, you can contact the office to say you are coming or just turn up on the day.

Revd Ruth Loveman. Group leader.

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Safeguarding Report for the APCM

This report covers the time from September 3[rd] 2023 – the date of my licensing up to now. St. Wilfrid’s takes safeguarding very seriously and it appears on every PCC meeting alongside a safeguarding report from both Reverend Chris and Val Strutt (Parish Safeguarding Officer) as well as Val and Chris meet together on a regular basis.

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The first thing to mention is how grateful I am to Val for all that she does as our parish safeguarding officer and for all the hard work she does within the role.

We can report that we are uptodate with all our safer recruitment and are very grateful to everyone who has co-operated with us to achieve this result. We have also worked hard on the safeguarding dashboard and are pleased to say we have achieved 100% at level 3. We cannot be complacent however, as it is subject to constant change. and once again our thanks to you all.

Val, Reverend Chris and Sonia attended the Safeguarding Conference back in October 2023 and we heard from different speakers. The first keynote session was about thinking differently about safeguarding: Neurodiversity and church led by Ann Memmott and Fiona MacMillan. These two women were very inspirational as they helped us all to understand the Neurodiversity paradigm, on thinking differently about neurodiversity and safeguarding and being aware of safeguarding risks for neurodivergent people. The second keynote session was about from unconscious Bias to Conscious Inclusion led by Dawn Lewinson. This session helped us all the recognise what bias is and how it plays out, understanding the impact of bias and how we mitigate the effects of bias in our churches. We spilt into various sessions during the morning and afternoon. As part of the conference, we heard about the new diocesan spiritual abuse guidelines. The document is needed because of the recent (December 2021) spiritual abuse guidance and so our diocese has considered the national guidance and put it into the local context. The working group recognises that the term spiritual abuse is a growing subject.

Val continues to go to safeguarding meetings either online or in person or on a webinar which discusses a range of safeguarding issues. In November the PCC updated our safeguarding policy, which is in place and follows the Diocese of Portsmouth guidelines. In November we updated our Safeguarding policy statement, as well as our exoffender’s policy and adopted the domestic abuse policy.

We all have safeguarding training for the various roles we do in our church. Reverend Chris has completed some of that training since his arrival and Val and Chris go through the training log to make sure that everyone is up to date with their training in this area of ministry. When it is required to update ourselves with safeguarding training, please let Val or Reverend Chris know that you have completed that particular course.

Alongside training is we need leaders and helpers for various roles within the church and we regularly require DBS checks. Val and I also complete the safeguarding bash board which helps us to review and record safeguarding issues.

I end with this prayer

Lord,

Look with favour on us your children, We ask for your tender care,

That you uphold us as we become Christ’s witnesses in our world.

Allow us to create an environment where both children and adults can flourish and minister to each other in a spirit of light, love and joy.

We remember those who have been hurt and those who are hurting so that they may know your healing source of strength.

We make this prayer through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Reverend Chris March 2024 Val Strutt

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General Data Protecton Regulatons (GDPR) Report for Annual Parochial Church Meetng April 21[st] , 2024

General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are a legal requirement but the appetite for compliance at St Wilfrids is very low. The Parochial Church Council (PCC) accept we are not currently compliant.

As a PCC we have a duty to protect all data we hold relating to not only our internal teams and people but also external people who share their data with us for any reason. Any loss or breach of data will result in a reputational damage and loss of confidence in our church to manage data. Should this occur, it is likely to have a significant impact at a personal level for those data has been compromised, for example identity theft.

Currently we do have:

We have agreed data consent forms available to all for:
Childrens groups
Adults attending church and church affiliated groups
A privacy notice which is available on the website

There is currently a database holding permissions (created in 2022) for all those who have provided data consent forms however this is now eighteen months out of date. We also have the beginnings of a data inventory log. To complete this we need to understand where our data is held.

There has been no action towards compliance during 2023.

Jo Mead

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Havant Deanery Synod report for the APCM

This report covers the time from September 3[rd] 2023 – the date of my licensing up to now.

The November meeting took place on Thursday 16[th] November at 7:30pm at St. John’s Church, Rowlands Castle. The meeting started with pray and worship led by the deanery band. A brief welcome was given including our new priest in charge Reverend Chris Spencer.

The main focus of the meeting was the Eco-Church presentation by Will Hughes and Rachel Houlberg. We were reminded that we as Christians are stewards of God’s creation (Genesis 1-3) so we are to love, value and protect what God has made. More recently the Church of England in 1996 introduced the 5 marks of mission in which a priority for the church is to look after the world. The resources are based on AROCHA see website for more information: htps://ecochurch.arocha.org.uk. The awards are from diocesan level to parish level and go from Bronze, Silver and Gold in which all churches will now be told that they must work towards. St. Wilfrid’s Church is on silver award. There are three questionnaires to fill in. The main questionnaire covers 5 categories. These categories are Worship and teaching, buildings, land, global engagement and lifestyle. The hope is that churches will be cardon neutral by 2030. There has been national church funding increase to £30 million to give out grants to help out churches based on the questionnaires.

There was some brief news about the Deanery was that two areas have gone into vacancy Rowlands Castle with BCI and Hayling Island. The synod prayed for them. Next was the Diocesan news which focused on SMII projects which have been or about to be applied for and our deanery has applied for Berewood Pioneering post and Horndean.

At the church meeting we acknowledged the debate on LLF and we prayed for the situation especially for unity, God’s grace and help in guidance for the future.

The previous Deanery Synod took place at Christ Church, Portsdown Hill on 21st June. Canon Dr Anthony Rustell, the Diocesan Director of Ministry and Mission gave a presentation on how to make training that enables all people to grow in vocation and discipleship. Commissioned Ministries (e.g., Pastoral, Anna Chaplains), could be taught in, eg, eight weeks.

Licensed Readers, Pioneer Ordained Ministers can be trained more flexibly. Commissioned: Ministries discerned In the Parish. Training through the Deanery that enables people to be commissioned to their Parish. This has been done in the Isle of Wight and Petersfield Deaneries.

Non-Commissioned, e.g., Servers, Choir and Band members, those who read and lead Intercessions, Flower Arrangers, Vergers etc. How could these people be supported?

Lay Readers, Lay Pastoral Assistants (LPA), Lay Worship Leaders (LWL) Lay Preachers (LP) and Anna Chaplains.

The March Synod was very much taken up over the last 3 years, with discussions on the issues of potential reorganisation of the way churches work together, with the aim of providing both better missions, and more efficient mission, given shortages in clergy numbers and resources faced across the Church nationally and locally.

Deanery Synod representatives: Reverend Chris, Reverend Derek, Reverend Julie, Elaine Hoey, Catherine King

March 2024

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Health & Safety Report 1st January 2023 – 1st March 2024

The PCC reviews and approves the St Wilfrid’s Health & Safety (H&S) Policy each January; a copy of the policy is on display in the Church Foyer.

During the period 1 Jan 23 – 1 Mar 24 I received nine Accident Report Forms, eight of which were raised on children who had fallen over toys or ran into doors etc whilst attending the Toddler’s Group. No further action was necessary on any of the reports.

On 28 Apr 23 a member of the Havant Borough Environmental Health Department conducted a routine inspection of the kitchen. There were no issues raised by the inspecting officer.

The contents of the First Aid boxes situated in the vestry, rear of the church, kitchen, and upper hall kitchenette are checked every March to ensure the contents are in date.

An annual assessment of the fire risks in the church and halls is conducted every March. The assessments (12 in number) are kept in the Fire Log / Risk Assessments / Test Certificates Folder.

I am not aware of any other H&S issues.

Allan Brawn

H&S Officer

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Fabric & Maintenance Report 1[st] January 2023 – 1[st] March 2024

The following improvements and maintenance have been undertaken during the period 1 Jan 23 – 1 Mar 24:

In January 2023 woodworm was discovered in some of the cupboards in the choir vestry. Following an extensive wider survey involving the church architect, Tim Sage, there were signs of woodworm in the old sanctuary, namely, in the priest’s stool and the back of the smallest pew. All affected areas were treated with a woodworm killer; the badly affected cornice at the top of the robe’s cupboard and the long cupboard above the altar frontal box were removed and destroyed.
There has been a problem for many years with dampness in the priest’s vestry which has got worse over the last two years. Following discussions and visits by the church architect, the following has been undertaken to try and alleviate the problem:

 A 7m long, 200mm wide and 400mm deep trench has been dug in front of the vestry wall and filled with pea gravel to act as a soak-away.

The Archdeacon approved the installation of a new 100mm extractor fan in
the vestry. During this work, the defective extractor fan in the vestry toilet was replaced and the obsolete wall mounted heater was disconnected and removed.
Plaster has been removed from the internal south facing and adjoining wall
to expose bare brick, and a section of breezeblock has been replaced with house bricks. G&C Property Services (Southern) Ltd [they are a sub-contractor for the Diocese] removed two courses of brickwork approximately 1.5m long and cleared the cavity of debris and dirt to a depth of 200mm before inserting a damp proof course (DPC). Work remains ongoing.
On 5 April 2023 the external protective glass on the centre Trinity window was shattered by an object. During its replacement it was seen that the stained glass in all three windows had bowed inwards at the bottom. On the recommendation of the church architect, Dan Humphries (Stained Glass Ltd) was employed to report on the state of the windows; this concluded that repair work was required to stabilise the stained glass and avoid a catastrophic failure. The PCC accepted his report and Dan was duly employed to carry-out the work identified in his report. On 2 Feb 24

the three windows were removed for renovation in his workshop, and in their place three murals, painted on polycarbonate by Sonia Passingham, were fixed.

