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Community Advice Support and Education

STATEMENT OF ACCOUNTS

FOR THE YEAR ENDING 31[st] MARCH 2025

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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 2025, and write a brief report. I have examined the accounts, and to the best of my knowledge, there is nothing:

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
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

Trustees' Annual Report for the year ended March 31[st] 2025

The trustees present their report and financial statements for the year ended 31[st] March 2025. 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: CASE Central, 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

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

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 2025

The continuing impact of the 'cost of living crisis' has not only meant an ongoing financial stress on CASE's beneficiaries, but also on CASE's own finances. Our fuel bills are still more than £2,600 higher than they were before February 2022, while other core costs have continued to rise faster than the general rate of inflation. Along with rising costs we have also seen a substantial fall in donations that are not restricted to buying food and basic necessities.

An important part of our funding comes from small donations from grant making trusts that help fund both our events and outings and some of our general running costs. During the Covid crisis there was a significant fall in this funding . This source of funding has still not fully recovered, and it remains unclear how far this has been due to a permanent change in the priorities of these grant making trusts, or a temporary result of the Covid and cost of living crises.

In addition, our Community Resilience grant from Brighton and Hove City Council, which previously covered half the costs of our annual rent, was cut by third the previous year and then this year withdrawn completely, due to the dire financial position of the City Council.

The financial year 2024-25 was therefore a particularly difficult time for CASE. Our deficit increased from £5,315 in the previous year to £9,288. This has meant that our unrestricted reserves fell to a perilously low of £5,886 (less than two months of our annual expenditure).

Maintaining our support for our beneficiaries

Despite our financial problems, in the year 2024-25 we maintained our free Welfare Rights advice service, which was still in high demand, especially with the recent changes in Welfare benefits. We also maintained our efforts to alleviate the continuing impact of the 'cost living crisis' on our beneficiaries by buying food and basic necessities to supplement the amount and range we receive to give away free from Fareshare.

We also thought it was important that we maintained our full programme of Summer and Christmas events for families on low income, which has promoted the mental well being of many families as well as family and social cohesion in these difficult times. We therefore held our usual three free outings over the school Summer holidays, and at Christmas we organised two outings to see Pantomimes and a Children's Christmas Party .

Summary

As the accounts show, over the financial year 2024-25 our total income was £30,664. This was a fall in income of £5,578 from the previous year. Our expenditure was £39,952. A fall in expenditure of £1,585 from the £41,537 we spent the previous year. We therefore made a deficit of £9,288. The total balance on March 31st 2025 stood at £12,366 - of this £5,886 was unrestricted reserves - lower than the amount prescribed by our reserve policy (the equivalent three months of total expenditure).

However, the gloom of 2024-25 is now lifting. During the course of the year, our fundraising team's efforts to secure unrestricted funding and funding for core costs succeeded in raising £23,000 made up of the following grants:

A £7,000 two year grant secured from the City Councils Catalyst Fund despite fierce competition.
A two year grant of £11,000 also was secured from National Lottery
And a year unrestricted grant of £5000 was secured from the Postcode lottery.

Our successful fund raising only became apparent shortly after 31st of March 2025 so it is not recorded in this year's accounts. These new grants will be more than sufficient to cover our current shortfall in funding and will help to stabilise our financial situation for the forthcoming two financial years.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank: Shirley Connor from the Hollingdean Community Centre , our local MP Siân Berry and Lynne Gash-Quantrell, East Sussex Branch Organiser for the PCS , for their continued support for CASE and its activities. We also thank our local community for donating clothes books and toys, all our donors, including in particular the Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust 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 past 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

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