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← Herts Welcomes Refugees

2023-12-31-accounts

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“ Welcoming and Supporting Refugees in Hertfordshire ” https://www.hertswelcomes.org.uk/ Patron: Robert Voss CBE CStJ HM Lord-Lieutenant of Hertfordshire

Herts Welcomes Refugees Trustee Report January to December 23

Executive summary

This has been a year of change and development for Herts Welcomes Refugees as we responded to the challenge of supporting increasing numbers of asylum seekers of many different nationalities and with a wide range of needs, whilst continuing to welcome and support refugees who have settled in the county.

We have spent time considering how we can most effectively organise ourselves and how we can ensure the growth and sustainability of the charity, reviewing our objectives, the support we are offering, our means of communication and methods of measuring our impact.

This activity was prompted by:

This report gives an overview of our work during the year. The Trustees have reviewed last year’s objectives against this year’s achievements and, while further work is needed in some areas, we are encouraged by our progress.

Here are some of the key points for 2023:

Herts Welcomes Refugees - A Charitable Incorporated Organisation - Registered charity No 1172687 Registered Address: 3 Newmarket Court, Goldsmith Way, St Albans, AL3 5LN

Please read on for further information.

Trustees

The Trustees meet on a regular basis and most of us attend the monthly management meetings. At Trustees’ meetings, we consider matters of policy in line with the Charity Commission’s guidance on public benefit, receive financial reports and take decisions regarding the strategic direction of the charity according to the constitution, objectives for the year and the need to adapt as new challenges arise. We will bring to the AGM a resolution to amend the Objectives of the charity to reflect that our primary focus is no longer Syrian refugees but refugees and asylum seekers of all nationalities.

Catherine Henderson resigned as a trustee at the end of December and Vicky Woodcraft will resign at the AGM. Catherine and Vicky were founder members of the charity and we will miss their wise contribution.

Andy Gregg joined us as a trustee in May. Andy brings a wealth of experience as he has worked with, and still has links with, other charities concerned with refugees and asylum seekers. He is also a trustee of the Hertfordshire Equalities Advisory Board.

An objective for this year was to recruit a trustee with lived experience and we have started our search for a suitable candidate. Our current Trustees are Irene Austin (Chair), Adrian Ball (Treasurer), Veronica Raymond, Kate Scott, Samah Alrahabi, John Borton, Andy Gregg and Vicky Woodcraft.

According to our constitution, Andy Gregg who was appointed as a trustee during the year will have his appointment formally endorsed at the AGM. Kate Scott and Samah Alrahabi will stand down and have offered themselves for reelection at the AGM.

The Management Team

This team continues to meet on a monthly basis. There have been a number of changes during the year: some retirements but also new members and redeployment of existing members to address emerging needs.

Karen Cleaver has moved from being a St Albans and Hertsmere Area Convenor to lead on support for asylum seekers in a Hatfield hotel and is now part of the Welwyn Hatfield team. Birim Karakas has taken

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over supporting the London Colney families as well as those in Hertsmere. In East Herts, Catherine Henderson resigned at the end of the year as both Area Convenor and Trustee but we were very pleased to welcome Carolyn Breheny to that team, working with Denise Beardshaw on supporting asylum seekers in a large hotel and in the community. Some areas still do not have strong enough teams to support local demand and recruiting more volunteers in those areas is a priority.

In terms of paid support, we were very sorry to see Caroline Herring retire in February as Volunteer Coordinator but were pleased to welcome Ruhena Akhtar to that role from the end of March. Ruhena is a registered counsellor and psychotherapist and brings a wealth of experience to her role. Annabel Kirk continues to work as our Administrator and ~~c~~ overed for the Volunteer Coordinator post whilst we were recruiting.

We are very pleased to welcome Lucile Bertolaso-Scarlett as our Safeguarding Lead, succeeding Vicky Woodcraft who has led on safeguarding for many years. We thank Vicky for all her help.

Advisory Group

The Trustees are aware that the charity needs not only to have a means of receiving feedback on the support we provide but also to involve those we support to ensure we are effective. We have therefore invited representatives from the communities we support to join an Advisory Group.