During September 2023 all external ground floor windows and doors of the church and lower hall were re-painted; renovation of the church main doors continues.
I would like to record my thanks to Derek Baker for his advice and hard work in helping to achieve all the above.
The upper hall carpet was cleaned in 2023; this was paid for by the Toddlers Group.
Also, last September Milton Glass replaced two of the foyer’s large double- glazed windows which had become badly fogged. Additionally, Mclean Carpentry replaced the rotten foyer cross passage and lady’s toilet window frames with new bespoke frames and double-glazed glass units.
In November 2023, a Stannah lift engineer assessed a problem with the lift, this resulted in the replacement of two defective relays which together with a call out charge was an expensive and unbudgeted event.

A variety of other tasks from cleaning out gutters and drains and sweeping up leaves to mending broken table legs and making repairs to the upper hall Velux windows have been completed.

Standard Maintenance Items

In addition to the above the following standard maintenance tasks remain extant:

The (8) lightning conductors are tested every 2½ years, their next test is planned for May 2024.
The fire alarms, emergency lighting and fire extinguishers are in date for their respective six-and twelve-monthly checks by Uni-Guard Fire Protection Ltd; the Maintenance Manager also checks them every two months.
The two central heating boilers and the kitchen domestic hot water boiler are serviced every September by All About Gas Heating & Plumbing Services Ltd; a gas safety certificate is issued.
The dishwasher and cooker are both serviced every February by Acorn Services; a gas safety certificate is issued.
The lift is serviced every April and October by Stannah Lift Services Ltd.
Our portable electrical items (currently numbering ninety-three) are checked every September by UK Safety Management Ltd.
The organ is covered by an annual extended guarantee and is serviced every March by Makin Organs Ltd (Church Organ World); the church piano was tuned last April by Intune (Mark Mulholland).
All external ground floor windows and the old sanctuary windows are cleaned every 3-months and the upper hall windows every 12-months.

Finally, I would like to thank all those who have assisted me with the maintenance of the building and environs. A special thanks must go to Janet Andrews and John Hill: Janet recently stood down after more than twenty years of looking after the borders of the Memorial Garden and advising on what flowers and shrubs should be planted and then looking after them with tender loving care, and John who is also stepping down has kept the Orchard Garden neat and tidy for the last ten years. I am pleased to report that Helen Couper and Stan Hoey have taken up the gauntlet.

Allan Brawn - Maintenance Manager

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Planned Giving Report – 1[st] January to 31[st] December 2023

Dear Friends

I am the Planned Giving Organiser for St Wilfrid’s Church. My duty to the church is to record the Regular planned giving and claim the Gift Aid which equates to an extra 25% on all donations made by taxpayers on behalf of St. Wilfrid’s Church.

In order for Gift aid to be claimed on your behalf for the church. I would only need your name and address and for you to acknowledge that you are a tax payer. I do not need to see any proof of earnings or tax payments.

If you are not a tax payer and donate to the church, St Wilfrid’s can still claim Gift aid against your spouse’s tax, again I would only need their name and address and confirmation that they are a Tax payer.

Thank you to all who donate through planned giving to St. Wilfrid’s Church and if we are currently claiming Gift aid against your donation. Please let me know if you No longer Pay tax.

If anyone would like to talk to me about planned giving, I usually attend the Sunday, 9 O’clock service and am in the hall until the start of the 11 O’clock Service. If I am not around, please give your phone number to one of the wardens and I will get back to you.

Norma White Planned Giving Organiser

Parish Giving Scheme

Parish Giving Scheme
Donatons Received	£13,854.62
Gif Aid Received	£3,425.62
Total	£17,280.24
Regular Planned Giving Scheme –Including one of donatons – Tax Payers
Donatons Received	£44,216.00
Gif Aid Received (includes 93p interest)	£11,054.93
Total	£55,270.93
Regular Planned Giving Scheme –Including one of donatons – Non Tax Payers
Donatons Received	£5,155.00

All Planned Giving Donations received including Gift Aid are allocated to the General fund.

= Total £77,706.17

The number of planned giving members has decreased this year from 82 in 2022 to 72 members at the end of this year.

Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS)- Donations from the weekly collection plate

Total GASDS Claimed for year ending 31st December 2023	£8,165.77
Total Gif Aid received	£2,041.47
= Total	£10,207.24

This Donation is added to the General Fund giving a Total Including Gift Aid £87,913.41 (Last Year £95,924.07) Reduction of £8,010.66

Total of All Donatons received	£71,391.39
Gif Aid	£16,522.02
Total	£87,913.41
Total Received for Year End 31st December 2022	£95,924.07
Total Reducton for Year End 31st December 2022 -	£8,010.66

Norma White Planned Giving Organiser – May 2024

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Music Group and Organist’s Report

Music Group Report 2023/24

As a group, it has been our privilege to be able to lead the congregation in worship every Sunday throughout this year and over that period we continued to ask God to guide us on the best ways to assist people to worship him.

In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we are reminded that we should be;

“Speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord” Ephesians 5:19

Our prayer for the coming year is that using the gifts that God has provided us, he will continue to lead people to sing and make music from their hearts to himself and that our worship will be acceptable to him.

There have been many highlights across the course of the year;

Outside of our normal service pattern we have had a number of special services throughout the year, including Chris’ licencing, our 100th Birthday Celebrations with the Archbishop of Canterbury and our celebrations around Christmas and Easter.

It has been great to work more closely with David on some organ-music group collaborations for some of our joint and special services. I really appreciate the time that David has given and look forward to continuing this into the new year.

We had an opportunity this year to review our ‘core song’ list. Through this process has introduced a number of new songs to our congregations as well as reintroducing some songs that we have not sung in a while. We believe that with an extended core song list we have a great balance of songs that we can use throughout the year.

Despite the many highlights, we were, of course, shocked and saddened by the loss of one of our members this year on Christmas Day, Shirley Rumgay. Shirley has been an integral part of the group over many years and I wish to acknowledge the huge contribution that Shirley brought to the worshiping life of the church across the full spectrum of our congregation. Her commitment over the years to both new and old styles on piano or organ across our Sunday services was immeasurable and she is remembered fondly and missed hugely.

I am very grateful for the continued support of Lesley, Mark, Sacha and Chris for the amazing gifts that God has given them and their prayerfulness as we continue to ask God to guide us in how we can help our wider congregation know more about and come closer to God.

Stephen Bolton.

Organist’s Report

It has been my privilege to play the organ for 9a.m. Holy Communion services both before and since covid lockdown. During some combined services recently, such as at Christmas, we have combined organ and music group for some the “major” hymns. This has worked very well and as far as I know has been balancing successfully. Organ volume can be adjusted quite easily, so do let me know if you think this is needed.

Since covid the format has been for two hymns to be sung – one towards the start of the service and one towards the end, with the organ (or sound system) being used to play a hymn tune as background music at the Offertory. From time to time we have also sung the Gloria.

It is possible that the musical content will be increased in due course, with perhaps another hymn and/or music over Communion and/or a regularly sung Gloria. A case of watching this space!

The other task I undertake regularly is to submit suggested hymns for the following month. I try to choose reasonably well known, singable hymns, referring to the suggestions in the back of the hymn book, which are listed Sunday by Sunday according to the Church’s year. The RSCM “Sunday by Sunday” magazines from previous years are another source; the Church is no longer affiliated to the RSCM so we do not receive these any more.

In addition to the sung hymns I look for a middle one as an organ “solo” (or sound system if there is no live organ), also two for the start & finish of services (four in all) as substitutes for organ voluntaries when needed.

My last job is to check my selections against my list of recorded accompaniments that we have in respect of those Sundays without organ and make changes if need be. Once this is complete my list is submitted to clergy/ministry team for vetting/making changes as they see fit!

David Wiseman

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Worship Services report for the APCM

This report covers the time from September 3[rd] 2023 – the date of my licensing up to now. For me personally music is a key part of worship at St. Wilfrid’s and to that end we have a volunteer organist who helps and our music group that leads our 11am service. It is so lovely to hear congregations singing and encounter the presence of God whatever the type of music being played live or pre-record, traditional or contemporary, individual musician or group of musicians.

Our Sunday worship services continue to be at 9am and 11am. The 9am is our weekly communion service using the white booklet setting for that service. In the future there will be more variety of liturgy focused on a particular liturgy such as Lent, Advent, Kingdom etc. My hope is to employ an organist to help at the 9am service.

The 11am is our informal worship which also covers informal communion, all age worship and our children’s Sunday Club activities. Occasionally we have had joint services at 10am to celebrate something in the liturgical year such as Christmas, Harvest, Remembrance and my hope is that will continue throughout the year.

It has also been a joy in introducing other services throughout the year such as Armistice Day. It has also been joyful to have on occasion more reflective services in which occasionally I have joined the music group and played.

I also introduced during the year more bible readings so we now have an Old Testament reading, a New Testament reading and a Gospel reading to help us study more of God’s word together.

My own thanks go to all those involved in all our worship services because each one of you do a sterling role in supporting, leading and serving whether that’s at the back with the AV or bringing someone up for communion, leading our intercessions or reading our bible readings or playing music and leading our services.

In terms of our mid-week services this still continues on Thursdays at 10:30am and continues to grow with the amount of people attending. Again, like the 9am Sunday service (but without music) the midweek service continues to use the white booklet but moving forward will use a more liturgy focused on particular themes such as Lent, Advent etc. like the 9am service.

In terms of Life events by which the church now means baptisms, funerals and weddings. Since September the church has baptised two children but sadly not conducted any weddings. We have had around 10 funerals either at church or at a crematorium as well as interment of ashes in our garden of remembrance.

Reverend Chris March 2024

Welcoming/Sidespeople

We are most grateful for the team of people who take time to welcome the people attending church; more team members would be very much appreciated.

Jan Smith

AV Team Report 2023

The AV group consists of a small number of individuals liaising with the clergy/lay clergy to manage the creation of content (songs/liturgy/images/video) for each 11am service and for other ‘special’ services and events – Christingle, Nativity Service, Easter, Baptisms, Concerts, etc. throughout the year and ultimately the projecting of these elements during the service.

The laptop used for projecting the texts and images/video was replaced earlier in 2023 year although the projector is now several years old. The software used is from 2005 and we are actively looking at replacing the laptop and projector having previously tried some large flat screen displays in the church to get the congregation’s feedback. This requires significant outlay and is not a decision that we will rush into as the current setup is workable for now.

