## **2020 Annual AGM Report**
## **CONTENTS**
|**1. Opening remarks and trustees report.**|**Page 2**|
|---|---|
|**2. Membership, insurance, employment**|**Page 3**|
|**3. Our objectives**|**Page 4**|
|**4. Campaigning**|**Page 5**|
|**5. Review of 2020 targets**|**Page 6**|
|**6. Targets for 2021**
**plus newsletter and assets**|**Page 7**|
|**7. Our proposed responses to Kendal Citizens Jury.**|**Page 8**|
|**8. 2020. Accounts (including Peoples Café) including independent**||
|**examiners report**
**Page 9**||
|**9. Budget for 2021-22**|**Page 10**|
|**10.**
**Waste into Wellbeing Kendal Peoples Café Report**|**Page 11-13**|
## **Opening remarks and trustees report**
Welcome to this annual report for 2020- a year like no other. Work has continued despite the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the response to it. Here are some administrative details:
## **Trustees**
In 2020 our Trustees were:
Chair Angela Lovett
Treasurer Robin Cope
Trustees Karen Bentley-Brown, Sally Fleming, Quentin Merritt, Chris Rowley
Town Council representatives were Jon Owen and Eamonn Hennessey
The Trustees’ role is to oversee the governance of SLACC- _tt_ . Trustees are recruited from the ranks of our members and by spreading the word amongst groups we have contact with. Anyone wishing to explore becoming a Trustee is invited to attend one or two of our meetings and can have further discussions with a current Trustee to test whether it is for them. We would welcome new Trustees with all levels of experience – all we ask is that you bring a can-do attitude and share our values. We have continued to review and add to our policies in 2020 to make them fit for purpose as our activities develop. We meet every 2 months to review and plan. We have taken the decision to focus our efforts on two principal areas each year.
Karen Bentley- Brown has left the trustees this year, in order to focus on her work in related areas. We thank her for her very valuable contributions.
Duncan Pollard has agreed to stand for nomination to the trustees at the AGM
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## **Paid workers (all freelancers)**
Tracey Gannon’s contract came to an end, and we thank her for her work for SLACC. The decision was made that SLACC could manage without general administrative support but would commission specialised work.
Nick Haigh has been working on the web site and has improved it considerably. He is currently working with us on the coal mine pages on the web site.
Stacy Hurley was appointed as part-time co-ordinator for Waste into Wellbeing. Her current contract runs until June 2021.
Stuart Lockton is undertaking a feasibility study on a community composting project in 2021
## Membership
We now have 77 members, up from 60 in April 2020.
Throughout 2020 our volunteer membership officer, Lisa Kenton, has improved our membership processes. We now have a range of membership options, starting with a fee of £10 per year, and are collecting Gift Aid where
possible. We thank Lisa for her very valuable work in this
area.
Insurance. We hold a policy with Zurich Policy No XAO 1220618953
valid till March 2021 extended to June by the insurers when it will be renewed. In 2021 it has covered all our
activities with a maximum of 2 full time equivalent employees, this will be reviewed in June 2021
Constitution. This remains is unchanged from its last ratification on 13 January 2011. We may wish to
revisit this if capacity permits. **Our Constitution**
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## **Our objectives:**
- 1) To promote for the benefit of the public the conservation, protection and improvement of the physical and natural environment
- 2) To advance the education of the public in the conservation protection and improvement of the physical and natural
environment.
In furtherance of these objectives the aims of SLACC- _tt_ are to:
- 1) increase a local awareness of local and global issues
surrounding climate change
2) To reduce South Lakeland’s overall greenhouse gas
emissions and dependence on fossil fuels
- 3) To establish and support
South Lakeland as a Transition District
4) To take every reasonable step to minimise greenhouse gas emissions
resulting from the group’s activities.
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## **Campaigning**
In accordance with our policy, we have focused on two main campaigns in 2020. The first of these was Waste into Wellbeing. The volunteers responded magnificently to the challenges posed by Covid-19. (separate report).
The second is the Coal Mine campaign,
## **West Cumbria Mining’s proposal for a coal mine near Whitehaven.**
SLSCC-tt opposed this proposal on climate change grounds, specifically that it is incompatible with UK targets for net zero carbon emissions. Written and verbal submissions were made by SLACC members Henry Adams and Maggie Mason, supported by expert advice from, among others, Professors Rebecca Willis and Mike Berners-Lee. SLACC-tt also commissioned external expert advice (for example on alternatives to coal for steel production) and legal advice and action. We thank SLACC members who generously donated to cover costs of external expert opinion and legal work. By December 2020, the proposal had been accepted three times by Cumbria County Council. SLACC and others petitioned the relevant Secretary of State, Robert Jenrick to ‘call in’
relevant Secretary of State, Robert Jenrick to ‘call in’ the application. This would have meant acknowledging that the decision was of more than local significance. Jenrick refused. SLACC began crowdfunding, using specialist site Crowdjustice, to fund a legal challenge to the Secretary of State’s decision.
