2024-03-31-accounts

In the Community, for the Community.

Burnhope Community

Centre

Annual Report and Accounts for the year ending 31st March 2024

Charity Incorporated Organisation Registration No: 1162463

Langley Avenue, Burnhope, Durham DH7 0AG

1

In the Community, for the Community.

Centre report: April 2023 – March 2024

Our Groups and Activities:

• Community Gym – open at various times through the week

• Yoga for those with chronic pain conditions – this is a gentle stretching and yoga session followed by workshops and alternative therapies beneficial for those with chronic pain. Attendance has been about 8-10 regulars with many other occasional attendees.

• Monday Club – Activities include bingo, quiz, raffle, chat, and a cuppa.

• Burnhope Bairns – Tuesdays and Fridays during term time for babies, toddlers and preschools and their families.

• Wellbeing Café – on Tuesday 12.30pm. Offers refreshments and snacks with activities designed to enhance creativity and help people to understand how to manage mental health issues

• Zumba - every Monday evening. Exercise class for all ages

• Pilates – every Tuesday for all levels and all ages.

• Keep Moving exercise class aims to get people to start exercising and improve their quality of life.

• Mindfulness - on a Thursday evening. This is led by one of our mental health trained volunteers and offers mindfulness routines to help with anxiety, sleep problems and anyone who would like to learn a positive way of mental relaxation

• Charity Table Top sale – run by local volunteers who raise money to give to local project including Burnhope Primary School and the Community Centre.

• Kids Klub – We now have two kids’ clubs running on a Wednesday and Thursday. Pick up from school and offers a range of games and crafts with a healthy snack as they arrive and hot food at the end.

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In the Community, for the Community.

• Carpet Bowls – on every Wednesday and Friday, useful exercise, and a chance to meet friends. The group is supported very well on the Friday afternoon, but numbers have dwindled on a Wednesday evening

• Coffee Morning – our weekly meeting point on a Thursday.

• Seated Chair Exercises – gentle exercise for the older person.

• Crafting Companions – gathering every week to work on creative projects together.

• Youth Drop-in - in partnership with Derwentside Detached Youth Project.

• Little Treasurers – a group for autistic children and their families (monthly)

• Burnhope Flower Club – meets monthly for guided flower arranging and, of course, cake.

• Bingo – a Saturday evening favourite amongst Burnhope residents.

• Café Church – run every month by St John’s Church. A chance for the whole family to think about spiritual things in a relaxed space.

• Lunch Club – a lovely hot meal and chance to relax with friends, run monthly with catering from The Garage Bar and Grill.

• Sewing Bee – the group meet monthly for the day on a Saturday

• The Heritage project - have a permanent display trolley in the foyer to supplement the display boards in the corridor and main hall

• Supper Club working in partnership with Burnhope Primary School and St. John’s Church - family cooking. Starting again on 22 June 2023. Thursday afternoons from 3:30 – 5:30pm.

• Spanish Club restarted run by Philip Richardson as a volunteer. This is going well with 10+ attending weekly.

Organisations that use the Centre free of charge:

• Burnhope Parish Council

• Burnhope Partnership

• Stanley Learning Partnership – School Science Networks,

• St Johns Church – Strawberry Supper, Seasonal Fayres, Pie and Peas Suppers and for Café church

3

In the Community, for the Community.

New Groups and Activities for 2023/24:

• Meditation group, wellbeing café and Monday Yoga and ME group. These are all supported by our wellbeing coordinator

• Warm Space/supper club – Dec 2023 to March 2024 working in partnership with Churches Together and Lanchester Partnership we delivered two Warm Space sessions each week. The hard work of the volunteers was borne out in the number of people attending which were around 24 – 32 participants each week. The lunch time social for seniors has proved to be so popular that we have continued it with Community Centre funds and it is supported by a large number of volunteers

Household support fund:

Concerned by the increasing numbers of Centre-users and volunteers hit by the costof-living crisis we started distributing funds through the household support fund. We advertise this in our groups, through the local primary school and our local childminder. We received the funds in February 2024 and over eight weeks were able to support 52 families who were interviewed confidentially. Our community has many needs such as sickness and health issues, mental health problems, and changes in circumstances such as family bereavement or relationship breakdown. Many in our community have no savings and no safety net when essential items break down, some are exploited, paying large monthly amounts for rented fridges and ovens. Some were requesting newer energy-saving appliances such as slow cookers and air fryers. Some were supported with higher-than-expected utility bills and food vouchers.