Andy Gregg chairs this group and John Borton has taken administrative responsibility. The first meeting took place in October when we shared information about how the charity works and asked the members to identify their key concerns. After this meeting a WhatsApp group was set up for participants ~~.~~ Concerns ~~em~~ erging from the group are the difficulties of finding suitable employment for those able to work, lack of legal aid lawyers for asylum seekers and the cost of living. One success story is that after the first meeting one of the members who was having difficulty finding work was able to gain employment through our volunteer network contacts.

Our volunteer network

We are a volunteer led organisation and volunteers deliver the great majority of the support we provide. Our volunteer network is the heart of our organisation and has grown significantly during the year. It remains a strong network, strengthened further by the recruitment of 47 new volunteers, giving us a total of 130 active volunteers. We are so grateful to all our volunteers for the time and commitment they give to the charity. We are constantly amazed by their enthusiasm, flexibility and compassion.

However we still need more volunteers to address local needs, particularly in Stevenage and North Herts and in Watford and Three Rivers.

Our new Volunteer Coordinator has introduced ‘Table Talk’ sessions to give volunteers a chance to meet each other (mostly on Zoom) and discuss their activities These sessions – of which we had four in 2023 - have proved very popular. Topics included health and wellbeing and cultural differences. In November and December we arranged two face to face meetings, one in Stevenage and one in St Albans which were really well attended and gave our volunteers a chance to share their experiences and learn about activities in other areas of the county. There will be more face to face meetings in 2024.

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We have developed our volunteer training this year, starting with a face to face meeting looking at language awareness and resources. We also signposted new volunteers to an online course to help with language support.

Judy Kirsh, our ESOL specialist, ran face-to-face and Zoom training sessions in February, April, May, June, July and September but we recognise that this area requires further development. Judy is available to answer individual queries, to recommend resources and training opportunities and to signpost to other sources of support. We have created an ESOL resources area, including self-access resources, on our website so that our volunteers can find suitable materials to support ESOL teaching and learning more easily.

Our work during the year

Refugees

Many of the Syrian refugee families do not need our support in the same way as they did a few years ago. We continue to support those who do. We are pleased to report that more of them now have British Citizenship.

We continue to provide opportunities for refugees to meet in lunch clubs, women’s groups and other gatherings, in addition to providing befriender and language support. Now that we are working with a wider range of people, we are keen to open up these sessions to all the groups we support in the interests of integration and sharing experiences.

Afghan evacuees

The bridging hotels for Afghan evacuees all closed during the year. Most of the people from the hotel in Dacorum that we supported have settled in the county and have been joined by others from hotels elsewhere.

The number of Afghan evacuees supported in the community has risen by more than 100.

The needs of these families and individuals vary and, while they have the benefit of having been in the UK for up to two years before leaving the hotels, moving into the wider community presents its own challenges. We are working closely with their caseworkers at the Refugee Council and Dacorum Borough Council to support them and we know that Christ First Watford has maintained contact with those who were housed in the hotel in Borehamwood who have settled locally. We are still able to offer welcome packages tailored to needs and some welcome events. Where possible, we continue to offer these families and individuals the range of support we offered those who settled in Hertfordshire earlier.

We have also supported Ukrainian refugees by providing financial help and donated goods and by welcoming them to language classes at our drop in sessions.

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Supporting asylum seekers

At the start of 2023 we were supporting asylum seekers living in three facilities (two hotels and selfcatering accommodation). By the end of the year we were providing support in eight locations as well as more “dispersed” asylum seekers i.e. those living in accommodation in the community. Other charities and faith groups lead on support at most of the other hotels.

There were 13 asylum facilities in Hertfordshire in 2023. One closed in January 2024 and other closures are planned in accordance with government policy to reduce the number of hotels and house asylum seekers in dispersed accommodation. This change will present fresh challenges to Herts Welcomes Refugees.

We can only support people who are willing to engage with us: we do not claim to have reached all asylum seekers living in the locations we support but we consider that we have had a significant impact on many of those who have engaged with us. It should also be remembered that we are not dealing with a static population as the Home Office can move people at very short notice. This brings its own challenges and makes it difficult to record how many people we have supporte ~~d.~~

We acknowledge and regret that we cannot provide the same level of support across all eight facilities because we do not have enough volunteers. We need quite a large group of volunteers to provide a range of support to asylum seekers with complex needs and ideally a team of people to coordinate their activities.

