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ACTIVE ESSEX FOUNDATION

RECEIPTS & PAYMENTS ACCOUNTS YEAR ENDED 31st MARCH 2021

Registered Charity Number 1166665

ACTIVE ESSEX FOUNDATION

YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

CONTENTS
Charity information	1
Trustees' report	2
Independent Examiner's Report	5
Receipts & payments	6
Statement of assets & liabilities	7
Notes to the accounts	8

ACTIVE ESSEX FOUNDATION CHARITY INFORMATION

YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

REFERENCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION

Charity Name Active Essex Foundation Working Name AEF Charity Number 1166665 Address E2 County Hall Chelmsford CM1 1QH Trustees Ray Gooding Chair (retired June 2021) Jennifer Tomblin Chair (appointed June 2021) Angela Brown Resigned 18/01/2021 Secretary Robert Hayne Treasurer Robert Mclintock Jason Fergus Azeem Akhtar

ACTIVE ESSEX FOUNDATION

TRUSTEES' REPORT

YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

The Trustees have pleasure in presenting their report and the receipts and payments accounts of the charity for the year ended 31 March 2021.

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

The objects of the charity are the promotion of community participation in healthy recreation across Greater Essex in particular by:

(1) Working with and through local agencies to increase levels of participation in sport and physical activity;

(2) Promoting and providing programmes and services for sport, recreation, physical activity, informal education and other leisure time occupation for healthy recreation;

(3) Promoting and providing facilities and services for recreational, sporting or other leisure time occupation in the interests of social welfare for the public at large or those who by reason of their youth, age, infirmity or disablement, financial hardship or social and economic circumstances, have need of such facilities and services; and

(4) The improvement and preservation of good health and well-being through participation in healthy recreation.

The Trustees confirm that they have had due regard to guidance published by the Charity Commission on public benefit.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND PERFORMANCE

Although the past year has been extremely challenging for communities across Essex due to the pandemic, loss of work, lockdown and lack of education the Active Essex Foundation have continued to develop projects that support and engage young people who suffer from a number of inequalities including poor mental health, those involved in or at risk of becoming involved in the criminal justice system, those living in areas of high deprivation, those who may lack positive role models and those who are not in education, employment or training.

Key to our work and being able to mobilise this support to local communities is how we work in partnership and support a range of grass-root and community organisations who engage our target groups. Over the past 12 months we have worked in partnership with a number of locally trusted organisations. It has remained important for us to continue to engage with the wider community in the places where our projects are delivered and project staff have received training in Asset Based Community Development and all projects have followed an ABCD approach, ensuring that young people and the wider community are always involved in identifying local needs and the way the project is designed in order to address and meet these needs. This has meant that without exception, all projects have seen great success and project targets have been exceeded, but more importantly the impact projects have had on individuals and communities has been clear to see.

Because of our expert knowledge and experience and the fact we built up and supported a network of over 100 locally trusted organisations, which includes charities, voluntary groups, sports clubs, youth groups, residents associations, leisure centres, schools, local authority teams and CVS teams, we spent the majority of the past 12 month developing and extending the holiday hunger programme, including the delivery of food and activity parcels as well as a school holiday activity and food programme across the county. This meant that the Active Essex Foundation and our network were able to play a key role in supporting local communities and responding to a direct need.

ACTIVE ESSEX FOUNDATION

TRUSTEES' REPORT (continued)

YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

Holiday Hunger: School holidays are a particular pressure point for some families, due to the local pandemic, the fact that the majority of children were not able to attend school, this became an even more important issue for us to support. In order to extend this programme to reach more families we were able to secure funding from the Lottery emergency coronavirus fund Magic little grants and Tesco’s bags for help which totalled £89,000. This allowed us to provide holiday hunger and activity and food clubs during the school holidays (Summer, October half term, Christmas and February half term). Over this period we were able to engage and support over 5000 young people and their families. It was recognised by Essex County Council cabinet members that the issue of holiday hunger and inactivity was increasing due to covid and because as a Foundation and through our network we had showed that we can deliver and engage these families we were able to leverage in an additional £580,000, which has been paid directly to our network of partners. This has allowed us to extend and sustain the holiday hunger and activity programmes across the network during school holidays and continue to provide support and networking for our 100 LTOs.