4

In the Community, for the Community.

Events:

• Trip to South Shields

In consultation with the community we discovered that historically there had been a bus trip from the village to South Shields which went from the Ivy League club. We laid on 2 coaches and took 70 people to the seaside on Friday 4[th] August.

• Volunteer Christmas Party

Held in December 2023 we celebrated our volunteers with an evening celebration. We awarded our volunteer of the year to Cindy Brockingham who supports so many of our activities.

• Easter and Christmas Fairs

Both were well supported supporting local businesses and raising money for the church and the Community Centre

• Burnhope Partnership Summer Fayre

Held at Burnhope Cricket Club on the August Bank Holiday Monday. We provided bouncy castles and tombola prizes and our staff manned the kids zone for the day.

School Holiday Activities:

Burnhope Community Centre provided a range of school holiday activities which were well attended. Thanks to Mid Durham Area Action Partnership’s Fun and Food funding we have been able to offer activities free of charge and all include a meal. Thanks also go to St John’s church who volunteer in the kitchen to provide the food, a partnership which began in February 2022 and still continues strongly.

5

In the Community, for the Community.

Future Plans:

• Wednesday Lunchtime Social – due to the success of the Wednesday Warm Space we will continue to provide this group in the new financial year.

• Continue to develop the Wellbeing Hub as part of the Community Centre’s core activities.

• Burnhope Pantry – Plans to look at sourcing and distributing food which would otherwise end up in landfill

• Ageing well project – we still have to complete this project including Outdoor furniture we plan to purchase outdoor seating, a picnic bench and a planter for the enclosed garden area and a bench for outside the main door.

• Catering dishwasher - with the increase in food offers at the Centre the dishwasher is a difficulty as the cycle takes too long and there are issues with filling and emptying it. We will purchase a catering dishwasher with a very short cycle so that volunteers can put the clean dishes away before they go home

Partnerships:

• Burnhope Partnership – Burnhope Community Centre continues to work closely with Burnhope Partnership by offering bid writing support and working closely with the Partnership members.

• Lanchester Partnership – Warm Space, offer of first aid training places.

• Churches Together and St. John’s Church

• The Garage Bar and Grille – providing our lunch club meals.

Our approach to room-hire:

In June 2022 the Trustees agreed that the Community Centre will no longer charge room hire to groups that are operating under the governance of the Community Centre and are part of our service provision. This new way of working was well received by the groups that use the Centre and for some groups they lowered the group subs which helps local people during the cost-of-living crisis. It also means that groups can raise funds for trips, equipment and seasonal get togethers. This has proved very popular with groups using the Centre.

6

In the Community, for the Community.

Trustees:

Our current trustees are:

• Oswald Johnson, Trustee – appointed 26 January 2016

• Alan Gibson BEM, Trustee – appointed 27 January 2016

• Heather Galloway, Trustee – appointed 11 November 2020

• Ian Galloway, Treasurer – appointed 28 April 2022

• Helen Prow, Trustee – appointed 28 April 2022

• Lisa Bryson : Burnhope Primary School, ex officio Trustee – appointed 10 August 2022

We haven’t appointed a new Chair but appoint a different one of our Trustees as Chair for each Trustee meeting, which is working extremely well. We undertook a skills audit as a group of trustees which showed we had a balance of abilities. We are looking out for one or two new trustees to supplement our current board

Staff and HR

In March 2024 our staff consisted of

• Centre coordinator (post currently vacant)

• Wellbeing coordinator

• Centre Assistant

• Cleaner

• Activities coordinator

• Administration assistant

Our biggest priority is the recruitment of a new Centre Manager, and this process is in motion. We currently have 31 applications for the post. Short listing is under way and an interview panel of 2 trustees, on staff member and one volunteer will interview up to 4 short listed candidates next month.