After a long period when a minimal number of asylum seekers were receiving decisions on their claims, the government has introduced a fast track process for asylum seekers of specific nationalities and we are now seeing a significant increase in decisions, mostly positive for those on this process. This has taken the charity in yet another direction as the euphoria of achieving refugee status is quickly overtaken by concerns about housing, the complexities of opening bank accounts and claiming Universal Credit and the prospect of being evicted from Home Office accommodation at short notice. This group do not have the support of caseworkers to guide them through the moving on process and so our volunteers are doing what we can to help.

In terms of the scope of support provided, we offer at some but not all locations:

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In most of the eight locations we operate, we engage with asylum seekers inside the hotels using communal areas. In Dacorum we operate from drop ins made available to us by the Alexandra Road Congregational Church and the South Hill Centre – a new departure for us which has opened up new opportunities for collaborating with other organisations. We may have to introduce more drop ins to address the needs of dispersed asylum seekers.

These activities help the asylum seekers who take part to improve their English, to meet others in a safe environment, get a better understanding of British culture, reduce their isolation and help integration by demonstrating that there are people who welcome them and provide opportunities for them to demonstrate their talents.

Notwithstanding the challenges we are encouraged by the appreciation shown by those we support and by seeing the impact our work is having. Here is an example:

‘ Sometimes a little help means life for those who have been disappointed in the estrangement and harshness of life’

Supporting asylum seekers has caused us to change and expand the support we provide and made us seek out new organisations to work with. Here are some examples:

The cooking project

This started in Dacorum with the aim of giving those who did not have facilities to cook the chance to do so. The project is funded by Mind Hertfordshire - Flourish. In Dacorum the Sunnyside Rural Trust welcomes us to their kitchen facilities. The project revealed that we had several talented chefs in our midst – four or whom cooked Iranian Ash Reshteh soup for more than 70 guests at a Sunnyside celebratory event. The cooking project is now up and running in Welwyn and Hatfield and we are grateful to Christchurch Baptist church for the use of their kitchen facilities. This project has achieved its aim of improving wellbeing and has also given participants opportunities to meet members of the wider community, to get an idea of the cost of living as they shop for ingredients and the chance to share their culture and that of others through food. Our volunteers have also commented on how enjoyable they find taking part.

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Thanks to the support of Daler Rowney, Cass Art and Artscape Harpenden, who have supplied materials, we have been able to run art and craft sessions for both adults and children in the Welwyn Hatfield hotels. This has really helped with wellbeing, especially for the adults, and has given the children enjoyable recreational time. We have some very talented artists and Ghazal, who now has refugee status, has kindly come back and helped with some sessions. We used the pictures from these sessions on ‘Donotsendmeacard’ in December.

Summer School for Young Asylum Seekers in Dacorum

The arrival of a large group of asylum seekers into new Home Office accommodation in Dacorum at the end of 2022 created many challenges for all local services. HWR identified that there was one cohort at particular risk of isolation and exclusion: around 20 young people aged15-19 who would be unable to start college until September 2023. For many of this group, this would mean a whole year out of education.

HWR created and organised a Summer School for this cohort, convening meetings with local partners to create a broad programme of activities to support the academic and emotional needs of the young people.

Many thanks to the following partners for supporting this Summer School initiative:

Many of the external organisations involved in the Summer School, and the HWR volunteers who supported every activity, commented very positively on the attitude and approach of the group. They changed the hearts and minds of everyone they met.

The HWR area team is proud of what was achieved for a very vulnerable cohort. The qualitative and quantitative evaluation feedback was positive and every young person who participated is now in Further Education at local colleges.

Bike scheme

Thanks to funding from Herts Community Foundation, we were able to deliver 140 bikes, locks and helmets to refugees and asylum seekers. A real achievement. Our bike coordinator, Andy Brocklehurst, saw this project through until it ended in November and has since retired. Our thanks to Andy for this. We have recruited a new volunteer who is undertaking training so that he can service bikes. The Herts

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Disability Sports Foundation has also worked with us in servicing and delivering bikes. We are grateful to Annabel Kirk who took over the administration and some of the coordination for this project and to a group of Welwyn Hatfield County Councillors who funded bike stands and locks through their locality budgets.

Working with other organisations

Herts Welcomes Refugees works collaboratively with many organisations to provide support to refugees and asylum seekers. As our offering develops, so do relationships with others.

