Major (Retired) Mark S Corthine BEM The Chairman The Rotary Somerset Community Volunteers Trust The Charity Commission: 20 November 2023 ## **THE ANNUAL ACCOUNTS AND REPORT OF THE ROTARY SOMERSET COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERS TRUST: CHARITY NO. 11642381** **INTRODUCTION** - The Trust has endured a year of great change. We continue to serve the communities within Somerset and surrounding Counties with a voluntary service to assist anyone in need and to aid the civil authorities in the event of any emergency. The Trust was a recognised Rotary body but has now removed themselves from the title of Rotary and Rotary Satellite Club and have reverted to their original name of: **The Somerset Community Volunteers Trust** . We are still able to be called upon by the civil authorities if an emergency is such that voluntary organisations are called to assist. All of these changes have been agreed by the five current Trustees of the Trust and all appropriate minutes oof meetings have been maintained. **THE ACCOUNT –** We now maintain a single bank account heading, named ‘The Charity Account’. _**The Charity Account**_ All of our monies are now centrally held in the Charity Account. On the change of name, all Club Monies were transferred to this account. One single Charity Account area. Only last year we were maintaining 3 accounts within one single bank account. All such monies that were ring-fenced to be used by The EVAG (Emergency Volunteer Action Group) where returned to that group on the Change of our status and name as these were donated for a specific purpose from two particular outside agencies: Somerset Prepared and SSE(N) for specific and names purchase priorities. **TRUSTEE’S** – Over the past year, our 5 trustees have only met once in person to make our big decisions and make changes and 7 separate occasions have been via Zoom meetings, all of which have been very successful. The Trustees have had to make big changes and have continued to provide the guidance and control necessary to bring in these changes. This is due to our Trust moving away from the Rotary spere of influence and making our own way without the ongoing costs associated with Rotary Membership. Last year was not a good year for renewing membership, we have tried hard to maintain our membership, but this has been challenging! **LOGISTICS** - Over the past seven years our Rotary Club has worked closely with the Rotary Emergency Volunteer Action Group (EVAG) who has covered the cost of the storage of our flood related stores. We continue to manage a centralized, secure, storage location. Our stores managers conduct regular stores management checks on the stocks of Flood related Stores that we held. These must be maintained in a good and serviceable condition and ready to be issued. Items that are nearing the end of their shelf life or are showing signs of deterioration are “conditioned” by our staff; these conditioned stores are removed from issue and where possible are sold or disposed of. All moneys raised from these sales go toward the Good and Benefit of our Charity Account. In November of 2022 we received a notice from the owners of the store that due to rising costs they would have to raise their annual charges by 150% , a charge that both EVAG and Rotary would not agree to pay, so the Chairman of EVAG found alternative accommodation for the flood defense stores that we held and with our assistance moved it some 15 miles away from the main M5 motorway and took over the maintenance of that stock, relieving the SCV of their stores ‘accounting’ duties. So that responsibility was removed from our club. Leaving us little option to go our own way! Those flood stores are still available to us to distribute whenever the need arises. We have continued deliver Flood Packs from the EVAG store and continued to deliver these to people who are at continued risk of Flooding. We have issued a total of 15 individual Flood packs, and a separate 110 yellow Plastic (Sand) bags since July 2022. We have formed a relationship with several local Parish Councils, and local flood wardens who constantly ask for assistance with flooding issues; the SCV now hold small stocks of Flood Packs to assist local people in time of need. Until recently the relationship between our Club, EVAG and other Clubs within the Rotary District 1200 were very good. Our chairman continues to work closely with three County Councils of the West Country, to facilitate the management of Spontaneous Volunteers, should the need arise. Their aims closely align with ours this senior management group has provided direction to our members to meet their volunteering needs. **AID TO THE CIVIL COMMUNITY** - Our SCV Trust members who were all originally Spontaneous Volunteers, have provided aid to the Civil Community, for many years. We have continued to issue flood packs to local communities, who are subject to flooding. These now include Parish Councils, Village Halls and many private houses throughout Somerset and Devon. Each flood pack contains, 15 x Self Inflating Sandbags, 30 Yellow Plastic (Sand) Bags with polymer inserts, together with a Large, waterproof bag, for the preservation of bedding, clothes and any such items. Last year we have added a wind-up torch and a whistle to attract attention into our flood packs and these new items have been well received. **GRANTS FROM THE CHARITABLE TRUST -** Our Club has made several grants to those most in need in our local area. Our Trustees have seen fit to present a total of £6,350.00 in individual donations to Eleven worthy local Charities. **SUMMARY** – 2022/2023 was another very good year for our Charitable Trust. We have now properly developed our SCV Trust management systems; Although our membership has not grown throughout this period, we have a strong following of Associate Members “The SCV Trust” continues to meet up regularly, we enjoy social activities together as well being able to react to any emergency that we are asked to aid and support of our Local Community, wherever it is needed. FOTAP (fv04) Somerset Communrty Volunteers ## **ROTARY SOMERSET COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERS TRUST as at 30[th] June 2023 Accounting period 01.07.2022 – 30.06.2023** |||||**Club Income Account**|**Club Income Account**|**Club Income Account**||**EVAG PPE Account**|**EVAG PPE Account**|**EVAG PPE Account**| |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| |||||**Description**|**Income**|**Expenditure**||**Description**|**Income**|**Expenditure**| |||||||||||| |||||Year OpeningBalance||||Year OpeningBalance||| |||||Social ActivityDonations||||||| |||||VolunteeringAid Donations||||||| |||||ID Badges||||||| |||||FundraisingOrganised||||||| |||||Subs||||||| |||||Misc||||||| |||||Income||||||| |||||**Club Balance Sheet**
**Assets**
**Liabilities**
Cash in Bank
£0.00
**£9,977.90**||||||| |**Charity Balance Sheet**||||||||**EVAG PPE Account**||| |**Assets**||**Liabilities**||||||**Assets**||**Liabilities**| |||||||||||| |Cash in Bank to be used for
charitablepurposes|£9,977.90|||||||Cash in Bank|£0.00|| |Promised Donations||||||||||| |||||||||||| |||||||||||| ||**Total in Bank**|||**£9,977.90**|||||||