Thurrock Council also provided us with an additional £4000 to support families living in Thurrock through this programme.

Family activity and wellbeing packs In addition to the above we recognised that during lockdown, although families were allowed to leave the house for exercise each day, many were not able to do this. Many of the families we support did not have an outdoor space and some needed ideas and equipment to get outdoors and be more active as family for the benefit of their physical and mental wellbeing. We secured funding through the Sport England Tackling Inequalities fund and Colchester Catalyst totalling £9350 in order to provide over 2000 activity packs. Essex County Council were able to match this funding for £50,000 which was managed via Active Essex. Alongside the activity equipment we also provided a family wellbeing pack which provided guidance, support and signposting to a range of services that could support families during the pandemic, including mental wellbeing, healthy living, food support, employability, government support, reducing conflict, domestic abuse and funding support available to them.

Supporting young people involved in the criminal justice system We were awarded £24,000 from Active Essex Children and Young People team in January 2020 to deliver a pilot project in partnership with the Essex Youth Offending Services that focused on engaging groups of young people in a range of sport and physical activity and also providing life skills support. Unfortunately, due to covid restrictions this project was not able to take place. We did however continue to work with the Youth Offending team in order to develop the project, identify key delivery partners and consult with the young people about what activities they would like to take part in and what they needed support with. This project will be delivered in the next financial year.

Kick off @ 3 Kickoff@3 is a partnership between Active Essex Foundation, Essex Police and local community groups aiming to engage young people living in areas of deprivation and high crime/antisocial behaviour in regular physical activity. Through the Kickoff@3 tournaments we will engage 1000 young people across 8 areas of Essex, who are not regularly active and at risk of becoming involved in the CJS. We have the opportunity to support and build the capacity of the community organisations and faith groups who are bringing the young people to these events to ensure that they have the opportunity to take part in regular physical activity in a setting that is familiar to them and positive relationships are already established. We will provide resources for weekly sessions to be delivered in partnership with these community groups, running alongside the up-skilling of community organisation staff, volunteers and local community members so that physical activity can be embedded in to their sessions and run on a regular basis.

This project has been paused as it included mass participation events. We will pick up this work with police and community partners as soon is safe to do so. Louise remains in contact with Kick off @ 3 National team and also Essex police.

ACTIVE ESSEX FOUNDATION

TRUSTEES' REPORT (continued)

YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

Active Essex Foundation Website We are pleased to have updated our website and it is now more user friendly and shows the extent of our work across the county and the impact that our work is having on communities most in need.

FINANCIAL REVIEW

The charity received grants totalling £102,594 during the year ending 31[st] March 2021. Grants totalling £83,205 were passed to partnership organisations to deliver projects across Essex as outlined earlier in this report.

RESERVES POLICY

Trustees annually review the amount of reserves that are required to ensure that they are adequate to fulfil our continuing obligations. We currently have no staff or fixed overheads so Trustees have agreed that we will maintain our reserves at £10,000. As the Charity develops and we have fixed monthly outgoings then we will review this policy and intend to maintain our reserves at a level which is at least equivalent to of 12 months’ expenditure.

STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

The charity is a CIO registered number 1166665.

Trustees are recruited according to their skills and appointed by the Members of the CIO.

Approved by the Trustees on 3 November 2021 and signed on their behalf by:

Jennifer Tomblin

Chair of Trustees

INDEPENDENT EXAMINER'S REPORT TO THE TRUSTEES OF ACTIVE ESSEX FOUNDATION FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

I report to the charity trustees on my examination of the accounts of the charity for the year ended 31 March 2021 which are set out on pages 6 to 8.

Responsibilities and basis of report

As the charity’s trustees 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 charity’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 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:

accounting records were not kept in respect of the charity 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.

Raymond Crace FCA

Edmund Carr LLP 146 New London Road Chelmsford CM2 0AW

11 November 2021

ACTIVE ESSEX FOUNDATION