We are recognised as an effective force for supporting refugees and asylum seekers. This is demonstrated by our participation in a number of groups and meetings at local, county and regional level. We find that we are increasingly consulted by others on the development of support they are trying to provide.

In terms of established relationships, we continue to work closely with:

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Our new partners include:

Funding

We are extremely grateful to the churches, organisations and individuals who have donated funds to us this past year. We would like to thank everyone for their contributions to our Warm Welcome appeal.

It was a year of hardship and we were able to do a lot to help refugees and asylum seekers thanks to the HCC Financial Hardship fund which we received through Herts Community Foundation. Through this we were able to help over 500 individuals, both refugees and particularly the children living in the asylum hotels with shoes and school clothes. Most recently we have received short term funding for our volunteer coordinator post to start in January 2024. We continued to receive invaluable support from the humanitarian arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints towards school uniforms and we are most grateful for their contribution. Redmill Solutions nominated us as their charity of the year and jointly with them we were able to distribute Eid gifts to families with children. We worked with several Rotary Clubs across the county to support newly resettled families. Thanks to Sue Johnson who wrote bids for us last year and with her help, we were successful with a grant from the Hilden Charitable Fund and Herts Community Foundation towards our administrative costs.

We were able to continue with the Arabic school thanks to a further grant from Cosaraf who also provided us with dates for families during Ramadan.

Evaluating our work and showing the impact

We are very grateful to Stephanie Cash who has been working with us for the past year to look at the best way of evaluating the services we offer.

We introduced a range of methods to gather this data. These include using qualitative methods through the gathering of case studies from those we support and our volunteers, which provides rich evidence of the impact of the charity on individuals. We also introduced some quantitative tools to gather numerical data on the performance of the learners in their English classes and through their 1-1 English sessions. All this data was included in the final report to the Lottery Fund. Click here to read the report.

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The rapid increase in people needing our support during 2023 meant that the charity had to look for a more robust way of collecting, managing, analysing and reporting data on what we do and who we support. This will help us to demonstrate our impact to funders, to share best practice across the county and to celebrate all the amazing work that volunteers do every day.

In September, Dacorum piloted the use of Monday.com to capture support provided by volunteers. Volunteers add information about activities via a simple web form which is collected centrally in a secure database. By the end of 2023, the system was being used by volunteers in Dacorum and by volunteers supporting a hotel in Welwyn Garden City. The plan is to roll out across the County by summer 2024.

Grateful thanks to Marcus Karia for researching software options and developing the HWR system, and the Dacorum Area Convenor Team for championing this initiative.

Here is a snapshot of volunteer support in Dacorum during December:

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----- Start of picture text -----
Name Type of Support Offered Volunteer
Hours
Childcare to support parents in Childrens' wellbeing 2
ESOL classes
Care and play for children of Childrens' wellbeing 3
asylum seekers while parents
attend ESOL classes
Shopping, transport and facilitation Cooking 20
of cooking session
Drop-in session ESOL/Language Support 18
ESOL children's lesson ESOL/Language Support 2
ESOL lesson on making ESOL/Language Support 3
appointments
Befriending arrangements ESOL/Language Support 1
Ordering and collecting goods Goods - Sourcing and 3
from Goods For Good Providing
Organising storage unit Goods - Sourcing and 3
Providing
----- End of picture text -----

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----- Start of picture text -----
Management Meeting HWR - Internal Meetings 26
Volunteer lunch HWR - Internal Meetings 7
Testimony project Legal 5
Drop-in session Listening and Advice 2
Advice and support Listening and Advice 5
Drop in session Listening and Advice 2.5
School admissions support Schools Support 1
Meeting with HCC/DBC re Positive Working with Other 7
Move On Planning Agencies
Refugee Council Meeting Working with Other 5
Agencies
Support for Afghan women's Working with Other 5
group Agencies
SMSG meeting Working with Other 1
Agencies
121.5
Totals hours
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Safeguarding

We take safeguarding of both those we support and our volunteers very seriously. We are still part of Thirtyone:eight. One of our objectives for this year relates to safeguarding. We are making good progress with the review of our policies and procedures and will then move onto increasing awareness amongst our volunteers. Our new Safeguarding Lead, Lucile Bartolaso-Scarlett will be ensuring we adhere to best practices.