The priority is to upgrade the audio which is suffering numerous issues and noticeably affects the ability of people to hear the service.

Significant progress to start addressing the issues and upgrade/replace faulty equipment has begun and changes and improvements will become apparent during 2024.

Steve Day

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Children and Families report for the APCM

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St Wilfrid Cowplain With Hart Plain 2023

Christ Centred, Creat i ve & All Age, a Celebrat i on with Hospitality

At Messy Church we are blessed to have such a strong and gifted team who are passionate about what we do. There are plenty of challenges thrown our way but we share a love for Jesus and are driven by our desire to share our faith with the families through actions and words. We’re delighted that many St Wilfrid’s Wednesday and Friday toddler families have become regular attenders at Messy.

We are playing our part in Eco Church and are committed to making sustainable choices in Messy Church, especially in developing an appreciation of the world that God created.

In May we held ‘Messy Coronation’, celebrating the crowning of King Charles and in October it was Messy Centenary to mark the 100th birthday of St Wilfrids. We look forward to another birthday celebration as Messy Church is 20 years old in April 2024.

Messy Church Team

Toddlers Annual Report 2023-March 2024

St Wilfrid’s Toddler group meets in the Upper hall on a Wednesday and Friday morning during school term time. Ages range from new born babies to pre-school children. Our aim is to provide a welcoming, safe and social environment for the children, parents/grandparents or carers giving them the opportunity to meet each other, play with their children and to have fun whilst mixing with others.

It is run by an enthusiastic team of Church volunteers who interact and engage with the children and adults. These morning sessions are very popular and we see it as a valuable opportunity to build and grow our links with young families and our local community. Due to its popularity we use Eventbrite on-line to ensure numbers attending do not exceed our limit and we use our St Wilfrid’s Toddlers Facebook group

we on

to interact and promote church events. As a result see some families attending Messy Church or Church a Sunday and this is an area we seek to grow.

Craft table sessions link in with the major Christian festivals Easter and Christmas.

October 2023 Toddlers helped decorate the Church the Centenary service.

November 2023 the team undertook a 2 hour

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for

Paediatric First Aid duty of care course in the Upper Hall.

December 2023 Clive and Sue Williams who had been involved with toddlers for a number of years stood down.

February 2024 Farewell Meal at Red Lion, Horndean for Clive and Sue.

The Toddler fund helps support the up keep of the Church and between January 2023 and March 2024 £1000 was transferred into the General Fund.

We are always looking to grow our team of helpers and if you feel God is calling you to this area of ministry please do speak to me.

We thank God for the building, for those on the toddler team who give up their time to help and for all those coming along to the sessions that they may not only enjoy their time with us but sense something of God’s love for them.

Bob Wheeler

Sunday Club Report for St Wilfrid’s church - APCM 2023 - March 2024

In 2023, Sunday club continued to run twice each month, with sessions led, planned for and taught by Deb Adam and Lisa Kernot. As well as assisting in the sessions, Elaine Andrews led Safer Recruitment .

In September 2023, Sara Bolton joined the team as an additional leader, and has assisted in sessions, and in both planning and delivering Sunday club sessions alongside Lisa and Deb.

In January 2024, Dan Jackson joined the team as an assistant. Natalie Pet has also just completed her DBS process and will be joining us once she has completed the relevant online courses.

We have had on average 6-8 children attending each session, with some having as many as 10-12 children. In January 2024, our new Sunday Club rota did not continue running on the second and fourth Sundays of each month as previously. It will instead run on those Sundays when all-age worship services are not being held, which means that the dates when Sunday club sessions run will vary month to month but will typically be held on two or three times a month (excluding Christmas, Easter and the

Summer school holidays). Families whose children attend Sunday club have been sent details of these changes of dates and arrangements.

Lisa Kernot

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School Work report for the APCM

This report covers the time from September 3[rd] 2023 – the date of my licensing up to now. The first thing to mention is how grateful I am to all those who went into the various schools and respond to help our school community. It is great to see so many people getting involved in different aspects of school’s work from listening to children read to serving as a school governor.

Since I have arrived, I have continued from what has gone before

me and engaged now with the three local primary school of Padnell Infants, Padnell Juniors and Queen’s Inclosure. I have had the delight of welcoming the children from both Padnell Junior and Infants to St. Wilfrid’s, to learn about what the church is and about what happens inside them. They have come also for special services and for Christmas performances.

I also go into the three primary schools and deliver once a term school assembly on all various topics including caring for animals, Christmas, advent and on the theme of respect which is based on a Christian story from the bible and concluding with a prayer. There are a number of ways we could add onto this ministry alongside taking assemblies like supporting the RE curriculum, governance, going into class rooms, Prayer spaces, Open the Book assemblies etc. but we need people to build a school’s work team to help alongside me as I can’t deliver all of this on my own.

My hope for the future is to continue the excellent links with these schools and continue to build links with further primary schools in the local area as well as the secondary school at Cowplain. If we are going to be present in more schools than we need people to get involved in different ways such as being governors, leading assemblies, reading with children) and my other hope is for St. Wilfrid’s church to be a place where children, young people and their families can encounter and deepen their understanding of faith in Jesus Church, be available to them by being there in our community and encourage every child, staff and parent who comes to church or the

church goes to them to experience something of God for themselves.

Reverend Chris March 2024

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School Work report for the APCM

As you will notice from my assistant curate’s report, the biggest challenge for me during the past year was doing the schools work in the absence of an incumbent. I had only done a few school assemblies assisting Rev. Ian and then all of a sudden, there I was, facing all those school children (a few hundred) on my own at both Padnell Infants School and Padnell Junior School. Having grandchildren certainly helped! However, the participation, interaction and inquisitiveness of the young boys and girls was a reward in itself. This certainly stretched me, not only spiritually but, at times, physically as well! I also had the privilege of conducting a Christmas service for the Infants school and easter services for both schools.

My aim, during the interregnum, was to maintain the strong links between St. Wilfrid’s and both schools, thereby building on the excellent work that had been built up in the past.

Reverend Derek March 2024

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Social Events

100th Centenary Events Report

We prepared for the centenary by inviting the congregation to write down their ideas as to how we might celebrate our big birthday, and to pop their ideas in the building fund brick collection box. Danny and Lyn from the 11am service came up with the great idea that we should challenge ourselves to do 100 wonderful things in our centenary year.

We began with acts of kindness, taking gifts to every business in the parish. Sonia’s artwork was chosen as our centenary logo and a large version was created for display on the front of the church. We served lunches, teas, fair trade breakfasts, and

Christmas Day dinners. We supported Havant Climate Alliance’s warm homes campaign, held sales, picnics and Brenda & Sarah’s wonderful dog show. We were treated to some brilliant music concerts, from dear friends Dragonfly, Achoired taste, Folks in Harmony and Deck & Fo’csle. We sang hymns, drank Pimms and prayed 100 prayers of thanksgiving. We held an exhibition of children’s artwork called ‘Down With Plastic’ as part of Big Green Week, alongside a magnificent Arts Weekend. During Big Green Week we undertook a litter pick (in a heatwave🥵) whilst our swishing and give & take event took centre stage at Havant’s Green Harvest Fair. We walked the Cowplain Cow Trail, built a bug hotel, planted native flowers, installed bird feeders & bird boxes, spent most of the summer counting butterflies and achieved both our bronze and silver Eco Church awards. Elliott Bolton became one of our Eco Warriors and won a Blue Peter Eco Badge. Eco Warrior, Lilly Coats designed and made supersized greetings cards for the congregation to sign collectively as her contribution to our Silver Award. We dug deep to find photos, newspaper cuttings, magazines, books and objects of interest to create ‘Memory Lane’, an exhibition documenting 100 years of history and life of St Wilfrid, Cowplain. Messy Church held Messy Centenary, Messy Coronation and Messy Big Green Week…

and in our hundredth year we welcomed our new Vicar and his family woohoo!! 🥵

We received a visit from the ArchBishop of Canterbury who celebrated communion in our building. Our Centenary Celebration Service on October 15th was attended by the Bishop of Portsmouth, along with past and present clergy and congregation and we cut and shared a huge celebration cake featuring Sonia’s logo… and breathe!!

Parishioners of St Wilfrid Cowplain

Fundraising

Two Fayres were held in 2023:

Easter Fayre 1 April 2023 – Profit £1017
Christmas Fayre 18 November 23 – Profit £2094

Both events were well supported by volunteer helpers and a good variety of stalls with quality products were available. Without the on-going support of these volunteers the Fayres would be impossible to organise and run.

The attendance for the Easter Fayre was significantly reduced by the bad weather on the day – but those who did have an (reported) enjoyable experience.

The Christmas Fayre (the first under Reverend Chris’ management) was a great success. Extra effort was put into advertising using all available media channels; for reasons unknown the Ratepayer was published with an incorrect date, but this only acted to highlight the correct date. We will look to improve our advertising exposure in 2024 in an attempt to widen our attendee appeal and bring more people into St Wilfrid’s.

The Fayres continue to have two key components:

1. Outreach

Simply getting more new attendees into our lovely church (and then advertising our services and commitment to the community).

Fundraising

By offering quality at a reasonable price and stalls that attendees want to see.

The Fundraising Team look forward to seeing everyone (both volunteers and attendees) at the next Fayre on Sat 18 May 24.

Jo, Colin, Trudy & Niall Fundraising Team

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Connect Group Reports 2023/2024

Monday Evening (meet online) – Leaders Mark & Teresa Moncreaff

Our group consists of eight regular participants and we have been watching the series ‘The Chosen’ and studying these programmes with the aid of the accompanying study guides which have proven both very interesting and challenging.

We have so far completed The Chosen, Season 1 and are now studying The Chosen Season 2, again with the accompanying study guide, which we expect to complete around Easter. We have found the format of The Chosen to suit us as a group and plan to start on Season 3 after Easter.

