**York** Neighbours **Independence, connection, and community for over 65s in York** ## **York Neighbours is a volunteer-led charity (CIO) supporting independence, reducing loneliness, and tackling isolation for people in York aged over 65.** We were established as a charity in 2015 following the success of the informal “Belfrey Neighbours” initiative. This was set up by members of York’s St Michael le Belfrey Church, who were concerned for older people in the community who ‘fell between the gaps’ of pre-existing services. We describe our service users as our “Neighbours” and our volunteers support them with acts of neighbourly help, primarily through **one-off tasks and errands** , **regular check-in and chat phone calls** , and **social outings** . We also provide other incidental support such as answering general queries on matters like bus timetables or shop opening times, signposting and referrals to other services, birthday and christmas cards, regular newsletters, and sharing information about service changes or consultations relevant to older people. ## **“People like us need people like you.” Colin, 81, Rawcliffe** ## **This report covers our work between Tuesday 1 October 2024 and Tuesday** **30 September 2025.** In this period our active Trustees were as follows: Claire Warren, John Barton, Elisabeth Ramage, Helen Aitchison, Kelly Wheatley, Caroline Wilson, Matt Nelson (retired), Walter Stockdale (retired), Lynn Bradshaw (joined), Leslie Holmes (joined). Our Trustees meet formally a minimum of six times a year. Between these sessions they liaise regularly and support our part-time staff team made up of an Executive Officer Kallum Taylor on 24 hours, three Assistant Coordinators Emily Fairs, Hermione Jewitt, and Tina Davis on 18 hours each, and a Community Fundraising Officer Christina Driver on 10 hours. ## **A word from our trustees** **We are really proud to have been able to continue York Neighbours founders’ simple, but powerful - and necessary - idea of supporting independence, reducing loneliness, and tackling isolation for over 65s up to, and beyond, its tenth birthday.** In a tough climate for small charities like ours, this has only been possible thanks to our incredible volunteers, supporters, and small staff team. Their compassion, generosity, skill and dedication has enabled us not just to keep going, but also grow with rising demand too. Thanks to them, we have been able to support increasing numbers of older people across York to keep living independently, enjoy social connection, and still feel part of a community through acts of neighbourliness that we all sometimes need - and which they often go without. In this report we hope to share with you a meaningful insight into our work. It covers the challenges we’ve overcome and continue to face, and the many positives and achievements. It has been a year of continued growth while at the same time working hard to refine our systems, better articulate our impact, and find new ways to make our limited resources go further in supporting our Neighbours. We hope you enjoy reading it, and thank you for your interest in our charity. **1** ## **Our Neighbours** Using the form on our website, or by calling our office, anybody can refer others, or self-refer, into York Neighbours provided they: **Due to York’s rapidly ageing population, changes to other local services, and awareness of our work growing, our annual increases of those registered with us for help has continued.** are aged 65 or over - live within the City of York local authority area We ended the reporting year with 503 Neighbours actively using our services. While this appears lower than the 540 reported last year, we have worked hard to make significant progress in reviewing our records, and caught up with long-standing - are not in a residential care setting - can be reasonably described as needing help with one-off tasks to maintain their independence, feeling lonely, or isolated. backlogs in the process. As a result, we now have full confidence that our reported figures are an accurate reflection of those using our services. **----- Start of picture text -----**
Our numbers of active
Neighbours across the
last ten years
503
332
226
139 145
49
2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 2025
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**“I’m really pleased with the job on my garden gate - and lovely to meet Trevor and Maisie. Thank you so much! Jules, Rawcliffe** **2** **While each is distinguishable, the** ## **Indicators of need across our Neighbours** **issues of loneliness, isolation, and need across our reducing independence overlap. Neighbours They are also a matter of wide subjectivity, sensitivity, and can** Sensory impaired **367 fluctuate. This makes evidencing** Caring commitments **24 them a challenge.** Physical or mental **395** health issues However, based on what our Neighbours share with us we can look Live alone **454** at indicators of these things to have Widowed **201** confidence that we are serving the No or distant family **170** types of people we were set up to No internet access **362** help ten years ago, as well as how many of these indicators are relevant Mobility issues **366** to individual Neighbours. Uses warden call **215** system **----- Start of picture text -----**
150
135
100
101
98
70
50
45
37
3 18 2
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
How many indicators of need
our individual Neighbours have
Number of Neighbours
Number of Neighbours