Communications

We recognise the need to raise the profile of Herts Welcomes Refugees in order to raise awareness of the situation of asylum seekers and refugees, to encourage donations and to recruit more volunteers.

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Helen Singer took over social media from Lauren Frankel in January. Lauren was a hard act to follow but gave a very helpful handover to Helen who has also been mentored by Naomi Mellor.

We are extremely grateful to Helen, who has transformed our social media platform by her posts on the charity’s weekly activities and her work is certainly bringing HWR to life on social media. Our website now has a link to our Instagram account so that visitors to our site can see the broad range of work our volunteers undertake.

Our Facebook page followers grew from 200 to 360, Twitter from 300 to 430 and we have also set up a Threads account. Our Instagram account has over 240 followers.

The Twitter post with the most engagement - and over 6.8 thousand impressions - related to colouring books distributed to asylum seekers in North Hertfordshire. This was designed by cartoonists in response to the demand from the then Immigration Minister that cartoons in an immigration facility should be painted over.

Website and enquiries

We have changed our website address to www.hertswelcomes.org.uk to better reflect our work. We are very grateful to Adam Ahmed-Keyte for making the transition happen. We will be changing our email addresses to reflect our new domain.

During 2023 the HWR website had just over ten thousand unique visits and over twenty five thousand page views, slightly up from the same period in 2022.

Moving feedback from refugees and asylum seekers has been added to a new page on the website, along with more volunteer and refugee stories particularly for Refugee Week and Volunteer Week.

The website has a new fundraising page for the Warm Welcome Fundraising Appeal which has raised over £3,000 of unrestricted funding. Thanks to Helen Singer, Kate Scott and Jane Collis for their help with this.

Our contact line received 200 enquiries over the last year. Over three quarters of these were in relation to asylum seekers, many of them contacting us directly, but we also received referrals from a broad range of partner organisations including the NHS, Herts County Council, local schools and other charities.

Newsletter

Mark Kendall continues to manage our Mailchimp list of members and supporters who receive our newsletter.

We are very grateful to have a comms professional, Anna Cotton, to write the newsletter and contribute to the work of the team. Anna has made the newsletters really engaging and visual and they have had a good response.

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Raising the profile of Herts Welcomes Refugees has been helped by volunteers getting letters in the local and national press. In addition Joyce Farnsworth gave an inspiring interview on BBC 3CR about the art club run at one of the hotels. The art work has also been donated so that it can be used to create charity greetings cards at https://www.dontsendmeacard.com/ecards/charities/herts-welcomes-refugees

Have we met our objectives for the year?

Our objectives for 2023 were:

How did we do? We have described in this report how we have worked toward achieving our objectives . In summary :

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appropriate work placements. We were very grateful to Redmill Solutions for providing a placement for an Afghan postgraduate student.

Given the growth of our work over the year, we have also been exploring what changes are needed in terms of posts to make the charity sustainable. We will be looking to apply to the Community Lottery and other organisations to increase our paid posts.

Our priorities for 2024

1. Work to increase the sustainability of the Charity including:

2. Work to increase Diversity and Inclusion throughout the Charity including:

3. To continue to support refugees and asylum seekers, whilst responding to changing circumstances, working with our partners including:

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4. To develop our volunteer workforce including:

5. To establish robust methods to evaluate the impact of the Charity including:

On behalf of Herts Welcomes Refugees we would like to thank all our wonderful volunteers and others who have supported the charity during 2023.

Treasurer’s Report

In 2023 HWR saw two significant changes in its financial activity. Our payments in support of asylum seekers in temporary accommodation grew considerably as a proportion of our total charitable payments, to the same level as our support for families, and our salary costs increased as for the first time we had two part-time posts for the full year. Our overall payments for the year were £96,612 (2022: £96,310), with charitable payments of £61,678 (2022: £72,529) and core salary and related costs of £31,295 (2022: £21,884.)

Our receipts for the year were £70,679, down from £106,188 in 2022. In the restricted funds, we used up the significant balance carried forward from 2022, supplemented by £27,578 in new restricted grants. The balance of restricted funds remaining at year-end was significantly lower than in 2022, at £9,875 (2022: £40,415.) However, in 2023 we saw a significant increase in unrestricted donations and grants to £41,087 (2022: £24,724.)