The Chosen programmes are watched beforehand and we meet to discuss and share what we have seen. The study guides are very comprehensive and give some interesting facts and insights besides the supporting readings and questions. Generally the content for each episode is discussed over 2 weeks as there is usually far too much to cover in one session.

We meet generally every Monday evening (depending on shift patterns) and do so via Google Meet (similar to Zoom) since the account we use is not time limited.

We have also had two face to face ‘socials’ – one in summer and the second at Christmas to really ‘Connect’!

Mark and Teresa Moncreaff

Tuesday Evening (in person) - Leader Denise Williams

We started the year with six people in our house group. We meet physically not online and that is our preferred option.

We have most recently looked at Romans, and then ‘the bible course’ – a Bible Society course with half hour of DVD to watch each session, taking an overview of the whole Bible with five weeks on the Old Testament, and three on the New Testament. With time left for discussion, prayer and fellowship. We are all enjoying this and finding it informative and helpful.

Sadly our house group is ending at Easter. One of our members died at the end of last year and two more will be moving away in the spring. The three remaining members are therefore available to join another group after Easter if there is any availability.

Denise

Tuesday evening (meet online) – Leader Elaine Hoey (with help from Jan Smith)

This group began in Lent 2021, as due to successive lockdowns and people being unable to meet in person, some of us felt that it would be really good if people could meet via Zoom. Once the Lent Study was completed, those who were able, continued to meet on Zoom.

A group of seven of us have done many studies, including one on Peter, written by Jan Smith; more recently we have learned lots about Women in the Old Testament.

We pray together and enjoy fellowship as we chat about all sorts of things – some of them related to our studies.

We meet in person for breakfast at Barnards, at least once a term. Something that we all look forward to, and enjoy.

Elaine Hoey

Friday afernoon (in person). Led by Sonia and Graham, Chris, Marion, Judith, Brenda and Sarah.

During 2022 we had begun to take turns to host our midday meetings and are continuing to share lunch and a wide variety of seasonable Bible studies, prayer and hymns. Occasionally other members of the group take a turn at leading and we all feel a strong commitment to our small Family group.

Sonia. March 1st. 2024

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Community Cofee Cup APCM Report - 2023/2024

We find meeting 2[nd] and 4[th] Saturdays is easier for us to have enough volunteers. We have lost a few volunteers this year but we do now have Jane back again. Looking to the future I think we will have to ask for more volunteers to come forward. Amongst our visitors, we average about 20 adults each time, mainly people from the community, and a few children. We do need to build up our numbers of families.

We were given a grant of £150 from County Councillor Prad Bains to buy some more leaflets and posters, toys and refreshments. Prad has just agreed to us having another grant of £1000. This will enable us to work in partnership with Y Services for Young People. From this grant we will help to resource two youth workers who aim to bring pop up activities on the green, subject to permission from the council. This will be monthly from April to September as they are outdoor activities. We can then evaluate how it went and may repeat next year if possible. It will be good to welcome young people and families and work in partnership. Y Services have identified a need for helping young people in the Westbrook area.

Our rent has gone up £1 per hour but we still wish to provide a free service, being a blessing to the Community. So we are grateful to those who help us to continue.

We celebrated our 10[th] birthday on Feb 10[th] and welcomed Paul and Margaret, and Cynthia and Patrick, whose vision it was to start Community Coffee Cup. In the evening we held a fundraising Fish and Chip Quiz at St Wilfs and had over 80 people, raising over £400 (after expenses) We had a lot of positive feedback from people within the community and church. Our thanks to Tony as quizmaster. We have been asked “When is the next one!!!”

As always our thanks to the amazing volunteers who give up their Saturday mornings to bring a real sense of wellbeing into the community, and most importantly, we thank God for all His blessings which have allowed us to continue.

Dave and Val Strutt.

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Parish Upper and Lower Hall Report for APCM

During term-time, our Upper Hall has been regularly used in the mornings by our own Toddler Groups and a dancing school. Both our art groups, SWAG and Want to Paint used it in the afternoons, as did two Pilates groups. After school – we had two Rainbows and one Brownies group.

Two Saturday mornings a month, it was used by Havant and Waterlooville Child Contact, and Sunday Club took place on the second and fourth Sunday mornings.

Our Lower Hall was used on Tuesday mornings by Weightwatchers and on Tuesday evenings (term-time) by a second Brownies group. We also hosted Guides on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. The Tuesday Guiding group has only just started using our halls and we were delighted to welcome them.

During the winter months, our Thursday Holy Communion services were held in the Lower Hall, followed by teas and coffees as well as Warm Spaces. We try to keep this hall free on Monday and Tuesday afternoons for Funerals; at various other times in the week both halls are needed to be available for cleaning. Another requirement was to ensure that Messy Church could take place every second Thursday in the month during term-time. This is made easier by its taking place on the same day as Holy Communion and PCC meetings.

The Lower Hall has been in full use on Sundays, both for teas and coffees after the Church Services and by TLC on the 2[nd] and 4[th] Sunday afternoons. I am surprised by the number of party requests I receive for the use of this hall on Sunday mornings!

Our halls were also used for parties, rehearsals, concerts, a King Charles Coronation party, a ‘Thanksgiving for the life of Vicki Turner’, a Centenary Garden Fete, Hymns and Pimms, and external events, as well as our own Spring and Christmas Fayres. Other social and fundraising concerts, quizzes, PCC ‘Away’ Day, etc. all took place here. Our gardens even held a Dog Show. In prior years our Lower Hall has been used for Lent Lunches and Lent Courses.

We celebrate the use of our halls, our contact with the users – and the income they bring.

Elaine Hoey

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TLC Report for APCM

After church on a Sunday, the afternoons can be very lonely and so Vicki Turner started TLC (Tea and Lovely Cakes) on every other Sunday afternoon during the winter months. Sadly Vicki died in 2023 after a long illness. Talking to her I had asked if we could restart this and Vicki was delighted and came herself to see us all with her husband John. Since her death, Sarah Canham and I have run the “Club”, Sarah being the cake maker (we only have home-made) and quiz master. A voluntary donation helps to pay towards the cakes. We also have a game for all each meeting. Many of our house groups have helped by serving teas and chatting. The laughter is amazing and we now run this, fortnightly, all year round for between twenty and thirty people. We hope that Vicki is looking down on us and laughing too.

Brenda Mizen (St Wilfrid’s) and Sarah Canham (St George’s Church)

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Warm Spaces Report for APCM

Warm Spaces started this year at the beginning of November and ended at the end of February, though as I speak we feel as if we should have carried on for another month as we are back in cold weather!

This year we have had many offers of soup makers for each Thursday. This has meant that we could offer a choice of three different home-made soups each week with rolls and butter and a cup of tea. We have had a clientele of about eighteen each week, most of these from our church members plus a few from outside, which is what we hoped for.

Each day, a basket for voluntary donations is put out and so £426 has gone to the food bank over the four months.

Thank you to all our soup makers who have also helped to serve piping hot bowls of soup (many of our customers had one of each soup each week!) We also had a chat with all our clients and had many laughs. We will miss seeing them, but will look forward to November’s Warm Spaces.

Brenda Mizen and Margo Farmer

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Art Groups Report for APCM

Want to Paint 2023/Easter ‘24

A new year found us increasing our three terms from ten to twelve weeks each and, as always, trying out different media. It’s easy to get into a rut and give ourselves too tight a rein but most rewarding when we cut loose, start experimenting and enjoying new challenges.

We suffered a great shock at the loss of our great friend and WTP secretary Gill last March-her blunt good humour and common sense, as well as her treasured friendship are still hugely missed. Thanks to our committee - Pam, Jane, Chrissy, Veronica and with Graham to audit our accounts, we march on.

We spent a wonderful day at West Dean College in the summer, enjoying the gardens and sketching the scenery, sheep and chicken. Lunch was pretty good too.

We shared the annual Exhibition with SWAG af course, this time in June which covered the weekend of Fathers’ Day – maybe that’s why our numbers seemed down. We look forward to an October weekend for the Exhibition in 2024 when folk come with Christmas present buying in mind.

On a personal note, I have been delighted that Lorraine who is a talented calligrapher has taken on the task of writing the names of departed friends in the St Wilfrid’s Garden of Remembrance Book. It just doesn’t seem right using a laptop for those cherished names so it’s good to have her use her wonderful gift for us.

In February this year, members really enjoyed an afternoon recreating one of Van Gogh’s landscapes with some pretty good results – another loosening up exercise!

We’ve had some requests to all go sketching at Staunton Park – but I think we’ll wait until it warms and dries up a bit!

Happy Painting everyone. X

Sonia Passingham

Want to Paint:

Thursday 1.30 – 3.30pm St Wilfrid’s Upper Hall- Welcome!

St Wilfrid’s Art Group (SWAG ) - APCM Report 2023-2024

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We are still meeting in the upper hall where the light is better, and easier to heat. It also has the advantage of being still warm from the morning activities and the sun helps us to not so often need the lighting nor heating.

We have enjoyed visits from Liz Kelly who has instructed us in acrylics, inspired by Old Masters.. These were much enjoyed. Our own Sonia taught us about different watercolour techniques which served as a reminder to some of us who have been painting longer than we care to remember, and very useful to our newer members.

We experimented by trying to paint the same image of flowers in different mediums. It was interesting to see all the different interpretations.

We will be holding our AGM next week and will be inviting Rev Chris and our auditor. Grace our treasurer does an amazing job behind the scenes and we are very grateful.

If you wish to join us then do contact me. We are a very welcoming group to adults of all ages and abilities.

We enjoyed another successful art exhibition with crafts, which was a joint venture between SWAG and Want to Paint. We were delighted to be able to give £1000 divided between our two charities, St Wilfrid’s Church and Unique. Unique is a little known charity which aims to provide support and information to families affected by rare chromosomes and gene disorders

We are currently working towards our next exhibition weekend 19[th] /20[th] October,. Please save the date!! It promises to be a great exhibition.

