2022-03-31-accounts

Community Advice Support and Education

STATEMENT OF ACCOUNTS

FOR THE YEAR ENDING 31[st] MARCH 2022

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Professor John Drury 15 Furze Hill Court Hove BN3 1PG

To whom it may concern,

CASE: Charity registration no. 1161466

I have been asked to examine the accounts of Community Advice Support and Education (charity reg. 1161466) for the year ending 31[st] March 2022, and write a brief report. I have examined the accounts, and to the best of my knowledge, there is nothing:

1. which causes me to believe that any material aspect of the requirements to keep accounting records in accordance with Part 8 s. 133 of the Charities Act 2011 and to prepare accounts which accord with the accounting records and comply with the accounting requirements of the Act have not been met, or

2. to which, in my opinion, attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

Professor John Drury

Date 7[th] July 2022

Trustees' Annual Report for the year ended March 31[st] 2022

The trustees present their report and financial statements for the year ended 31[st] March 2022. In accordance with Section 4 (6) of the Charities Act 2006 and the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 the trustees have given due regard to the guidance on public benefit issued by the Charity Commission when exercising their powers and duties during the period.

Reference and administration details

Charity name: Community Advice Support and Education Charity Registration Number: 1161466 Address: 4 Crestway Parade, Brighton, BN1 7BL

Bank details: Unity Trust Bank, Account 20353054, Sort Code 608301 (current account); East Sussex Credit Union, Member Account 8095 (reserve account).

Trustees

Michael Hill (Treasurer), Felton Shortall (Chair/Secretary), Adrian Rumney , Natalie Coomber, Pip Tindall, Ernesto Granese, Stella McHugh, Sanjeedah Choudhury and Adi Archer.

Structure, governance & management

Community Advice Support and Education was registered as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation on 29 April 2015. Trustees are elected from the membership in accordance with the charity's constitution.

Independent Examiner

Professor John Drury, 15 Furze Hill Court, Hove, BN3 1PG .

Trustees’ responsibilities

The trustees have overall responsibility for ensuring that the charity has appropriate systems of controls, financial and otherwise. They are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charity and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the appropriate regulations. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charity and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

Aims and Objectives

The objects of the Community Advice Support and Education are:

The prevention and relief of poverty and the relief of need amongst individuals and families on low incomes (whether due to low wages, irregular employment, unemployment, sickness or disabilities) in the City of Brighton and Hove and surrounding areas, regardless of race, gender, age, nationality or sexual orientation, in particular but not exclusively through:

• The provision of advice, representation and support to those on low incomes concerning welfare and employment rights and entitlements.

• The provision of small emergency grants, food, clothes and other everyday necessities.

• The provision of information regarding access to other services which may complement our advice and support.

• The organisation of educational, cultural and recreational events for those in need in order to build capacity to overcome the social and cultural barriers that cause or exacerbate poverty through:

• The facilitation of mutual skills sharing.

• The organisation of free educational, cultural or recreational outings, activities and events for families and individuals on low income.

• The administration of both vocational and non-vocational educational classes, including courses of English for Speakers of Other Languages for individuals on low income.

• The promotion of an understanding of European matters and culture amongst European migrant workers, and potential migrants workers, who are on low incomes; by providing information on the laws and constitution of the European Union and its member states, and by facilitating the mutual exchange of experiences of living and working across the European Union.

Financial Review

Like the previous year, the financial year 2021/22 continued to be dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In response to the Covid restrictions and government guidance that came into force at the beginning of the first lockdown in March 2020, we introduced the following measures to ensure the safety of our volunteers and our clients:

1. We restricted admittance to our premises to only our volunteers. (The distribution of food and basic necessities to those coming to us in urgent need being done at our front door) as part of our Covid crisis project.

2. In order to maintain 2m social distancing inside our premises, we also restricted the numbers of volunteers working in the building at any one time to a maximum of six.

3. We ensured that the building was well ventilated by keeping doors and windows open (despite making our centre quite cold at times).

4. Our Welfare Rights team suspended all face to face advice sessions, and instead carried out consultations over the phone or via e-mail. They also suspended all training of new welfare rights volunteers.

5. Four Welfare Rights Caseworkers worked from home, with the Team Leader coming in when necessary to coordinate the work.

This year we were able to gradually relax these measures. With the lifting of most national Covid restrictions in March we expect to be more or less back to normal operations by the Summer of 2022.

