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Bridging the Gap Islington also known as :

Bridging the Gap Mentoring Registered Charity No. 1162671

Annual Report and Accounts for the year ending March 2025

Bridging the Gap Mentoring offers trained, expertly supervised volunteer mentors for people at risk of homelessness, offending and addiction. Regular informal support from someone who is concerned about them individually helps people to rebuild their lives.

Our volunteer mentors will meet service users about once a week for four months and work with them to achieve goals that are chosen by the service user. These goals are often related to housing, benefits, health, training, and relationships. Each week they will agree tasks to be achieved that week as steps towards the longer-term goal.

Trustees' Report for the year ended 31 March 2025

The trustees present their report together with the Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2025

Status and Administration

Bridging the Gap Islington (the Charity) was established 1st Dec 2012, and was constituted and registered as a charitable incorporated organization (CIO), no. 1162671 on 15[th] July 2015.

The trustees agreed to use Bridging the Gap Mentoring as a working name for the charity because this provides an improved description of the work of the charity. Bridging the Gap Mentoring has been registered with the Charity Commission as a working name for the charity.

Trustees .

During the year, Niki White resigned as a trustee and Mick Holloway resigned by rotation and decided not to stand for re-election. The following trustees served during the year. Greg Foxsmith (Chair) Sharmila Rajaratnam (Vice Chair) Robin Latimer (Co-ordinator) Ruth Hayes Lee Wakefield ( Co-opted 16 April 2024, Elected 16 October 2024 ) Michael Holloway (resigned 16 October 2024) Niki White (resigned 5 December 2024)

Banker

The Co-operative Bank, P.O. Box 250 Delf House, Southway, Skelmersdale WN8 6WT

Registered Address : 33 Tollington Way, London N7 6RG

Objects

Bridging the Gap lslington offers trained, supervised volunteer mentors to provide support to people at risk of offending including people with experience of unstable housing and substance misuse to help them to achieve specific short-term goals along their chosen path to a more constructive and participative life. We operate in North London, in the area around Islington.

Review of Activities

Trustees met formally 5 times during the year.

Our work during 2024-25 has been dominated by planning to replace the contribution of our Coordinator and Founder, Robin Latimer. Robin plans to end his work with Bridging the Gap at the end of 2025. For several months, we were uncertain whether the charity could continue to operate beyond this time. We are very happy to report that we have received and accepted an offer from Dave Smith to take over as Chief Executive. We are grateful for Dave’s support. His work will initially be unpaid but we expect to pay Dave as soon as our financial situation makes this possible.

The uncertainty caused by this situation meant that fundraising was paused for several months and some of our unrestricted reserves were used to maintain the service. However, at the time of writing this report, fundraising has started again. We are now confident that we will be able to continue to offer a service in future years.

Our Service

We arrange mentoring partnerships between a trained volunteer mentor and a service user who needs support. Each mentoring partnership is supervised by an experienced professional, such as a social worker.

For new referrals, our outreach manager offers an initial period of support through weekly phone calls and suggestions. Some people find this sufficient and do not need further help. For those people who need more help, we will arrange a mentor.

For those people who would like more help, we arrange weekly meetings with a volunteer mentor for up to four months. This provides a unique high-quality service by combining the enthusiasm and personal interest of a volunteer with the expertise of an experienced professional. There are not many services that can offer this level of detailed supervision.

Mentoring partnerships are expected to last for 16 weekly meetings. If a service user needs more support, we can arrange a second mentoring partnership with a different mentor. But we do not usually arrange a third partnership.

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		Mentoring Partnerships
Ongoing at start of year	Commenced during the year	Completed		Shorter periods of help	Continuing at end of year	Offered but not taken up
		14 or more wks	3 to 13 wks
3	8	4	2	3	5	5

Service Users’ comments

One special thing about the program is that my Mentor understood my needs. She gave me help, and advice that was right for me. This made me feel more confident. M Y June 2025

Bridging the Gap has helped me in every way. It is a really good programme. H T August 25

Our mentors

We match mentors and mentees individually, considering their experience and their interests so that each mentee will be offered a mentor who can understand their situation and help them to make changes. To do this, we maintain a pool of potential mentors and recruit and train new mentors each year. Some mentors will only mentor once. Other mentors are happy to mentor several times. We have a wide range of volunteers with a diverse range of skills. They include university students but also young professionals and people with established careers and home lives.

During the year we organized 2 series of training courses for new mentors. There were about 20 mentors available during the year.

Income

We are grateful for grants from the Albert Hunt Trust, Charles French Charity, the Steff Phillips Foundation and Islington Local Initiative funding. We are also grateful for regular gifts from an individual donor.

Financial Affairs

At the start of the year, the Charity's resources stood at £ 20,806. During the year, further income was received as grants of £4,000 from the Albert Hunt Trust, £2,000 from the Charles F. French Charity, £1,956 from the Steff Phillips Foundation and £950 from Islington Local Initiative Funding and fundraising income of £55. The end of year balance, after expenditure of £20,598 was therefore £9,169.

Reserves Policy

The Trustees’ policy is to aim to maintain sufficient reserves to cover six months’ committed expenditure. During 2024-25 fundraising was paused for several months as a result of uncertainty about our future. This meant that some of our unrestricted reserves were spent and our reserves have fallen below the desired level. We have now resumed fundraising and we plan to rebuild our reserves over future years.

Risk Review Policy

The major risks to which the Trust is exposed are financial risks to the continuity of income and reputational risks due to failures of mentoring relationships. The steps taken to mitigate these risks are:

undertaking fundraising on a regular basis to maintain a regular flow of grant income;
establishing an attractive and easy to navigate website to encourage individual donations; and
• ensuring mentors are well trained and supervised.

Statement of Trustees' Responsibilities

It is the Trustees' responsibility to prepare financial. statements for each financial year which give a fair view of the state of affairs of the Charity and of the surplus or deficit of the Charity for that period. In preparing those financial statements, the Trustees are required to:

select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently,
make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent,
state whether applicable accounting standards have been followed, subject to any material departure disclosed and explained in the financial statement,
prepare the financial statements on a going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the Trust will continue in business.

The Trustees are responsible for keeping proper records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the Charity. 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.

The trustees have arranged for an independent examination of the accounts as they have done in previous years, even though this is not legally required.

Approved by the trustees and signed:

Robin Latimer (Co-ordinator)

Date:

Independent examiner’s report to the trustees of Bridging the Gap Islington

I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the Bridging the Gap Islington Trust (the Trust) for the year ended 31 March 2025.

Responsibilities and basis of report

As the charity trustees of the Trust you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (‘the Act’).

I report in respect of my examination of the Trust’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Act.

Independent examiner’s statement

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe that in any material respect: 1. accounting records were not kept in respect of the Trust as required by section 130 of the Act; or

the accounts do not accord with those records.

I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

Signed:

Name: Nicholas C Evans

Address: 8 View Crescent, Tivoli Road, London N8 8RW

Date: 20 October 2025

Approved by the Trustees and signed on their behalf