Val Strutt

SWAG Secretary

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St Wilfrid’s & Eco Church

Report March 2023-24

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It’s nearly four years since Lesley joined TerraCycle and began to prepare and install boxes for the successful recycling of waste products, otherwise difficult to process. Much has changed!

Now it’s easy to find supermarkets equipped to receive items like squishy plastics and sweet wrappers; at last everyone can take personal responsibility for recycling those while out shopping.

You must have noticed a different look to our re-cycling corner; we have introduced new blue recycle buckets for those items more difficult to re-home.

We’re looking to introduce the capability of taking broken toys and games as part of the Hasbro Recycling Programme. Not only does this help families de-clutter crowded rooms but raises funds for schools and charities.

It’s also been good to see visitors to the car park unloading unwanted clothes and shoes into the big mauve Heart Radio charity collection bin.

We have been delighted to host the Diocesan Eco meeting and hear stories from our neighbouring parishes.

In answer to a request made at PCC, a meeting with another solar panel installer was arranged between Lesley and Derek Baker, Allan Brawn and electrician Gary Baker. This was very useful and included the positioning of panels and battery storage. We now have costings and look forward to presenting plans to the Borough and the Diocese and pulling together to raise sufficient funds. Our next step means drawing a knowledgeable team together to move the dream on to reality. Please speak to Chris or Derek if you feel you can offer practical help and advice with this.

Eco Church: Thanks to Lesley’s spade work and promptings we have been awarded both Bronze and Silver by A Rocha but would draw your attention to the diverse paths taken by A Rocha UK and The Church of England.

Our Money: Graham is currently researching our Carbon Footprint 2023 and suggests - - - - - that we should check out htps://good with money.com/2024/02/19/top 5 least ethical-banks-and-w You may well be shocked.

Our Land : When the new estates were built on Hazelton Wood in the 1960s, bluebells and wood anemones were just two of our native wildflowers lost under concrete and tarmac. We look forward to re-introducing some of these plants in the green. Dave Strutt began forking over some shaded soil so that we can introduce suitable plants for those areas.

We’re encouraging members to donate unwanted plants when they re-jig their gardens in preparation for spring.

There are about twenty REALLY useful and important responsibilities just calling out for someone, maybe a family, to take on-please do ask.

Elliott has received a Blue Peter Badge for his letter describing his Eco Warrior work, Lilly continues using her art work for us and Leah hs been busy with Elliot creating some small new windows for the crèche area.

Our Cathedral is now Silver Awarded, has Solar Panels to its roof, and has formed a team of Deanery Eco Representatives, one of which I am delighted to say is our own Lesley who will be working with the team to work the way ahead.

You will no doubt have noticed and enjoyed the Fairtrade Breakfast and Spud Lunch, both supporting the Endangered Aisle’s underlying message of the Climate Change dangers to the foods we take for granted.

Many blessings for your eforts to save water and power and for your recycling.

Don’t forget that we’re always open to your ideas for spreading the Eco Message! Sonia, Lesley and the Team (Which is each and every one of us).

IT Team Report

The IT team met on a few occasions during the past year to look at a number of IT processes.

We were required to change our Internet provider and so now have BT providing both our Wifi and telephone services.

During the year the team has provided the technical ability to live stream services on line using zoom. Our biggest challenge was streaming Chris’s induction service where we integrated our church AV system with a multi camera and audio zoom meeting to a number of churches in Wales. We have also live streamed a number of funeral services.

We are part of the Diocese trial for digital giving and so you may have noticed the white digital collection tin being used at our services. We are also making more use of the digital Sum Up card reader at our events.

There is a long term plan to upgrade our 2016 website to bring it more in line with current website design and make it more user friendly with our modern types of digital devices.

Steve Day

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Publicity Report

During the last year, the need to publicise our events at St Wilfrid’s almost doubled with our parish profile, centenary plans and summer concerts.

Getting our message out to the community can take many forms from the simple A4 weekly notice sheet to producing video content for the parish profile and we try to utilise them all. During this year we have produced 2 25min videos, a full colour parish profile, numerous A3- A4 posters for display both in the church notices boards and the local area, targeted Social Media, Facebook and Website posts but also by word of mouth. So you all play an important part in informing everyone about our events.

If you are organising an event for St Wilfrid’s please think about how you are going to tell everyone and what publicity content you would like produced for it.

If you want posters etc produced then, if possible, we would like an 8 week run in to your event which breaks down as follows

8-6 weeks before Initial ideas to produce and agree poster designs etc

6-4 weeks before Designs confirmed and sent to printers. Social media content produced

4- event Posters put out. Social media content posted

If you have any ideas for an event and it’s publicity please don’t hesitate to give the office a call and we will be glad to help you.

Steve Day

Website Report

Our church website which was created in 2016 is slowly undergoing revision to ensure the information is correct. The long term plan is to eventually give it an upgrade which will bring it more in line with current website design and make it more user friendly with our modern types of digital devices.

Maria and myself attended the diocese webmaster’s training course during 2023 and having learnt a few tips have been able to apply them to the website.

With our new incumbent in place we will be looking to increase our stock of images for use on the site and to replace some of the current ones.

Steve Day

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Mission Report for APCM

Ukraine Link

As mentioned in our previous Annual Report, our CMS Link, Alison Giblett spent time with us in December 2022 and since then we have kept in touch with her through weekly Zoom prayer meetings attended by Alison and others in Ukraine, as well as by people from other supporting churches in the UK. At the beginning of 2024, Alison went to Australia for a few weeks and we are delighted to know that she is likely to come to the UK with Pastor Valery and his wife Olga in April. The tragic situation in Ukraine continues and our prayers are valued for matters relating to the war and its victims; HOWEVER, mission and evangelism and support for the whole community continue in significant ways in Pastor Valery’s church, The Tabernacle of the Living God, and we give thanks and praise as we pray for all the members of the many teams at TLG, who are very tired after such a long time of striving to do God’s work – they are exhausted physically, emotionally and spiritually. Let’s continue to hold them in our prayers. St Wilfrid’s church members have responded generously to appeals made by TLG, especially in response to the need for money for a generator - to continue their role in supporting the community in Kyiv.

Our Missionary Partners

Please see the Treasurer’s report on donations made to a number of Missionary Societies; these are, of course, in addition to donations made by individual members of our church.

The Leprosy Mission

On both Sunday Services on 26th March, Chris Strata from TLM talked about supporting communities where there is still a prevalence of leprosy, and £599.70 was donated to the Mission from St Wilfrid’s members. £317 was received via TLM’s ‘Sum up’. £257.80 from our loose plate collection and the rest from two other donations.

Jan Smith

Sadly I only took the sum of £35.18 in Leprosy donations for the year 2023. This is due to the high cost of living, people feeling that they cannot afford to support, and also sadly people passing away.

There has been a new local manager appointed nearer to us in Southampton and her name is Gabby North who would very much like to visit us at St Wilfrid’s.

Margo Farmer

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Prayer Report for APCM

Day of Prayer

On the first Wednesday of each month, members of St Wilfrid’s Church are offered resources which they might use during the whole day, or part of the day, as they spend time with God.

Connect in Praise

Parishioners ae invited to come to St Wilfrid’s for an hour once a month for an hour of informal Prayer and Praise.

Pause and Pray

A monthly ecumenical opportunity to pray for the many aspects of life in the Borough of Havant.

New Wine Celebraton

During 2023 a number of Christians, mainly from our Diocese, and including a few from St Wilfrid’s, met at the Church of the Good Shepherd for worship and prayer on the first Sunday evening of each month. This celebration will continue on a termly basis in 2024.

Morning Prayer

During lockdown daily services of Morning Prayer on Zoom were started. These services were reduced gradually to three times a week until they ceased at the end of November 2023.

During the time of our vacancy, Tuesday mornings focussed almost entirely on recruitment of our new Priest-in-Charge. We praise God that those prayers were answered so graciously.

Jan Smith

Prayer Cascade

Over the last year the prayer cascade has received many requests for prayer and also quite a few updates on requests. I don’t keep count on the number of requests, suffice to say that there are several or more every month.

As soon as a request for prayer arrives in my inbox I send it out to the prayer cascade (sending Bcc) as soon as I possibly can.

Currently there are 62 people who receive the prayer requests. I am always willing to add more people to this list if they wish to be added.

Joy Day, Co-ordinator for Prayer cascade.

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Christmas Day Lunch 2023 – Report for APCM 2024

Our most grateful thanks to the team, including:

Colin and Trudy, Chris, Emily, Chloe and Leah, Mark, Teresa and Bex, Charles, Sonia, Helen and Pat.

31 guests enjoyed a delicious 3 course Christmas lunch, followed by games and afternoon tea.

The event was fully funded by donations from the church family and from the team who provided, prepared, cooked and served all the food - and cleared away. One meal was delivered to a person in her own home.

Donations from guests enabled us to bolster the church’s Christmas offerings by £227.80 for the Rowans and Sophie’s Legacy.

Decorations were put up and taken down and Chris provided accompanying music to this happy event.

We are pleased that St Wilfrid’s is able to offer this opportunity for people to come together year by year in celebration of Jesus’ birthday and in fellowship with us all. A number of people present said they would like to come along again in 2024.

We thank the PCC for offering to underwrite the cost.

Jan Smith – a guest on this occasion.

Approved by the PCC 21[st] April 2024

and signed on their behalf by Rev Christopher Spencer (PCC Chairman)

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Annual Financial Report and Statements

The Parochial Church Council of the Ecclesiastical Parish of St Wilfrid, Cowplain

Registered Charity No. 1130601 Year ending 31 December 2023

Financial Review

2023 saw a return to a more normal pattern of services after two years of Covid-19 adverse impacts; however this was not fully reflected in our finances. Additionally, much of 2023 was spent in a Vacancy/Interregnum and this negatively affected attendance levels for services, whilst unprecedented Utility price rises significantly increased overall expenditure.

