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2022-06-30-accounts

NATIONAL PARK CITY FOUNDATION

ANNUAL REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 JUNE 2022 Registered Charity number 1173267 Charitable Incorporated Organisation

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ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION

Registered Name: National Park City Foundation, also known as National Park City (NPC) and London National Park City (LNPC)

Registered Charity number 1173267

Contact details: Email hello@nationalparkcity.org or visit ww.nationalparkcity.org

Trustees holding office during the year:

Luis Alvarado Martinez (from 16 June 2022)

Alison Barnes

Emily Brennan (Chair from 16 June 2022)

David Cope

Joanna de Jong (from 16 June 2022)

Paul de Zylva (Chair, retired on 16 June 2022)

Claire Eagle (from 16 June 2022)

Eilish Kavanagh (Treasurer)

Emily Hamilton Lucy Livesley (from 16 June 2022)

Angela McDermott Melissa Miners (from 16 June 2022) Ben Smith (retired on 16 June 2022)

Tim Webb

Registered office: c/o Geovation, Sutton Yard, 4[th ] Floor, 65 Goswell Road, London EC1V 4EN

Bank: CAF Bank Limited, 25 Kings Hill Avenue, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent, ME19 4JQ

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STRUCTURE AND GOVERNANCE

Governance and Management

The National Park City Foundation is registered as a charitable incorporated organisation, under a constitution which governs its activities.

Much of the year was still affected by COVID-19. The Board of Trustees anticipated and monitored rules and restrictions to assess what could be achieved to ensure safety and legal compliance with lockdown rules, as well as supporting our staff and volunteers during this difficult time. We remain conscious that the pandemic is still here, even if restrictions have been lifted and we continue to adapt our activities accordingly.

Trustees met five times during the year to June 2022 (including our first face-to-face meeting since before the pandemic started) to review and plan work. During the year Paul de Zylva and Ben Smith retired from the Board at the end of their terms. The Trustees are immensely grateful to Ben and Paul for their long-standing contribution to the charity and our cause, especially as Paul chaired the Board of Trustees and helped steer the charity through the worst stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The charity is grateful to all its Trustees, past and present, for their contribution and support.

This year marked a significant moment as we employed an Executive Director. Mark Cridge joined the National Park City Foundation in June 2022 to take operational leadership of the charity. The Trustees are delighted to welcome Mark to the team. Mark joins the Foundation’s existing two part-time Ranger Programme Managers, who continue to develop the unique London National Park City Rangers Programme, having expanded the number of volunteer Rangers to 150.

New fundraising has been challenging during the pandemic, however with our expanded team we have confidence in future fundraising prospects, and are optimistic about continuing to grow our staff and wider volunteer team. As a grass-roots organisation, we will always rely on the goodwill and enthusiasm of volunteers to deliver many of our successes. We are immensely grateful to all of them, in all the roles they play.

During the year we further increased our focus on diversity and inclusion. The National Park City Foundation strives to be an anti-racist organisation. At the end of the year we committed to submit our staff and Trustee diversity data to the RACE Report, an Esmée Fairbairn funded collaboration designed to address the under-representation of minority ethic people in the environmental sector. We now record full diversity data for our staff, Trustees and volunteer Rangers to help us identify where we need to improve how we represent the communities we serve.

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Charitable Objectives

The objects of the Foundation are:

  1. To promote for the benefit of the public the conservation, protection and improvement of the physical and natural environment of Greater London having aesthetic, architectural, historic, scientific or educational interest;

  2. To advance the education of the public in the conservation, protection and improvement of the physical and natural environment of Greater London;

  3. To advance the education of the public in the heritage and culture of Greater London;

  4. To promote for the benefit of the inhabitants of Greater London the provision of facilities for recreation or other leisure time occupation for the public at large in the interests of social welfare and with the object of improving the condition of life of the said inhabitants; and

  5. To promote for the benefit of the public the conservation, protection and improvement of the physical and natural environment of other cities and urban centres by promoting the National Park City learnings, practice and status to other cities.

Public benefit statement

The charity Trustees have complied with their duty to have due regard to the guidance on public benefit published by the Charity Commission in exercising their powers or duties. The Trustees also ensure the programme of activities is always in line with the charity’s objectives and aims.

Risk Statement

The Trustees have, taking into account guidance available from the Charity Commission, reviewed the risks faced by the Foundation and have put in place policies and procedures to address and mitigate those risks to an acceptable level.

Given the ongoing uncertainties from the pandemic, cost of living and the energy crises, the Trustees consider the main risk to the charity to be the ability to raise funds to develop its role, capacity and future activities. As a result, Trustees have focussed on monitoring the fundraising scene and identifying fundraising opportunities and boosting our prospects of further successful fundraising.

The charity continues to have few overheads in terms of physical office and related costs.

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TRUSTEE’S REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 JUNE 2022

The Trustees present their report and the financial statements for the year ended 30 June 2022.