The year saw a further increase in volunteer activity, particularly in support of asylum seekers, much of which does not involve charitable payments and is not reflected in our financial results except by the increase in the cost of volunteer coordination and administration. We rely on the time, effort and expertise given so generously by our volunteers, including the management group. This generosity is fundamental to the charity’s character and operations, and we don’t believe it is appropriate to assign a monetary value to it for the purposes of the accounts.

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Support from the broader community is also fundamental to HWR, both from our members and registered supporters and from the general public. This includes significant financial support, and we would particularly like to thank all those who have contributed to our appeals and donated so generously in 2023. We receive many direct individual donations as well as donations from congregations and members of community organisations and contributions through fundraising events. This generosity has allowed us to finish the year with slightly increased unrestricted reserves: excluding the unrestricted grant received for salary costs, unrestricted reserves at the end of the year were £27,148 (2022; £24,794.)

2023 Payments

c) Charitable payments (64% of total payments)

We are very grateful to all the organisations and individual donors who have provided funds for 2023 to support our charitable payments:

b) Payments for volunteer coordination and administrative support, including salaries and related

costs (32% of total payments)

These core costs were funded in 2023 principally from three grants, and we are grateful to these institutions for their support:

The volunteer coordinator and administrator are employed through Community Development Agency Hertfordshire, and we maintain a reserve with CDA for this purpose.

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c) General administration (4% of total payments)

General administration and governance costs were £3,639 in 2023 (2022: £1,897). The increase reflects higher direct costs as a result of our growth as well as some website charges from prior years. It also includes the cost of the AGM which we were able to hold as a live meeting with a strong social element after the virtual meetings during the pandemic. We are very grateful for the time and effort given so generously by the unpaid volunteers in our management group.

Reserves Policy

Our policy is to have a minimum level of available reserves equal to three months’ operating costs for the charity.

The Annual Accounts for 2023 and the Examiner’s letter are attached. We are grateful as ever to Geoff Harper, our examiner, for all his support and professional expertise.

On behalf of all the trustees of Herts Welcomes Refugees we would like to thank you all for your continued support.

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Irene Austin Chair Adrian Ball, Treasurer

25[th] March 2024

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CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Independent examiner's report on the accounts Section A Independent ExamineVs Report Report to the trusteesl membors of Herts W8lcom8s Refugees On accounts for the year ended 31* December 2023 Charity no (if any 1172687 Set out on pag•s 1103 I report to the Iruslees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity ("the Trust.) for the year ended Re8ponslbllltlo8 and As the charity trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation basls of report of the accounls in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 {"the Act.). I report in fespect of my examination of the Trust's accounts carried OLrt under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in Carrying out my examination, I have followed the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5llbl of the Act. I have completed my examination. I confim that no material matters have come to my attention in Connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that in, any material ￿Spect.. accounting records were nol kept In accordance with section 130 of the Act or the accounts do not accord with the accounting record8 Independent examiner'8 Statsment I have no concems and have come across no other matter8 in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in order to enable proFer understanding of the accounts to be reached. Slgned: Dato: 1910312024 Nama: Geoffrey Harper Relevant profo8slonal quallflcatlonls) or body {11 any).. Retired Chartered Accountant AddreM: 14 Church Street Guilden Mord6n Herts. SG8 OJD Section B Disclosure Only complete if the examiner needs to highlight matters of concem (see CC32, Independent examination of charity a¢￿UnIs.. directions and guidance for examiners). IER Octobor 2018