Total receipts to the General Fund were £103,985 (a decrease of £13,365 or 11.4% on 2022), of which £87,155 (a decrease of 1.8%) was unrestricted voluntary donations, including £16,723 tax recoverable on the two forms of Gift Aid.

Planned-giving through blue envelopes, banker’s orders and PGS was materially reduced (£8,493 or 12.4%) on 2022 - following a similar (albeit smaller) reduction in 2021, this is a worrying trend! Loose plate collections decreased by £164 or 2.8% on 2022 figures. Normal donations decreased materially by £1,1,208 or 26.3% on the 2022 figure, but there was an extraordinary anonymous donation of £1000 to cover the cost of advertising for a new priest-in-charge.

Income from hall lettings was £9,209, a decrease of £8 or 0.1% on the 2022 figure: In view of this, PCC agreed no increase in hire charges for 2024. Income from fees for funerals and weddings was £1751, an increase on 2022 of £71 or 4.2%. Aggregate gross income from the May and Christmas Fayres was £3111, a decrease of £1,588 or 33.8% when compared to 2022 – much of the reduction was due to bad weather for the Easter Fayre which adversely affected attendance, nevertheless, well done the Fundraising Team. Other Events in 2023 generated nett income of £1607 – there was no Event Income recorded in 2022.

£115,394 was spent from unrestricted funds to provide the Christian ministry from St Wilfrid’s Church, an increase of £5,691 or 3.4% on 2021. This included fully meeting our contribution to the Diocesan Parish Share of £81,904 (that was the same as for 2022) which largely provides the stipends, pension contributions and housing for the clergy. [Note: The sum that the churches in the deanery must find is shared between them according to a formula that is based primarily on headcount (average weekly attendance) of the congregations, but also dependent on the relative assumed wealth of the whole parish population, ie not just the congregation.] The sum we must pay in 2024 is £86,000, an increase of £4,096 (or 5%) against 2023. [Note: The Diocese has promised to undertake a review of the Parish Share Formula in 2024 – the outcome is awaited with interest.]

The overall nett result for the year was a loss of receipts over payments of £10,909 in the General Fund balance at 31 Dec 2023 versus a gain of £8,849 in 2022. Nett change to aggregate balance on all Designated Funds (after income, expenditure and inter-fund transfers are taken into account) is an increase of £64,315 – mostly due to receipt of a legacy into the Legacy Designated Fund. The amount held in Restricted Funds remained static throughout the year at £27,136 (of which £22,000 is locked into the value of the Orchard Garden). The total nett increase across all Funds was £53,406 or 90%.

The balance carried forward at 31 Dec 23 on Unrestricted and Designated Funds was £107,794 of which £71,624 is held in the Legacy Designated Fund for approved projects and major maintenance items, £3,177 has been set aside for the Evangelism Fund (used, for example, to fund the Alpha and Restore courses), £16,756 for the Growth Fund (to be used to update and upgrade our Information Technology and Audio Visual capabilities) to better support our administration, services and any new mission initiatives which

hopefully will be enjoyed by existing members of the congregation and at the same time impress any visitors and those seeking a vibrant welcoming church to join and £695 for Community Coffee Cup. Any new/further projects may need additional specifically targeted fundraising, application for any applicable grants or be funded from the Legacy Designated Fund (subject to PCC approval).

Reserves policy

It is a longstanding PCC policy to try to maintain a balance on the Unrestricted General Fund which equates to at least three months payments on unavoidable (nondiscretionary) running costs. Based on both the average monthly spend in 2023 and the 2024 Budget this would amount to some £27,450. This balance would smooth out fluctuations in cash flow (expenditure versus receipts) and meet emergencies, eg the lift requiring further major repairs without which the Upper Hall would be largely un-usable. The Unrestricted General Fund balance on 31 Dec 23 was £8,177, only 30% of target (down from 72% at 31 Dec 2022). Whilst the overall balance on all Funds at 31 Dec 23 was £134,930, £27,136 (of which £22,000 is the value of the Orchard Garden) or 20%, is held in Restricted Funds can only be used for their legally defined purpose, with a further 74% (£99,617) held in Designated Funds where the PCC has varying discretion over how the funds are expended. Therefore, the monthly management of receipts and expenditure in the General Fund should be regarded as “hand to mouth” where one month’s income is necessarily used to pay some or all of that month’s expenses. It remains the PCC’s intention to increase the General Fund over time. Scope for increasing income from investments are being investigated, especially from the legacy received in 2023. Going forward, the overall monthly situation of receipts and payments against the General Fund must be regarded as being in decline; any unanticipated material decrease in income or increase in expenditure will have significant consequences in both the short and medium terms.

A potential loss to the General Fund amounting to some £16,700 is projected for the end of 2024 – based on forecast further changes in utility prices and general inflation factors affecting everything we purchase. As always, we remain unendingly grateful to all who contribute to St Wilfrid’s finances, both through regular giving and in supporting our various fundraising efforts.

Charitable giving

Charitable giving through the church totalled £6881. This is equivalent to 6.6% of gross receipts to the General Fund income. This is an increase on previous years but remains below our target of 10%. [Note: This calculation only considers gross income to the General Fund. Additionally, no account is taken of either discounted Hall Rental Charges for users with charitable status or the Parish Share which directly accounts for some 79% of income.] Furthermore, if a nett income figure were to be used as the comparator (ie gross income minus the obligatory Parish Share) then the result is 31% of nett receipts.

St Wilfrid’s Church Annual Report for the year ended 31[st ] December 2023

2023 Accounts of the Parochial Church Council of St Wilfrid’s Church, Cowplain

Explanatory notes to the accounts

The accounts are being reported on a receipts and payments basis as agreed by the trustees at a full PCC meeting on 26th November 2015. The accounts are presented in accordance with guidance in the 5th edition of “PCC accountability” which conforms to The Charities Act 2011 incorporating SORP 2015.
A budget for 2024 is included in the accounts. This was accepted at the PCC meeting in Nov 23. All finance projections are based on the final figures for 2023 and/or known costs.
Assets are still declining and an expected big spend in the Growth Fund on a new audio-visual system will significantly reduce the holding in the bank accounts and therefore our overall liquidity.
The liabilities (£2,150) shown in the statement are due to transactions in the “Agency post boxes” (money that passes through the church bank accounts but must not be counted as church funds) that could not be completed in the financial year. The significant items are £1,211 owed to the Diocese for 2023 Q4 fees, £313 to the RBL Poppy Appeal, £175 to the Christmas 23 Appeals, £138 to Waterlooville Foodbank.

St Wilfrids Church - 1130601

Statement of Financial Activities

For the period from 01 January 2023 to 31 December 2023

	Unrestricted	Designated	Restricted	Endowment	Endowment	Total	Prior year
	funds	funds	funds		funds	funds	total funds
*Receipts:*
Voluntary receipts	87,404.84	66,634.51	—	—	154,039.35		99,766.72
Income from church activities	4,962.44	793.65	—	—		5,756.09	4,918.77
Other trading activities	10,792.63	—	—	—		10,792.63	11,797.30
Investments	102.23	—	—	—		102.23	47.46
Other income	722.82	2,431.36	—	—		3,154.18	6,725.46
Total income	103,984.96	69,859.52	—	—	173,844.48		123,255.71
*Payments:*
Raising funds	161.97	—	—	—		161.97	2,056.13
Costs of church activities	114,703.96	4,096.80	—	—	118,800.76		111,034.73
Other expenditure	527.74	947.8	—	—		1,475.54	4,313.12
Total expenditure	115,393.67	5,044.60	—	—	120,438.27		117,403.98
Gains / losses on investment assets	—	—	—	—		—	—
Net income / (expenditure) resources before transfer	-11,408.71	64,814.92	—	—		53,406.21	5,851.73
*Transfers*
Gross transfers between funds - in	500	—	—	—		500	7,688.63
Gross transfers between funds - out	—	-500	—	—		-500	-7,688.63
*Other recognised gains / losses*
Gains on revaluation, fixed assets, charity's own use	—	—	—	—		—	—
Net movement in funds	-10,908.71	64,314.92	—	—		53,406.21	5,851.73
*Reconciliation of funds*
Total funds brought forward	19,085.76	35,302.37	27,136.10	—		81,524.23	75,672.50
Total funds carried forward	8,177.05	99,617.29	27,136.10	—	134,930.44		81,524.23

St Wilfrids Church - 1130601

Statement of Assets and Liabilities (by code) As at: 31 December 2023

Class and nominal code		General Designated	General Designated	Last year Restricted Endowment Total

Net total assets Liabilities - Creditors: Amounts falling due in o 6601 : Loans received Total Liabilities - Agency accounts 6699 : Agency collections Total 6505 : Virgin Charity deposit account Total 6502 : Lloyd's Bank current account 6503 : CAF cash account Total Current assets - Cash at bank and in hand 6501 : Barclay's Bank current account Fixed assets - Tangible assets 6430 : Land 6431 : Organ	ssets	— — (976.19) 1,356.19		22,000.00 — 22,000.00 22,000.00 — — 380.00 380.00
	Total	(976.19) 1,356.19		22,000.00 — 22,380.00 22,380.00

		1,137.56 3,309.46 13,757.92 — 18,204.94 18,102.71 61,381.86 (31,878.00) (12,920.68) — 16,583.18 13,013.65 (5.00) 5.00 — — — — (54,905.18) 126,094.30 8,723.49 — 79,912.61 30,160.12
	Total	7,609.24 97,530.76		9,560.73 — 114,700.73 61,276.48

	unts	— —		2,150.29 — 2,150.29 2,132.25
	Total	— —		2,150.29 — 2,150.29 2,132.25

	ounts falling due in o	ne year (1,200.00) (730.34) 1,930.34 — — —
	Total	(1,200.00) (730.34) 1,930.34 — — —