Aims

The Foundation aims to bring the idea of National Park Cities (NPCs) to life, starting in London, with the ambition to extend this across the UK and internationally, by:

  1. Providing thought and practical leadership;

  2. Coordinating and developing the vision of NPCs;

  3. Galvanising the London National Park City movement;

  4. Growing a partnership of organisations and interests in support of NPCs

  5. Leading inspiring campaigns;

  6. Supporting activities that contribute towards National Park City aims; and

  7. Fundraising.

Principal activities

During the year to 30 June 2022 the Foundation focused on:

  1. Supporting Adelaide in their bid to become a National Park City, working closely with World Urban Parks and Salzburg Global Seminar;

  2. Reviewing Trustee skills and succession planning, culminating in recruiting five new Trustees plus one young person as an observer to the Board;

  3. Recruiting our first Executive Director for the National Park City Foundation;

  4. Recruiting 40 new volunteer Rangers in London, developing the Ranger Programme and delivering activities with Rangers across the London boroughs;

  5. Developing funding applications to support the growth of our impact; and

  6. Collaborating with other London, UK and international organisations to further explore and promote the role of National Park Cities in inspiring urban improvement.

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Spreading the National Park City movement around the world

We are delighted that Adelaide was invited to become the world’s second National Park City in December 2021. Green Adelaide coordinated the application process and acknowledged the Kaurna people as the Traditional Owners of the lands and waters of the Adelaide region. The cultural, spiritual, physical and emotional connection of the Kaurna Miyurna hold with their land, waters and community were acknowledged and respected, and the Elders past, present and emerging were respected by Green Adelaide as they committed to working in partnership with the First Peoples of South Australia to take a leading role in caring for their Country.

The National Park City Foundation, along with our partners World Urban Parks and Salzburg Global Seminar continue to work towards our goal of 25 National Park Cities by 2025 and are working with people from cities around the world to support their local campaigns to join the family of National Park Cities. After the publication of the National Park City Journey Book in July 2021, we promoted the 10 steps, and 23 assessed criteria, to becoming a National Park City with emerging campaigns in 30 cities around the world. Regular discussions are held with all campaigns to support their journeys, with highly active international campaigns in Breda – Netherlands, Galway – Ireland, and Chattanooga – USA. During this year, we supported the publication of the Journey Book in Japanese, and are progressing its translation into more languages to make it as accessible as possible to campaigns around the world.

We have continued our close collaboration with people in several UK cities through the year, and are particularly pleased to see the progress being made in Glasgow, Cardiff and Southampton’s campaigns, among others.

Making the London National Park City a success

This success in our global endeavours has been matched in our progress in London. Our third round of recruitment of volunteer Rangers successfully led to 40 more people stepping forward to join our programme, bringing the total volunteer Rangers to 150 across all London boroughs. We are grateful to Timberland, Natural England and the VF Foundation for their support for this programme during the year.

Our Rangers form the core of our work, drawn from the diverse local communities of London, our Rangers act as catalysts for change in each neighbourhood. They work in collaboration with our friends and partners to lead grassroots activities and projects, and help celebrate the work of the thousands of active organisations and citizens across London. They directly lead walks, workshops, planting, and rewilding activity across London, and we plan to significantly expand the scope of this work over the coming months.

As part of the Rangers programme throughout the past year, we delivered and been involved in a wide range of activities, collaborations and events both online and offline. Our role in bringing people together to explore and discover their London National Park City continued during the year, with a cautious switching from online events during Covid lockdowns to physical gatherings, largely in outdoor spaces.

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In July we hosted a series of Ranger-led events across London which ranged from nature walks and foraging expeditions, to nature illustrations, yoga and dancing in nature to celebrate our 2nd anniversary which engaged hundreds of people. In October we were involved in Half-Earth Day organised by E.O. Wilson in partnership with Sir David Attenborough, where we ran a session alongside Kew Gardens, the Natural History Museum and Eden Project. This event gave London National Park City exposure to a lot of influential people and organisations, as well as thousands of people across the world. Throughout autumn we’ve also been involved with Timberland’s Build Forward campaign, our work culminating with a creative workshop delivered by five Rangers from multidisciplinary backgrounds, to participants from across Europe who won a competition run by Timberland.

In April, we created a VR experience in nature with artist Joy Crooks, led by Ranger Katie, who runs a forest school and is a forest bathing practitioner. Our partnership also enabled Timberland to work with a youth community called Inspire, with whom we ran a large community event at the end of April in Elephant and Castle, taking some of these young people out in nature for the first time in their lives.

With the support of Right Thing Media we were able to offer small grants for Ranger led activities. As this proved successful, we aim to continue providing small grants for our Rangers as it's a proven way to increase their impact across the city. The activities included:

Through a funding partnership with Natural England, we led the delivery of Nature Connects Brent, a multi-partner project to support local communities to engage with nature on their doorsteps. With a series of events held in the borough across five months, designed to engage with all corners of the community, we were delighted to welcome over 750 participants. We hope this project can be scaled up and replicated across multiple boroughs in the future.

We continued our Schools Network programme which brings together over 40 organisations supporting London's schools and educators, to help all of London's children. We support a community of schools, committed to supporting our goal of connecting 100% of London’s children to nature. We are working with Learning Through Landscapes who run Outdoor Classroom Day in the UK, on an expanded programme of Teachmeets and Events, showing how all sorts of lessons can take place outside for all subjects.

