COUNTY DURHAM TALKING NEWSPAPER
CIO Charity: Registered No.1159940
Unit 1, City West Business Park, St John’s Road, Meadowfield, Durham, DH7 8ER T: 0191 378 9051 E: info@cdtn.org.uk www.cdtn.org.uk
ANNUAL REPORT FOR PERIOD JANUARY 2021 - DECEMBER 2021
Trustees : Stephen Prior (Chair); Alice Severs; Linda Johnson; Leita Prior (Managing Editor)
Charitable Objects:
“ To relieve blind and partially sighted people, or those labouring under some temporary or permanent incapacity or disability which makes reading a strain, in County Durham and the surrounding areas by the provision of audio resources in particular, but not exclusively, a talking newspaper.”
NB: Our current address is as shown above (with effect from 1st January 2022).
A FREE AUDIO RESOURCE FOR 100 VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE ACROSS COUNTY DURHAM
The County Durham Talking Newspaper (CDTN) is here to keep blind and partially sighted people connected to their community. We want our listeners to be able to enjoy access to the county’s traditional print press —for both local news stories and certain features and articles. The idea is to replicate, as far as possible, the experience of sitting in a room with a companion as they read local stories and snippets out to you. It is a fact that radio and television do not provide most of the material we record from our region’s printed sources. There has been a talking newspaper service covering County Durham for more than 30 years hosted by several consecutive organisations. CDTN has been running the service on a volunteer-only basis since January 2015.
Most of our listeners are at least 85 years old and most lost their sight later in life. Many have said they miss the satisfaction of settling down with their newspaper. Their paper is likely to have been one of several still surviving the general decline in printed news, amongst them The Northern Echo, the Sunday Sun, the Teesdale Mercury, the Chronicle. From these (and a couple of other historically used print sources) we compile a news and magazine package comprising a local news digest; a quiz; entertaining or thoughtful articles; and material of a historical and nostalgic nature.
Until the Covid pandemic struck, our talking newspaper was a weekly production. Several weeks into the first lockdown with all its shieldings, postal hold-ups, volunteer shortages and hygiene precautions we found it necessary to move to a fortnightly despatch. We continue to work this way, not least because listeners say they have come to prefer a less relentless provision: the fortnightly routine reduces pressure on them to listen and return their postal wallets in time for the next edition. We find we can still cover the news through a more vigorous sub-editing of the printed original.
From 2020, Covid restrictions saw our total volunteer number drop from 20 to eight. Our smaller team has continued to work remotely, editing and recording at home then sending files via email to a sound technician for compilation and mastering. Our office continues to serve as a once-a-fortnight despatch centre only. Around eight of us cover the multiple roles of sound technician; copy-and-despatch; reading; admin; and editing.
CDTN is a member of the Talking Newspaper Federation through whom we enjoy not only ideas and advice but a good, heavily discounted, insurance package.
THE FINANCES
(See Receipts & Payments Accounts in Appendix below)
Our services users pay nothing whatsoever for our services and we never ask them for donations. Their recordings travel free via Royal Mail under the ‘Articles for the Blind’ concession; listeners merely drop their returning postal wallets into a postbox, no stamp required.
Our expenses include rent, CDs, postal wallets, insurances, newspapers, USB sticks, USB players, maintenance and purchase of recording and copying equipment, office supplies, computer data protection, telephone and internet and TNF subscriptions. Only two of our eight volunteers claim any reimbursement or travel expenses (except where these are donated back to the charity).
We receive no grant aid. Our operating costs are met by: (a) the dwindling remains of a legacy from former charity VIPS in County Durham which closed December 2014; (b) payment for recording services provided to Durham County Council ; and (c) public donations. In 2021 we received unsolicited donations from Rotary Durham, Fred Henderson Ltd, The Shakespeare Temperance Trust, Trefoil group (Sedgefield), several listeners and/or their families, one other private benefactor and Forest Carbon Ltd.
With respect to reserves: we have no employment obligations but our reserves policy states that we should keep at least 6 months’ running costs in reserve (to serve notice on our rented accommodation and pay any outstanding volunteer expenses, newspaper bills, etc.). At present this figure would be around £4,000.
Trustees declare they have approved the trustees report above.
Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees
………………………………… Stephen Prior (Chair of Trustees) 27th September 2022
APPENDIX: RECEIPTS AND PAYMENT ACCOUNT
(January 2021 – December 2021)
COUNTY DURHAM TALKING NEWSPAPER
CIO Charity: Registered No.1159940
Signed by Chair of Trustees: ………………………………. Stephen Prior, 27th September 2022