	Net total assets	7,833.05	99,617.29	27,480.10 — 134,930.44 81,524.23

Restricted - Whitbread Restricted - VDF Restricted - WMgarden Designated - Youth Restricted - Larteh Designated - LegDes Designated - Toddler-2 Designated - Evangelism Designated - Growth Designated - Cowtrail Designated - Eco Designated - CCC Designated - CommSupp Represented by Unrestricted - General		— — — — — — — — — — — — — 8,177.05	— — — 118.61 — 71,623.78 1,796.51 3,842.16 16,755.66 191.33 1,417.19 694.85 3,177.20 —	22,354.67 — 22,354.67 22,354.67 300.00 — 300.00 300.00 4,343.20 — 4,343.20 4,343.20 — — 118.61 118.61 138.23 — 138.23 138.23 — — 71,623.78 8,052.27 — — 1,796.51 1,341.60 — — 3,842.16 3,994.68 — — 16,755.66 16,755.66 — — 191.33 191.33 — — 1,417.19 760.18 — — 694.85 910.84 — — 3,177.20 3,177.20 — — 8,177.05 19,085.76
	Total	8,177.05	99,617.29	27,136.10 — 134,930.44 81,524.23

St Wilfrids Church - 1130601 Receipts and payments Selected period: 01 January 2023 to 31 December 2023

*Note* To From 01 January 2023 01 January 2022 31 December 2023 31 December 2022	*Note* To From 01 January 2023 01 January 2022 31 December 2023 31 December 2022

Total Other income Total receipts: Total Investments Other income other income Insurance claims Total Other trading activities Investments Dividends Bank and building society interest Other trading activities Rummage sales etc Fees for weddings and funerals Church hall lettings - objectives Easy fundraising Income from Events Total Income from church activities Income from church activities May Fayre Christmas Fayre Easter Lilies Tax recoverable on Gift Aid Non-recurring one-off grants Total Voluntary receipts other voluntary receipts Loose plate collections Donations appeals etc Receipts: Voluntary receipts Planned Giving - Bank Planned Giving - Envelopes Other planned giving (PGS) General - General fund (Unrestricted) Fund	16,722.56 18,352.45 250 1,500.00 — 418.79 5,781.11 5,945.27 4,383.55 4,592.37 45,978.00 51,101.00 435 3,570.00 13,854.62 14,089.76
	100.16 189.62 1,751.23 — 1,016.94 2,189.14 2,094.11 2,510.01 — 30 87,404.84 99,569.64
	— 900 1,584.00 1,680.00 9,208.63 9,217.30 4,962.44 4,918.77
	10,792.63 11,797.30 — 47.46 102.23 —
	102.23 47.46 444.82 1,016.33 278 —
	722.82 1,016.33

	103,984.96 117,349.50

Payments:

Brought forward balance Total carried forward balance Total payments: Excess of Receipts: over Payments: Transfers to/(from) Total Costs of church activities Other expenditure Miscellaneous expenses Total Other expenditure Governance costs examination/audit fee Fire check Electrical testing Hall supplies Phs supplies Water-church/Hall Electricity Gas Bookstall costs Data Developments Computer costs Visiting speakers / locums Hospitality costs Stationery Postage Administration Sacristy supplies Printing Church Cleaning Lift maimtenance Caretaker salary Telephone Organ / piano tuning Church maintenance Parish training and mission Insurance Performing rights license Water rates - vicarage Vicar's telephone Education Working expenses of incumbent Travelling expenses Parsonage house expenses Parish Share Assistant clergy expenses Office manager Children & Youth Resources IT Subscriptions Portsmouth Foodbank Total Raising funds Costs of church activities CMS Alison Gilbet Advertising Raising funds Costs of fetes & other events	161.97 2,056.13
	50 25 503.4 132 84 83.99 358.21 59.11 35.23 406.06 718.48 113 5,192.08 2,200.67 5,762.55 1,900.27 — 176.1 150 150 — 84.99 439.28 — 122.46 125.62 328.56 — 12 14.68 301.62 239 496.86 331.32 178.49 95.23 4,812.40 4,484.20 960.53 230.48 — 1,950.00 19 67.36 810 450 2,237.50 1,768.67 364.85 17.93 1,397.61 1,270.55 538.28 485.32 86.04 286.28 — 206.64 14.78 36.26 98.24 — 114.57 104.4 206.77 — 81,924.01 81,924.04 87.88 692.78 3,463.95 3,689.40 — 29.2 602.99 774.97 240 416 161.97 2,056.13 900 900 1,091.34 143.67
	114,703.96 106,065.19 527.74 1,581.31
	527.74 1,581.31

	115,393.67 109,702.63
	19,085.76 10,237.21 -11,408.71 7,646.87 500 1,201.68
	8,177.05 19,085.76

St Wilfrids Church - 1130601

Fund movement by type Selected period: 01 January 2023 to 31 December 2023

Fund and type
Fund balances
brought forward

Incoming
Resources
Outgoing
Resources
Transfers
Gains and
Losses
Journal
Entries
Fund balances
carried forward

General - General fund
19,085.76
Sub-totals
19,085.76
Designated
CCC - Community
Coffee Cup
910.84
CommSupp -
Community Support
3,177.20
Cowtrail - Cowtrail
fund
191.33
Eco - Eco Fund
760.18
Evangelism -
Evangelism fund
3,994.68
Flowers - Flower Fund
—
GM - Ground
Maintenance
(Formerly WMGF)
—
Growth - Growth Fund
16,755.66
LegDes - Legacy
(Designated)
8,052.27
Organ - Organ fund
—
Restore - Church
restoration fund
—
Robin - Robin Jones
studies fund
—
Toddler-2 - Carers &
Toddlers - 2
1,341.60
Youth - Youth Work
118.61
Sub-totals
35,302.37
Restricted
Choir - Choir fund
—
Kitchen - Kitchen fund
—
Larteh - Larteh fund
138.23
Legacy - Legacy fund
—
Library - Library fund
—
Toddlers - Carer's and
toddler's fund
—
VDF - Vicar's
Discretionary fund
300
WMgarden - White
memorial garden fund
4,343.20
Westbrook -
Westbrook church
fund
—
Whitbread - Whitbread
fund
22,354.67
Sub-totals
27,136.10
Totals
81,524.23
Unrestricted

103,984.96
115,393.67
500
—
—
8,177.05
103,984.96
115,393.67
500
—
—
8,177.05
467.2
683.19
—
—
—
694.85
—
—
—
—
—
3,177.20
—
—
—
—
—
191.33
1,170.81
513.8
—
—
—
1,417.19
—
152.52
—
—
—
3,842.16
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
16,755.66
66,484.51
2,913.00
—
—
—
71,623.78
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
1,737.00
782.09
-500
—
—
1,796.51
—
—
—
—
—
118.61
69,859.52
5,044.60
-500
—
—
99,617.29
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
138.23
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
300
—
—
—
—
—
4,343.20
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
22,354.67
—
—
—
—
—
27,136.10
173,844.48
120,438.27
—
—
—
134,930.44

Note: The Whitbread Fund Balance includes £22,000 for the purchase value of the Orchard Garden.


	Charitable Giving 2023

Source	Recipient	Amount

Rev C SPENCER Induction +Centenary Celebration	Bishop's Discretionary Fund	879.58

Church Funds	BRF -Christmas Collections	432.14

Church Funds	Childrens'Society-Christingle	54.91

Church Funds	CityHope Church -Ukraine Generator	1,922.60

Church Funds	CMS- AlisonGIBLETT	900.00

Event	Dragonfly Cancer Trust	250.00

Church Funds	LeprosyMission	278.70

Event	RNLI	250.00

Event	RosemaryFoundation	290.00

Church Funds	Tearfund-Collections29 Oct 23	192.26

Event	Traidcraft	102.00

Church Funds	WaterloovilleFoodbank	1,328.78

	Total:	6,880.97

Notes:

The Total figure does not take into account the discounted Hall Rental Fees charged to other Registered Charities, eg The Brownies and Girl Guides or to those on the Electoral Roll.
The congregation also made a significant but uncosted contribution to Samaritan’s Purse in the form of filled Christmas boxes and in providing all the food and drink for the Christmas Lunch at no cost.

Receipts and Payments to the General fund (Budget 2024 calculations)

General Fund - Final Budget for 2024 (Using M12 23 & Actual Figures)	General Fund - Final Budget for 2024 (Using M12 23 & Actual Figures)	General Fund - Final Budget for 2024 (Using M12 23 & Actual Figures)	General Fund - Final Budget for 2024 (Using M12 23 & Actual Figures)	General Fund - Final Budget for 2024 (Using M12 23 & Actual Figures)	General Fund - Final Budget for 2024 (Using M12 23 & Actual Figures)	General Fund - Final Budget for 2024 (Using M12 23 & Actual Figures)	General Fund - Final Budget for 2024 (Using M12 23 & Actual Figures)	General Fund - Final Budget for 2024 (Using M12 23 & Actual Figures)	General Fund - Final Budget for 2024 (Using M12 23 & Actual Figures)

	20	23	2024			2023		2024
RECEIPTS (GROSS)	Budget	Actual	Basis	Budget	PAYMENTS	Budget	Actual	Basis	Budget
Voluntary receipts
Planned Giving/envelope scheme	54671	46413	= 2023 Less	44163	Missionaryand charitablegiving	1300	1140	Budget	1140
PGS	14090	13855	= 2023 Actual	13855
Gift Aid Income tax refund	18352	16723	= 2023 Less	16172
Sub-Total	87113	76990	=Sum Above	74189	Parish Share	81904	81924	Actual	86000

Church collections	5945	5781	= 2023 Actual	5929	Clergy, organist and office manager	7650	4497	= 2023 + 40%	6295
Donations and appeals	4760	4384	Mid Point	4572	Cost of RaisingFunds / Events	2300	144	= 2023 + 8%	156
Other voluntaryreceipts	300		Mid Point	150	Parish Training	100	380	= 2023 + 45%	550
Diaries	0		Zero	0
Legacy	0		Zero	0	Church running expenses
HCCgrant	0	250	Zero	0	Cleaners & Window Cleaner	4900	4812	= 2023 + 10%	5294
Income from charitable activities					Gas and Electricity	12500	10955	See Note 5	8000
Other income	950	723	Mid Point	836	Water rates	350	718	= 2023 + 5%	754
Easyfundraising	190	100	= 2023 Actual	100	insurance	1398	1398	Actual	1419
Easter Fayre	2190	1017	Estimate	2000	CCLI + RSCM	485	538	= 2023 + 5%	565
Christmas Fayre	2500	2094	= 2023 Actual	2094	other running/admin expenses	2000	1643	= 2023+10%	1807
Income from events	0	1751	See Note 8	0
tea/coffee, other fundraising	0		= 2023 Actual	0
Other trading activities					Church maintenance(incl Lift & Tests)	3700	4235	Budget	4247
Hall lettings	9200	9209	= 2023 Actual	9209
Fees weddings and funerals	1945	1584	Mid Point	1765	Church/Hall runningcosts	1200	890	= 2023+10%	979
Recycling	0		Zero	0
Investments	50	102	See Note 6	100	Miscellaneous	1000	428	= 2023 Actual	428
carpark	0		= 2023 Actual	0

Total	115143	103985		100944	Total	120787	115394		117634

-16690 2024 Projected Excess of Income over Expenditure:


Notes:

1. All fgures are based on a prudent approach that disregards extraordinary and exceptonal income and expenditure. Further, 2023 has been used as the base-year where appropriate.