Herts Welcomes Refugees

Receipts and payments accounts for the period 1 January to 31 December 2023

Receipts
Private donations
Charitable trusts and other organisations
Contract and other
Total receipts
Payments
Note 1
Charitable payments
Note 2
Volunteer coordination and administrative support,
including salaries and related costs
Note 3
General administration
Total payments
Cash funds
Net receipts/ (payments)
Transfers between funds
Payments from CDA
Cash funds at 1 Jan 2023
Note 4
Cash funds at 31 December 2023		 Unrestricted funds
26,089
14,998
2,014
43,101
23,800
9,088
3,639
36,527
6,574
(1,967)
24,794
29,401		 £
Restricted funds
3,748
21,330
2,500
27,578
37,878
22,207
60,085
(32,507)
1,967
40,415
9,875		 Total 2023
29,837
36,328
4,514
70,679
61,678
31,295
3,639
96,612
(25,933)
65,209
39,276		 Total 2022
22,084
75,069
9,035
106,188
72,529
21,884
1,897
96,310
9,878
(877)
56,208
65,209
Statement of assets and liabilities at the end
Cash funds
Cash at bank
Balance at CDA
Total cash funds
Other monetary assets
Gift aid due
Signed:
Irene Austin
Adrian Ball
Chair
Treasurer
25/03/2024		 of the period
Unrestricted funds
29,401
29,401
128		 £
Restricted funds
8,232
1,643
9,875		 Total 2023
37,633
1,643
39,276		 Total 2022
63,566
1,643
65,209

Note 1 Charitable payments from all funds by category

Category
Financial support
Bike scheme
Festival gifts
Activities
Clothing
TV and licences
Phones
Arabic school
Household goods and furniture
Transport
Computers
Support for asylum seeker applications
Volunteer mileage
Sports
Educational support
Driving lessons
Other
Total		 £
2023
11,978
10,507
7,270
6,398
5,578
4,903
3,588
3,257
2,973
1,693
1,373
908
549
289
214
100
100
61,678		 2022
7,631
2,271
8,329
6,393
8,230
8,042
7,016
2,100
6,738
3,052
5,925
1,646
2,023
793
1,300
1,040
72,529

Note 2 Volunteer coordination and administration

Payments for volunteer coordinator, administrator and related activities

Category
Payments to CDA for salaries and related costs
DBS costs
Training
Travel
Utilities
Office equipment and supplies
Total		 £
2023
28,700
885
624
577
373
136
31,295		 2022
18,750
920
1,344
162
317
391
21,884

Note 3 General administration

General administration costs from Unrestricted funds

Category
Website and publications
2023
Website and publications
prior years
Insurance
Professional fees
Other
Office equipment and supplies
Subscriptions and courses
Safeguarding membership
Cost of goods for sale
Total		 £
2023
457
747
707
500
444
369
270
145
3,639		 2022
95
490
480
20
474
146
129
63
1,897

Note 4

Table of restricted funds, designated unrestricted funds and CDA reserve

Restricted funds for core costs
Postcode Lottery Fund
National Lottery Community Fund
Volunteer Coordinator Legacy
Total restricted funds for core costs
Restricted funds for charitable payments
Cosaraf Arabic school
Herts Mind project
HCC locality bike scheme
HWR Ukraine appeal
Library
Redmill Solutions Education Fund
HCF Hardship Support
HCF Life Chances Bike scheme
Redmill Solutions Eid Festival gifts
Church of Latter Day Saints
HWR Asylum seeker appeal
HWR uniforms appeal
National Lottery Community Fund
Redmill Xmas 2022
Volunteer Coordinator Legacy
Total restricted funds for charitable payments
Total all restricted funds
Designated unrestricted funds
Hilden Charitable Fund
HWR Warm Welcome appeal
Total designated unrestricted funds		 £
Opening balance
Receipts
Payments
Net
Transfer
Closing balance
16,757
(13,336)
3,421
3,421
8,470
(8,731)
(261)
261
-
140
(140)
-
25,367
(22,207)
3,161
261
3,421
164
3,831
(3,258)
737
737
3,750
(2,148)
1,602
1,602
2,500
(2,050)
450
450
1,622
270
(495)
1,397
1,397
517
517
517
64
64
44
108
10,000
(10,068)
(68)
68
-
8,003
(8,028)
(25)
25
-
3,900
(5,440)
(1,540)
1,540
-
1,707
2,544
(4,277)
(26)
26
-
1,018
60
(1,085)
(7)
7
-
723
(727)
(4)
4
-
238
(238)
-
52
(44)
8
(8)
-
20
(20)
-
13,405
27,578
(37,878)
3,105
1,706
4,811
38,772
27,578
(60,085)
6,266
1,967
8,232
7,000
(4,747)
2,253
2,253
2,770
(560)
2,210
2,210
9,770
(5,307)
4,463
4,463

Designated unrestricted funds are included in the total Unrestricted funds at 31 December of £29,401

CDA reserve: the balance held with CDA for payroll management at 31 December 2023 was £1,643 (2022: £1,643)