In April we held a pilot London National Park City Assembly in Islington, one of the poorest local authority areas in the country for access to high quality green space. Funded by Natural England, this was a pilot for a new approach to enable local citizens to steer discussions around greener, healthier and wilder neighbourhoods, and make proposals to make life better in their urban area. Islington Borough Council took the proposals into their wider Greener Together programme.

The NPC Development Forum is a collaborative space aiming to get members to fully integrate independent projects into the National Park City concept; how their work connects across different

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developers’ land. Our aims are to accelerate the transformation of London National Park City’s physical green infrastructure, share knowledge to provide vital habitats for nature, play spaces for children, climate adaptation benefits and boosting the health and wellbeing of our communities. Five of these developers have put forward pioneer demonstrator projects, with further demonstrator projects to be established over the coming months.

Looking forward with optimism

At the end of the reporting year, with our newly recruited Executive Director and new Trustees, we started planning ahead for future developments across the National Park City Foundation and we look forward to reporting on progress in next year’s report.

The year ahead will see us focus on further enhancing our Rangers community, establishing new partnerships and funding to support our programmatic work, celebrate and support the varied and exciting activities already happening across our National Park Cities, directly support more National Park Cities within the UK, and support more emerging cities around the world to become National Park Cities.

Our supporters

Our thanks goes to:

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FINANCIAL REVIEW

The Foundation’s financial report for the year to 30 June 2022 is on Page 11. The financial statements comply with current statutory requirements and the requirements of the Constitution.

Funding Sources

The Trustees thank all funders and donors for their support and generosity.

This year we received £74,271 (2020/21 £155,532) of which £31,471 were restricted grants.

Expenditure

During the year, the main costs were running the Ranger Programme in London.

Total expenditure in the year was £90,399 (202/21 £61,964) of which £80,430 (2020/21 £52,453) was spent on the Ranger programme, supported by grants from Natural England and the VF Foundation as well as ongoing support from Timberland.

Expenditure has increased as restrictions on face-to-face events and activities ended. Trustees are confident that other sources of funding will be found to continue the programme uninterrupted.

Other expenditure during the year included the recruitment of the Executive Director who joined in June 2022, and general IT and administration costs.

Reserves

The fund balance on 30 June 2022 was £145,293 all of which was unrestricted (2020/21 £161,422, of which £126,319 was unrestricted). A reserves policy will be set to enable expansion and long term sustainability once the new Executive Director is able to set out future plans. The unrestricted reserves at the end of the year represented 14 months of committed expenditure, and the Trustees aim to hold 6 months of committed expenditure in unrestricted reserves..

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Independent Examiner's Report to the trustees of the National Park City Foundation

I report to the charity trustees on my examination of the accounts of the charity for the year ended 30 June 2022.

Respective responsibilities of trustees and examiner

As the charity’s trustees of National Park City Foundation, you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (‘the Act’).

Having satisfied myself that the accounts of National Park City Foundation are not required to be audited under Part 16 of the 2006 Act, I report in respect of my examination of your charity’s accounts as carried out under section 145 of the Charities Act 2011 (‘the 2011 Act’). In carrying out my examination I have followed the Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the 2011 Act.

Independent examiner’s statement

Since the National Park City Foundation gross income is more than £25,000 your examiner needs to be a member of a body listed in section 145 of the 2011 Act. I confirm that I am a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, which is one of the listed bodies.

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe:

  1. accounting records were not kept in respect of the National Park City Foundation as required by section 130 of the Act; or

  2. 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.

Sarah Welsh

Date 22 October 2022

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NATIONAL PARK CITY FOUNDATION

Receipts and Payments for the 12 months to 30 June 2022

30 June 2022 30 June 2021
Restricted Unrestricted Total Total
£ £ £ £
Receipts:
Grants 31,471 20,827 52,298 52,907
Donations 0 21,959 21,959 102,626
Interest 0 13 13 0
31,471 42,800 74,271 155,532
Payments:
Staff costs 35,592 14,546 50,138 50,438
Project costs 0 500 500 5,330
Events & creative 25,713 9,154 34,867 898
Admin & IT costs 1,663 3,227 4,890 5,298
Volunteer expenses 0 4 4 0
Contribution to core 3,606 (3,606) 0 0
66,573 23,826 90,399 61,964
Net Receipts/(Payments) (35,102) 18,974 (16,128) 93,568
B/Fwd funds 35,102 126,319 161,421 67,853
C/Fwd funds 0 145,293 145,293 161,421
Statement of Assets and Liabilities at 30 June 2022
30 June 2022 30 June 2021
Restricted Unrestricted Total Total
£ £ £ £
Cash Funds:
CAF Bank 0 143,602 143,602 159,736
PayPal 0 1,692 1,692 1,686
Total cash 0 145,293 145,293 161,422
Total Assets 0 145,293 145,293 161,422
Liabilities: 0 0 0 0
Net Assets and Liabilities 0 145,293 145,293 161,422

The Trustees declare that they approved the Trustees Report on the 30th of September 2022. Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees:

Emily Brennan Eilish Kavanagh
Chair Treasurer

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