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**3** ## **Our** ## **volunteers** **Our entire reason for existing is based on neighbourly help and support given to older people in moments of need. Without local people volunteering to provide that, there would be no York Neighbours.** We are pleased to have increased our number of active volunteers to 66 this year. We are hosting increasing numbers of students both as part of placement hours and simply volunteering on top of their studies. This is made possible thanks to our ever-improving partnerships with the University of York and York St John University. ## **3650 hours** **of neighbourly help and support for odler people across York given by...** ## **66 active volunteers** doing one-off tasks, making phone calls, driving to outings, fundraising, writing birthday cards, serving as trustees, attending community events and more, to the value of... ## **£49,668** **worth of time if applying the Real Living Wage and expenses (which many choose to not claim)** **“I like volunteering with York Neighbours because, while they’re usually quick jobs I can fit into my busy schedule, they mean so much to the person I’m helping.** **It’s a good reminder that slowing down and doing a small act for others can still make such a big difference for people.” Maliha, 38, Heworth** **4** **Neighbours KEY: Volunteers** ## **Coverage across York** **----- Start of picture text -----**
41
19
4 3
61
31 4
19
4
4
27
5
18
2
14
9
0
10
0
3
35
22
6
5
29 38
2 32 5
2
15
25 27 18 5
1 1 5
51
5
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**While we have a reasonable spread of Neighbours and volunteers, using the City of York Council’s ward boundaries we can now better target our efforts to raise awareness of our work.** Combining this with having more efficient systems to release capacity, next year, we will be able to focus much more on volunteer recruitment - especially in places where we have no or low numbers. **5** _You can ring them and somebody comes to help._ _**You’d be lost** .”_ _**without these people**_ **Glyn, Woodthorpe** **6** ## **One-off** ## **tasks and errands** **Not counting the exceptional circumances of Covid-19, the number of tasks or errands our volunteers have helped with this year has been our highest to date.** Considering the sheer variety of asks we receive - changing light bulbs, tech troubles, charity shop runs, weeding, setting up furniture, lifts to the doctors, and more - we are proud of how many we have helped with. ## **409 tasks or errands** **done for older people in need of one-off bits of help, meaning an...** ## **86% success rate** **out of the 474 requests for help we received.** The requests we were unable to do were mostly too complex or large for volunteers to try. While we welcome the variety, and want to remain flexible, the trickier the ask means fewer volunteers will be able to help. In these cases, we try to signpost our Neighbours to other services. There are also occasions when volunteers are simply not available, or a Neighbour may have sorted their request through other means before a volunteer has been able to offer. **“I don’t feel like I can solve everyone’s problems but every now and then there’s a job I can help with. I really like the way York Neighbours makes it possible for people to have someone to turn to when they need somebody.” Pete, Tang Hall** **7** **We have also started capturing information to** ## **more effectively show the benefits this service has for our Neighbours.** This is not an exact science as, for some tasks or errands, we are preventing the risk of something bad from happening. An example of this could be moving furniture for somebody in order to prevent a potential fall. This can make it hard to ‘prove’ the value of an intervention, however, it is something we needed to start articulating. We look forward to refining this in the future. **A view on the variety of things our volunteers help our Neighbours with** **----- Start of picture text -----**
Other
5.6% Social
DIY 5.1%
30.8% Tech
14.2%
Shopping
4.6%
Transport
4.6%
Gardening Practical
24.2%
10.8%
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## **Benefits and impacts for our Neighbours** Prevented risk of Helped food or 120 Enhanced 47 91 health security home safety injury or illness Avoided Supported to 14 120 trades’ fees appointment Enabled social Improved or 51 224 connection repaired living environment Built confidence 68 with device or task Liaised with or referred to 58 other service Addressed problem not 134 covered by other service **8** ## **Regular check-in** ## **and chat phone calls** **This service gives those who can go days without speaking to anybody a friendly conversation, with people who are interested in hearing about them and their life.** It continues to be hugely valued, both by the Neighbours who feel less lonely as a result, and the volunteers making them each week. They are also a really useful line of communication for our Neighbours to ask us for help with a task, to join ## **2754 calls** **with our Neighbours, which when added up, work out as...** ## **Over 32 days** **of neighbourly chats, asks for help, and memories, problems, and laughs shared** an outing, or to let us know if their needs are changing so we can help find them appropriate support. **“Volunteering was really flexible and slotted into uni quite well. There’s a lot of loneliness, especially for older people who can’t get out, so with the calls checking in with those who don’t have people around them it was a rewarding thing to do.” Danielle, York St John University** **“I started volunteering for York Neighbours after retiring from social work. It gave me an interest outside of the usual day-to-day things, and enabled me to carry on helping people as I had done for several years.” Barbara, Huntington** **9** ## **Innovating this service in order to help more people** **Thanks to incredible support from the Tech for Good Alliance we have also embarked on a major change for our phone calls service.