In February we learned that Cumbria County Council (CCC) has decided to return the planning application for Woodhouse Colliery back to their Development Control and Regulation Committee for redetermination, on the basis of the Committee on Climate Change report recommendations for the UK’s sixth carbon budget. We are poised for further action as the situation develops. More details of the campaign are available on the SLACC web site.
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## **Review of targets set for 2020-21 (progress noted in green)**
Increase our membership (achieved, from 60 to 77 memberships) and to collaborate with other groups in the area which have similar interests and aims; Waste into Wellbeing is in contact with a number of different groups and we are represented on several local and regional groups.
2. Find funding to secure the continued support of the new part-time coordinator for the Kendal People’s Café and food Hub (ongoing);
3. Respond to developments and grow the Kendal People’s Café and food hub alongside our business plan ;(ongoing, see operational plan)
4. Continue supporting those members who wish to campaign on issues that our charitable objectives support (decision made to concentrate on coal mine campaign);
5. Continue to support community resilience after the Covid-19 virus emergency period has passed; (ongoing, see operational plan)
6. Increase membership of SLACC-tt from our Kendal People’s Cafe and Waste into Wellbeing volunteers; Over the last year we have gained new members but very few of these are directly from Waste into Wellbeing. The 2021 AGM will be an opportunity to invite volunteers and encourage them to join.
7. Continue to support and monitor the Town and District Councils in their adoption of emergency climate change policy (a major development here was the formation of the Kendal Climate Change Citizens’ Jury. This has resulted in a set of recommendations. SLACC has been very actively involved, and we thank Chris for his leadership on this);
8. Set up an active travel network to promote walking and cycling locally. (A list of interested people was made, but we have not had the capacity to develop this as we would have wished.)
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## **Proposed objectives for 2021-22**
1. To develop Waste into Wellbeing in accordance with the operational plan, specifically
- a. To understand the ‘market ‘ better by developing a beneficiaries group
- b. To manage volunteers more smoothly
- c. To continue collaborate with other groups and look for possible partnerships find suitable premises
2. To continue with the Coal Mine campaign
3. To contribute to developing some of the recommendations from the Citizens’ Jury
4. To stay in touch with the composting project, and support as far as possible
5. To continue to liaise and co-operate with groups with similar aims, such as Cumbria Sustainability Network and Cumbria Action for Sustainability (CAFS)
6. To support talks on matters of interest, within SLACC and beyond, as a response to COP 26
7. To continue to produce regular newsletters and maintain our website
8. To continue to increase membership, to a point where membership income covers core SLACC running costs
9. To strengthen our internal governance by continuing policy review, with an immediate priority of addressing equality and diversity issues
10. To look again at our constitution, in particular to consider the nomination and rotation of trustees.
## **Bike Generator and other Assets**
Our 8-bike generator is currently kept in Becky Willis’s garage. We have offered it on long term loan to other sustainability groups in Cumbria but will be setting criteria for its use, including training and discussion about its educational use.
## **Newsletter**
Editions of the SLACC Newsletter have enabled many local activities to be publicised to our 160 readers. We are now increasingly linking this to posts on our website to reduce the workload in creating them.
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## **Our Proposed Responses to the Kendal Citizens Jury**
The Kendal Citizens Jury has produced a set 27 recommendations orientated to address the climate crisis in Kendal See Jury recommendations here
SLACC has considered these recommendations and proposes to focus its efforts in supporting the following list:
## **Food & Farming**
There is a specific recommendation (No.2) regarding Waste into Wellbeing. This is for the Town Council to provide additional funding support, specifically about the education of food choices, cookery skills, avoiding food waste. This could also be extended to include promotion of plant based diets (recommendation No 8). This recommendation is already aligned with the priorities in the Waste into Wellbeing (WiW) business plan. We foresee the need in our work to both monitor the reach that we have, and report upon the potential impact we are making. This will include not only the number of people that we reach, but the quantify the food that we have prevented from being wasted. From this we can calculate the GHG emissions avoided, and publicise that.
In WiW we already envisage building strong connections to allotment owners to source surplus food and give allotment owners a sense of community purpose. Whilst not a direct contribution to the recommendations, it does align WiW with the strong focus on growing (and using) food locally. We will also give further thought in our plan to doing the same with local farmers.
The compost project which we have supported recently is also very complementary to WiW in providing an outlet for (household) food waste and providing a nice circularity project for producing fertiliser (and avoiding fossil fuel use).
## **Housing & Energy**
Most of the recommendations in this section are for CAfS and the Town Council. SLACC can best contribute in making sure that the new premises we are seeking for WiW are as energy efficient as possible. We can also contribute to raising awareness on energy efficiency (recommendation 10) to our members and supporters (starting with a talk at the AGM).
## **Promoting Action and Raising Awareness**
Recommendation 13.a) is about scrutiny of council actions. SLACC can play a role in ensuring that there is a regular reporting of actions by the Council and other groups.
Recommendation 14 on accessible information and 15 on awareness and promoting action. We can also promote online footprint tools to help build understanding. We can encourage SLACC members to make their own ‘pledges’ and take action.
SLACC can play an active role in Recommendation 16 - building a collective vision for the town.