2. 2023 Actuals are based on M12 Actuals and known actual costs for 2024, eg Insurance and Parish Share. Where NOT an appropriate assumpton, prudent estmaton has been employed (at no additonal cost!).

3. The 2024 Parish Share has been confrmed as being £86,000, ie 2023 + 5%. The Diocesan review of the Parish Share Calculaton Formulae remains outstanding.

4. The Real Living Wage £12.00 ph (increased by 10% from £10.90 in 2023/24) has been used for salary costs (including cleaners) from 1 Apr 24.

5. Utlity costs are based on current informaton re rates and assumed consumpton equal to average 2021-23 using the Utlity Forecastng Model.

6. The Maintenance Budget fgure excludes items that it has been assumed will be funded from the Legacy Designated Fund.

7. There has been no informaton re Events in 2024 to support a Budget entry, therefore zero income is forecast.

15 Loxwood Road Waterlooville Hampshire PO8 9TU

11 April 2024

The Secretary of the Parochial Church Council St Wilfrid’s Church, Cowplain

I ndependent Exa miner s ’ R eport – Yea r E ndi n g 3 1 st D e c e mbe r 2 0 2 3

Respective Responsibilities of the Trustees and Independent Examiner

The charity’s trustees consider that an audit is not required for this year under section 144(2) of the Charities Act 2011 (the 2011 Act) and that an independent examination is needed.

It is my responsibility to:

Examine the accounts under section 145 of the 2011 Act;
Follow the procedures laid down in the General Directions given by the Charity Commissioners section 145 (5) (b) of the 2011 Act; and
State whether particular matters have come to my attention

Basis of Independent Examiner’s Statement

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

Independent Examiner’s Statement

In connection with my examination, no matters have come to my attention

Which give me reasonable cause to believe that in any material respect the requirements
To keep accounting records in accordance with s. 130 of the 2011 Act; or
To prepare accounts which accord with those accounting records
have not been met; or
To which, in my opinion, attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

Andy Forbes

Andrew Forbes

Honorary Independent Examiner Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales prior to retirement

I ndependent Exa miner s ’ R eport – Yea r E ndi n g 3 1 st D e c e mbe r 2 0 2 3

11 April 2024

P o i n ts f o r c on s i der a t i o n

The following are observations I have made during my review:

My approach was to check the audit trail between the source documents and the Summary Trial Balance. To do this I converted the Detailed Trial Balance into an Excel file using OCR software to which I added and linked the Fund Movement by Type and Fund Receipts Payments reports as separate spreadsheets in one workbook which I have sent to the Treasurer.

Although this was a major exercise it enabled me to reconcile and cross reference the three files and highlight a random selection of entries in the Detailed Trial Balance that I agreed and cross referenced to the supporting invoices and expense forms.

Since completing my work, I have learnt that the Trial Balance can be downloaded as an Excel file as well as a pdf and this should make the work easier next year.

As Neil Blanchard noted last year there were no statements for the Virgin Bank Account. I understand they should be available next year as the account transactions are now held online instead of being recorded in a passbook.

I also noted that there are still several designated and restricted accounts and I wondered if any had been merged after Neil questioned the number of funds last year.

I could find no supporting documentation other than the reference in the 16 November minutes for the legacy of £66,484.51 from the estate of Ken Urry without which there would have been a deficit for the year of £13,078. The treasurer has informed me that he is aware of this shortfall which he projects to get worse if ways to increase income or reduce costs and expenses cannot be found.

I have not identified any discrepancies in the reports I was given apart from some apparent misallocations between Unrestricted and Designated Funds which I have highlighted in the combined workbook.

I have not raised queries about policies or authorisation limits as my focus has just been on the amounts received and spent.

Andy Forbes

Andrew Forbes Honorary Independent Examiner

15 Loxwood Road Waterlooville Hampshire PO8 9TU

11 April 2024

The Secretary of the Parochial Church Council St Wilfrid’s Church, Cowplain

I ndependent Exa mi ner s ’ R epor t – Yea r E ndi n g 3 1 st D e c e mbe r 2 0 2 3

Respective Responsibilities of the Trustees and Independent Examiner

The charity’s trustees consider that an audit is not required for this year under section 144(2) of the Charities Act 2011 (the 2011 Act) and that an independent examination is needed.

It is my responsibility to:

Examine the accounts under section 145 of the 2011 Act;
Follow the procedures laid down in the General Directions given by the Charity Commissioners section 145 (5) (b) of the 2011 Act; and
State whether particular matters have come to my attention

Basis of Independent Examiner’s Statement

Independent Examiner’s Statement

In connection with my examination, no matters have come to my attention

Which give me reasonable cause to believe that in any material respect the requirements
To keep accounting records in accordance with s. 130 of the 2011 Act; or
To prepare accounts which accord with those accounting records
have not been met; or
To which, in my opinion, attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

Andy Forbes

Andrew Forbes

Honorary Independent Examiner Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales prior to retirement

I ndependent Exa mi ner s ’ R epor t – Yea r E ndi n g 3 1 st D e c e mbe r 2 0 2 3

11 April 2024

P o i n ts f o r c on s i der a t i o n

The following are observations I have made during my review:

Since completing my work, I have learnt that the Trial Balance can be downloaded as an Excel file as well as a pdf and this should make the work easier next year.

I also noted that there are still several designated and restricted accounts and I wondered if any had been merged after Neil questioned the number of funds last year.

I have not identified any discrepancies in the reports I was given apart from some apparent misallocations between Unrestricted and Designated Funds which I have highlighted in the combined workbook.

I have not raised queries about policies or authorisation limits as my focus has just been on the amounts received and spent.

Andy Forbes

Andrew Forbes Honorary Independent Examiner

2023-12-31-accounts

Annual Report and Financial Statements

Annual Report of The Parochial Church Council (PCC) of the Ecclesiastcal Parish of St Wilfrid, Cowplain (Registered Charity No. 1130601) From 1[st] January 2023 to April APCM 2024

Administratve informaton

Banking:

PCC Report for the APCM January – September 2023

September to March 2024

Administratve Informaton

Governance

Objectves

Structure, Governance and Management

Sub-commitees

Atendance at Services :

The total number of people who attended at least once during the month

Average attendance at individual services during the month

Baptsms, Weddings and Funerals held in 2023

Electoral Roll

Priest-in-Charge (Vicar’s) Report for the APCM 2024

Churchwardens’ Report for APCM 2024

January 2023–March 2024.

Ministry Team Report for the APCM

January 2023 untl September 2023.

From the ordinands,

Rev Ruth Loveman

Reverend Chris March 2024

Curate Report

Assistant Curate Report

Licensed Lay Minister (Reader) Report

Pastoral Care Report for APCM

Pastoral Care and Home Communion

Pastoral Assistants

Anna Chaplaincy

Bereavement support group

Safeguarding Report for the APCM

General Data Protecton Regulatons (GDPR) Report for Annual Parochial Church Meetng April 21[st] , 2024

Jo Mead

Havant Deanery Synod report for the APCM

Health & Safety Report 1st January 2023 – 1st March 2024

Fabric & Maintenance Report 1[st] January 2023 – 1[st] March 2024

Standard Maintenance Items

Planned Giving Report – 1[st] January to 31[st] December 2023

Parish Giving Scheme

Music Group and Organist’s Report

Music Group Report 2023/24

Organist’s Report

Worship Services report for the APCM

Welcoming/Sidespeople

AV Team Report 2023

Steve Day

Children and Families report for the APCM

St Wilfrid Cowplain With Hart Plain 2023

Christ Centred, Creat i ve & All Age, a Celebrat i on with Hospitality

Toddlers Annual Report 2023-March 2024

Sunday Club Report for St Wilfrid’s church - APCM 2023 - March 2024

School Work report for the APCM

School Work report for the APCM

Social Events

100th Centenary Events Report

Fundraising

1. Outreach

Connect Group Reports 2023/2024

Tuesday Evening (in person) - Leader Denise Williams

Community Cofee Cup APCM Report - 2023/2024

Parish Upper and Lower Hall Report for APCM

TLC Report for APCM

Warm Spaces Report for APCM

Art Groups Report for APCM

Want to Paint 2023/Easter ‘24

Want to Paint:

Thursday 1.30 – 3.30pm St Wilfrid’s Upper Hall- Welcome!

St Wilfrid’s Art Group (SWAG ) - APCM Report 2023-2024

St Wilfrid’s & Eco Church

IT Team Report

Publicity Report

Steve Day

Website Report

Mission Report for APCM

Ukraine Link

Our Missionary Partners

The Leprosy Mission