** They connected us to a team of technologists from one of their parters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) who - at no cost - built for us a new online ‘portal’ for the service. After a number of workshops, and weeks of testing, we moved our student volunteers (who mostly come into the office) onto this. We expect that once it is fully rolled out to all call volunteers it will save around two days of staff time by removing our previous reliance on lots of work across different documents, emails, and database. **“It's clear that Kallum and the team at York Neighbours deliver a service that is hugely valued by the Neighbours that it supports. We were delighted to have been able to support them by bringing a team from PwC to work on a project to use technology to free up time to focus on the most valuable parts of their work. ”** **Alistair Forbes, Founding Director and CEO, Tech for Good Alliance** For a charity of our size, this time saving is huge. It will allow us to more confidently support many more older people, spend more time raising awareness about our work across York, and give more attention to further improving the impact and efficiency of our work in other areas of the charity. **10** ## **Social outings** **Our Social Outings programme proved our busiest one to date.** ## **11 outings held** We held trips to regulars such as Thompson’s Fish & Chips, New Earswick Bowls Club for boccia and lunch, and seasonal celebrations at Bootham School. Thanks to kind offers from supporters new ones were held too, including coffee-tasting experiences at Starbucks and some Christmas carols and afternoon tea courtesy of the Joyful Voices Choir at York Community Church. This year we have also made it a norm to ask for donations from those attending, making our funding for future events go further. ## **Hosting 130 Neighbours** Our biggest challenge with outings continues to be volunteer driver availability. We usually have to turn (easily) over ten to twenty people down for each event. As such, we are trying to recruit more volunteer drivers and seeking possible partnerships with local businesses. **11** _York Neighbours have been_ _**very kind and very good** with us._ **Ann & Jack, Heworth** **12** ## **Other** ## **highlights Content Creator Internship** **Over the summer we hosted an intern from the University of York (part-funded by Santander Universities).** We applied for this as our charity lacked media which brought to life our people and their relationships with us. Given our size, we also only needed a one-off resource to produce content to last a few years. After a competitive recruitment we hired Maisie Clegg, a Business of the Creative Industries student. Maisie produced a range of quality videos and photographs for us - and then went onto winning the University’s “Intern of the Year” award! ## **Chris Chambers wins York Press “Volunteer of the Year” Award** **We were delighted that one of our volunteers, Chris, received this award at this year’s York Press’ Community Pride Awards.** At the time of the award, he had completed well over 400 one-off tasks for our Neighbours. If you discount Christmases and holidays, this amounts to one a week, every week, for ten years! **13** ## **Our Tenth Birthday Party** **To mark this special occasion and achievement, we held a celebration at the Bishopthorpe Social Club.** We were so pleased to have had over 100 in attendance - from Neighbours to current and former volunteers, supporters, local representatives and the Lord Mayor’s Civic Party, as well as a number of our charity’s founding members. We were treated to wonderful songs by the Sounds Fun Singers, a raffle was held to help raise funds, and a birthday cake presented to Wendy Smart, one of our founders. **“We were delighted to celebrate York Neighbours tenth birthday. It was a wonderful mix of entertainment, information and moving tributes. This is a charity that the Civic Party are proud to support - ordinary people doing extraordinary things, making a difference in our communities. We wish them well and look forward to our continued** **support.” Cllr Martin Rowley BEM, Lord Mayor of York** **14** ## **Finance and fundraising** **After some worry mid-way through the year as grants appeared to dry up, we were extremely grateful and relieved for some success over the summer. This helped us end the year with a healthy balance, although there is no room for complacency. We cannot overstate how much we appreciate every single funder’s support.** The majority of our costs cover our five part-time staff, totalling to just over 2 full-time equivalents. Thanks to more efficient systems we have been able to keep this resource roughly the same despite the annual increases in demand. That said, the point for when we can no longer absorb increases without more staff will come soon. Our next biggest cost comes with our office. Late last year, we moved downstairs at The Raylor Centre to a more comfortable and accessible environment with (crucially) extra desk space. This has tripled the amount of potential volunteer hours for us to make use of in the office. ## **26% success with grant applications** **with 14 out of 54 resulting in awards** ## **Invested in community fundraising** **to help diversify income and raise awarness** While we are succesfully keeping a downward pressure on regular staffing costs, we did have a temporary increase in costs for this area. This was a deliberate decision to enable effective handovers between outgoing and new staff. **15** ## **The cost of keeping in touch with our Neighbours takes up most of our discretionary spend.