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## **Accounts (including Peoples Café/ Waste into Wellbeing)**
**Independent accounts examination April 4th 2021**
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I have examined the accounts for South Lakes Action for Climate Change for 2020.The internal records relating to the Fundstracker Funding Pots documents show the amounts involved The various spreadsheets related to this tally with each other and with the amounts shown in the bank statements apart from one discrepancy due to an internal accounting error in January when the system was being set up.
## Excluding the Cumberland Account, in the Charity Commision sheet
Total WintW Grant Income is £38040. Total Expenditure is £18241 Net amount is £19799 The SLACC account shows the net In and Out to be £19738.28 This is a difference of £61 to the nearest pound It also shows up in the grand total amounts of course. In the Charity Commission sheet, Total Funds = £43066 The total of KPCC Cumberland account £7756.30 and the SLACC account £35249.29 balance = £43006 This is a difference of £61 This is due to an error of internal accounting in January when the system was being developed. Two amounts totalling £65 were paid into the SLACC accounts as gifts and were logged in the internal accounts. The amount was withdrawn and the gift bestowed but this record was omitted from the internal system.
_**Liz Boothman** Retired teacher. 14 Maple Dr. Kendal LA95BN Examiner for OCR A,-level and CIE AS in Physics, 2010-2020 BA Physics and Philosophy 1969 PGCE Physics 1970 MA(Ed) 1997_
## Budget 2021
1. Existing restricted funds allocation on 1[st] January 2021
**----- Start of picture text -----**
Categorisation of Restricted Funds for 2021 £26,709.04
£12,000.00
£10,000.00
£8,000.00
£6,000.00
£4,000.00
£2,000.00
£0.00
Committed Employment, Rent, Services &
Equipment and
Projects/Campaig Training & Covid Emergency
Sundries
ns Recruitment Response
Grant: CCC Christmas Extras Fund £1,273.63
Grant: CCC/DEFRA £10,004.32
Grant: Eric Wright Trust £159.02
Grant: Frieda Scott (Equipt) £959.17
Grant: WRAP 6 month project £1,612.22
Grant: CCF Covid 19 Emergency Fund £2,605.00
Grant: Frieda Scott (Employment) £3,008.90
Funds raised from Coal Mine Campaign £8,900.00
**----- End of picture text -----**
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At the start of the year in 2020 everything was very positive! We were welcoming a new influx of volunteers with a series of face-to-face Induction sessions; planning on increasing the number of monthly Cafe sessions; welcoming 25 older vulnerable adults to a monthly Lunch Bunch, partnering Half Term lunches for kids and doing a modest waste food sharing from The Hub. We had just welcomed our new coordinator Stacy Hurley and were full of plans for moving the organisation forward.
Then the news about the spread of Covid at the end of February, caused us to stop in our tracks and review the safety of all our activities. We paused both the Cafe activity at the South Lakes Foyer and the face-to-face Lunch Bunch meals.
We immediately identified the things we could do differently, to help as part of the Community response to the pandemic and lockdown. This included increased Food Sharing and delivering Lunch Bunch meals. The local national supermarkets and the council upped their community response and substantial food donations and grants became available to us. We reached out to other donors including local allotment holders and stately home kitchen gardeners as well as taking perishable stock from local food businesses who shut their doors. Our new coordinator, Stacy, focused on helping us to make all these new multi-site operational challenges work and worked on grant applications that helped us keep the community fed, and food not wasted.
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Over the course of the year we;
- delivered twice monthly 2 course meal to a growing number of Lunch Bunch older people initially for 25 but rising to up to over 40 at Christmas. In 2020 we delivered a total of 733 nutritious meals.
- ran 3 separate Food Shares a week from March until October offering pre filled shopping bags at Outside In (a soft play business who allowed us to use their space while they couldn’t trade) ; at the Salvation Army and from outside Hallgarth community hall.
- ran 2 separate Food Shares from October onward from a new venue at Stricklandgate House and inside Hallgarth Community centre both offering a self-serve style shop.
- we improved our supply chain of waste food by joining the national organisation Fare Share in Autumn 2020.
- In 2020 we redistributed 5041 kg of surplus food or 2995 bags of shopping which ultimately supported 8470 people.
-
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- we steadily acquired more volunteers offering their time whilst on furlough but of course some of our regular volunteers had to shield for themselves. During 2020 we clocked up a conservative total of 2268 volunteer hours.
Complying with the Covid rules has created challenges in food preparation and food sharing but all new guidance has been adopted and we have had no Covid cases arising in our work settings.
As an organisation we have been agile and committed in our responses to everything that we faced during last year and now look forward to opening up our operations again as Covid allows. We have excellent new contacts and partnerships forged to build on in 2021.
We are delighted on the impact we have had on people in the community in Kendal and district as reflected in the infographic above.
None of this would have been possible without support from many organisations including The Mayor of Kendal (Alvin Finch) who chose us as one of the charities to support in 2020. Also the many individual donors who supported us both financially and in kind. You know who you are and a very big thanks.
Not forgetting the many local supermarkets and businesses who have supported us with food donations .
`
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