During the previous year (2020/21), we had been able to secure a total of £13,547 Covid emergency funds from various sources to help us respond to the consequences of the pandemic. This funding, together with increased supplies from Fareshare and Harvester funded by government grants, enabled us to substantially increase our provision of free food and basic necessities to those in urgent need. Some grants also helped us cover additional costs, such as phone and internet connection charges, incurred by our Welfare Rights advisors due to their home working.

However, this year there has been substantially less funds available to cope with the impact of Covid on low incomes (despite the withdrawal in the Autumn of £20 extra Universal Credit Payments). With reduction of government grants to Fareshare, we also saw a substantial fall in the amount and variety of food we received from them. However, we were able to secure both Local Support for Summer (£1,034) and Winter (£1,464) grants. These grants allowed us to offset some of the decline in the amount of free food and basic necessities we could distribute to families and individuals on low income over both the school Summer holidays and over the winter period.

In general, we also saw a fall in donations from grant making trusts towards both our outings for low income families, and for our general running costs funds. It is unclear if this was due to changing funding priorities of grant making trusts in response to the Covid emergency, or whether this decline in funding will continue into the future.

Covid restrictions meant that we still had to curtail both our Summer and Christmas events, even though events was needed more than ever in order to alleviate the impact of lockdowns and the closure of schools on family cohesion and mental well being of both parents and children of low

income families. In the Summer we were able to organise two outings, rather than our usual three: one to the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum and the other to Groombridge Gardens and Enchanted Forest . At Christmas, we had two outings to see the pantomime: one in Eastbourne and the other in Worthing. Like last year, instead of our usual children's Christmas party we had a Covid secure event: A Visit to Santa , in which families had their own appointed time to see Santa and the parents received a Christmas hamper and each a present.

Our Healing With Music project which started in 2020 to address stress, isolation and racial divisions which increased with the lockdowns, ceased to receive funds with the phasing out of the Covid restrictions, but we continued to organise it on a mutual support basis, due to the demand from our established users.

We also received a £3,650 grant (the last tranche of a three year grant) from TUUT, which we proudly consider an acknowledgment from the Trade Unions for the social impact of our work and for the professionalism of our advice service.

Like many small charities, an important part of our fundraising efforts is to meet core costs, particularly the £7,000 we need to cover the rent on our premises. Unlike the previous year, we were able to secure £3,500 to cover six months' rent from the Brighton & Hove City Council's Community Resilience Fund.

Refurbishment: The easing of Covid restriction allowed us to restart work on our refurbishment programme to ensure that our premises meet basic health and safety standards for both our volunteers and users. We had to spent £6,386 on this refurbishment. This included electrical work to install new lighting to meet basic office standards, rewiring to ensure electrical standards and the installation of extractor fans to improve ventilation, particularly in our windowless basement offices. We also replaced our old rusted manual shutters -which posed a serious risk of back injury for our volunteers open them up, with new electric shutters.

As a result we have completed the most urgent part of our refurbishment project. We will need to review further refurbishment over the coming year in the light of the financial uncertainties of both funding after Covid and with impact of the current rapid rise in cost inflation.

Summary

As the accounts show, over the financial year 2021-22 our total income was £27,276.36, while our total expenditure was £36,216.42. Thus income minus expenditure a deficit of £8,940.06. However, most of this deficit is accounted by the £6,368.36 we spent on refurbishment of our premises necessary to meet basic health & safety standards for our volunteers and users. Taking this into account we made an operating loss of £2,571.70

The total balance on April 1st 2022 stood at £26,625.12. Of this £6,760 is restricted. This leaves £19,865.12 of unrestricted reserves. Our reserve policy is to keep the equivalent six months of total expenditure as undesignated and unrestricted reserves. This means our current target is £18,108. We therefore exceeded our reserve target by £1,757. With the current financial uncertainties we have outlined above it is perhaps best to err on the side of caution.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank: Ceza DaLuz from the Hollingdean Community Development Trust , Trevor James FCA DChA, our local MPs Caroline Lucas and Peter Kyle, Lynne Gash-Quantrell, East Sussex Branch Organiser for the PCS for their support for CASE and its activities. We also thank our local community and in particular Hilary Standing for donating stationery, clothes, books and toys, and all our funders, including in particular Sussex Community Foundation, Kleinwort Charitable Trust, Brighton & Hove City Council and T.U.U.T. , without whose generous help we would not be able to offer our services, and, last but not least, our volunteers, whose commitment and enthusiasm has been essential in sustaining CASE and its work over this very difficult year.

Declaration

The trustees declare that they have approved the Trustees' Report above.

Signed:

Name: Felton Shortall Position: Trustee (Chair/Secretary) Signed on behalf of the Trustees on