7

In the Community, for the Community.

Treasurer Report

Income:

Grant-funding for our projects remained strong and is our main source of income (£100,165), growing by 30% from the previous year.

We were hugely grateful for grants given from the National Lottery Community Fund for our Ageing Well project (£20,866) which supported our activities that enable older people, who can be prone to isolation, to exercise, socialise, and engage confidently with the community. A consultation group was gathered who planned and agreed some strategic equipment purchases specifically designed to help older people. The Dickson Trust (£2,903) enable us to develop a weekly Wednesday lunchtime social for over fifties which includes a hot meal.

Grants from the Barbour Foundation (£2,000), the Greatham Hospital Trust (£1,000), Durham Community Social Prescribing Fund (£2,988), and CDCF Welcome Spaces fund (£2,991) enabled us to continue to expand our wellbeing work that supports so many people coping with long term health and mental health challenges.

The Sir James Knott Trust (£9,000) along with the Willan Trust (£10,000) are both wonderful contributions to our core costs and helped us to employ our Centre Coordinator, Centre Assistant, Activities Coordinator and Cleaner. We also were able to allocate some to our office and admin costs like broadband and telephone, and to our highly successful lunch club that serves over 40 hot meals every month.

The Co Durham Community Foundation Household support fund grant (£26,500) enabled us to make a massive difference to over 100 people in the community struggling with the cost of living crisis.

Karbon Homes (£1,458), Ballinger Trust (£1,000), working in partnership with our local Action Area Partnership, AAP (£6,106) meant that we could continue to expand our activities for children and young people, employ our Activities Coordinator and also serve nutritious food at each club. We also received generous grants from Durham Council for our Holiday Activities (£2,003).

Poverty Hurts (£9,978) together with the Lanchester Partnership (£850) enabled us to continue to be open as a warm space and offer hot food regularly through the week. We also purchased 4 laptop computers to overcome IT exclusion.

For everyone who supported us, we are incredibly grateful.

8

In the Community, for the Community.

Our other income is from Room Hire (£1,570), contributions from some of our activities (£11,845), bank interest (£611), and some other income, mostly unsolicited donations (£1,142).

Expenditure:

Our main expenditure is on staffing (£55,128). During the year we continued to employ our Centre Coordinator, Cleaner, Centre Assistant, Activities Coordinator and Wellbeing Coordinator, all of whom worked extremely hard.

Costs of running the Centre were well controlled (£23,795). This includes maintenance (£1,588), the completion of our new Heritage display boards (£1,766), insurance (£1,948), utilities and licences (£3,852), equipment purchases (£5,451), office and admin (£5,164), and bins and sanitary (£299). As set out above, we gave away a large number of small grants from the household fund to support those struggling with the cost of living crisis (£12,772), we catered extensively for groups through the week (£3,695) and have many activities and projects running through the week that we funded (£16,444).

We ended the year with three months expenditure designated as reserves, as recommended by the Charity Commission (£19,000), some Unrestricted funds (£4,331), and Restricted funds, given by our funders for specific projects and activities that are continuing into the next financial year (£47,901). Our balance at the end of the year was therefore £71,231. Whilst healthy from a cash-flow perspective, but only covers our costs into next year for a limited period and our fund raising will need to continue to be successful.

9

In the Community, for the Community.

Accounts from 1[st] April 2023 to 31[st] March 2024:

10

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In the Community. for the Community. Thanks to our funders: THE Barbour li/ . COMMUNITY FUND FOUNDATION BALLINGER IUN&IOOP County Durham Community Foundation tham Community Foundation Durham County Council HOSPITAL OF GOD Here for Everyone karbon homes Durhom rea Actlon etshlp

éThe Lanchester Partnership Bett￿ 6¥41) (Trorffl spoce The 1989 Willan Charitable Trust SIR JAMES KNOTT 'fRUST 13