** Over two-thirds of our Neighbours are not digitally active, and probably never will be. This means taking on the costs of printing and postage for communicating with them, through items like our quarterly “Neighbours News”. **Excitingly - thanks to a one-off grant to trial a part-time role last year - we have also stepped into community fundraising.** The aim here is to reduce some of our reliance on grants by raising financial support through local events, raffles, sponsored challenges, business partnerships, legacy gifts, and more. At just 10 hours per week, and with our organisation starting from scratch in this area, it has taken time to build momentum. However, we are now we are seeing this grow as a share of our income. With plans to take part in the Yorkshire Marathon, the Big Give’s match-funding Christmas Challenge, Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge and more, we hope for more growth in the next reporting year. **Across the board - whether through grants, physical feats, buying raffle tickets, standing orders, and more - we are incredibly thankful to the individuals, community groups, businesses, trusts, foundations, and other organisations who have supported us.** **16** ## **Summary of accounts** # **Brought foward from 2023/24: £47,017** **Other 0.8%** **Individal donations 9.9%** **Community fundraising 4.1%** **Grants and large Income donations 85.2% £103,283** **Office hire and running costs 12%** **Expenses 1.7%** **Neighbour, Communications volunteer and Spend and marketing 5.8% service support £86,014 (staffing) 80.5%** **Carried into 2024/25: £64,286** **17** ## **York Neighbours @YorkNeighbours** ## **York Neighbours** **York** Neighbours **Independence, connection, and community for over 65s in York** **Registered charity No. 1163768** Office C1, The Raylor Centre, James Street, York. YO10 3DW. 01904 891 627 info@yorkneighbours.org.uk | www.yorkneighbours.org.uk **York Neighbours Accounts** ## **October 2024 – September 2025** |**Receipts**|**Unrestricted**|**Restricted**|**Total**| |---|---|---|---| |Donations|10,235||10,235| |Grants & larger donations|85,594|2,500|88,094| |Marathon - Just Giving|1,988||1,988| |Hotel Envelopes|255||255| |Interest|756||756| |Rafle & Marathon Entries|775||775| |Gift Aid Tax Recovered|1,179||1,179| |**Total Income**|**100,783**|**2,500**|**103,283**| |**Payments**|||| |Salaries, NI & Pensions|59,598|6,751|66,349| |Recruitment & Marketing|4,969||4,969| |Room Hire|20||20| |Stationery & Postage|994||994| |Bank Charges|60||60| |PayPal Charges|21||21| |Ofice Refreshments|61||61| |Travel - Volunteers & Staf|1,427||1,427| |Rent & Rates|8,366||8,366| |Insurance & PAT Testing|471||471| |Internet & Phones|1,154||1,154| |Outings|121|1,628|1,749| |Training|120||120| |Gifts to Staf & Volunteers|225||225| |Other|10|18|28| |**Total Expenditure**|**77,617**|**8,397**|**86,014**| |Net Receipts|23,166|-5,897|17,269| |Brought Forward|39,172|7,845|47,017| |**Carried Forward**|**62,338**|**1,948**|**64,286**| |**Restricted Funds**|**B/f**|**Received**|**Spent**
**Remaining**| |Barchester - Outings|153||153
-| |Alan Lane – Fund Raiser|7,592||6,751
841| |When all else fails|100||18
82| |York Dispensary Sick Poor||500|500
-| |Headley Court||2,000|957
1,043| ||**7,845**|**2,500**|**8,379**
**1,966**| |**Assets and Liabilities**|||| |Unrestricted Funds|62,320||| |Restricted Funds|1,966||| |**Bank Balance**|**64,286**||| Independent examlnerfs rewt to the trustees of York Nel8hbours tharltsble Incorporated Oryanlsatlon (*he Cltt) I report to the ¢harlty trustees on my examination of the accounts of the CIO for the year ended 30 september 2025. Responslbllltles and basls of r•port As the charity trustees of the CIO you are responslble for the preparatlon of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Art 20111'the ACVI. I report In ￿pert of my examlnation of the Cl(Ys accounts carried out under section 145 of the Act. In carrylng out my examlnation I have followed all appllcable Dlrectlons glven by the Charity Commission under section 14515)Ib) of the 2011 Art. Independent ex•mlnees stat•m•nt I have completed my examlnatlon. I confimi that no materlal matters have come to my attention In connertlon wlth the examlnation gSvlng me cause to belleve that In any materlal respect: l. accountln8 records were not kept as requlred by sectlon 130 of the Att; or 2. the accounts do not accord wlth those records. There Is a very mlnor dlscrepancy In the reported openlng posltlon in the accounts but thls relates to a low value Item whl¢h wa5 pald In thls year but accounted for In the prlor flnanclal year. Thls was resolved very earty In the financlal year and was promptly and clearly explained by the relevant officer of the charlty. There15 no su88estlon of fraud or mlsmanagement and the value Is of1Sttle slgnlflcance (less than £3CK)l and does not materlally affert the financlal result& I have no other concerns and have come across no other matters In connectlon wlth the examlnatlon to whlch attentlon should be drawn in thls report In order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached. Sl8ned: Name: Shlrley Reed Relevant professlonal qualificationlsl or membership of professional bodles (If any).. CIMA Address: Lllac Cottage. Sklrpenbeck, York Y041 IHF Date: 25th Aprfl 2026