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2023-06-30-accounts

NATIONAL PARK CITY FOUNDATION

ANNUAL REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 JUNE 2023 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 nationalparkcity.org

Trustees holding office during the year:

Luis Alvarado Martinez

Alison Barnes

Emily Brennan (Interim Chair between 16[th] June and 30[th] November 2022)

David Cope

Joanna de Jong

Navdeep Singh Deol (Appointed as Chair from 1[st] December 2022)

Claire Eagle

Eilish Kavanagh (Treasurer)

Emily Hamilton

Lucy Livesley

Angela McDermott (retired 30[th] September 2022)

Melissa Miners

Tim Webb

Management:

Mark Cridge Executive Director

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.

The Trustee Board was expanded in 2022 to the maximum of 12 with the appointment of a new Chair in December 2022, Navdeep Singh Deol. We thank Emily Brennan for stepping in as Interim Chair between June and November 2022 and Angela McDermott for her service over the past 3 years.

This was a significant year of transition for the Foundation. The first full year with our Executive Director Mark Cridge in post; much of the year was spent establishing a new strategy and priorities for London National Park City, reassessing the mix of programmes and activities we intend to undertake and realigning our work in ways that will allow us to secure new funding and income.

Our two part-time Ranger Programme Managers, Ed and Floree, continue to support and enhance the impact of our Ranger community, which following a fourth round of recruitment has increased to 160 active volunteers drawn from, and operating within London’s diverse communities.

We secured new funding from new donors including Peter Bennett Foundation, Right Thing Media and King Baudouin Foundation, modestly increasing our income from the previous year. We did dip into our reserves through the year, however the important strategic and reframing work that has taken place has justified this important investment, and we move forward with a clear and diversified funding strategy with active bids and proposals submitted to a number of Foundations, Corporate Partners, and public institutions. We’re therefore confident that this will bear fruit in 2023-24 and beyond, allowing us to further grow our staff and volunteer team.

As a grass-roots movement, we continue to rely on the goodwill and enthusiasm of volunteers who lead our day to day activities. We are immensely grateful to all of them, in all the roles they play.

We’ve continued to enhance our focus on diversity and inclusion. The National Park City Foundation strives to be an actively anti-racist organisation. In the year we submitted our staff and Trustee diversity data to the RACE report, an Esmée Fairbairn funded collaboration designed to address the under-representation of minority ethnic people in the environmental sector.

We record full diversity data for our staff, Trustees and volunteer Rangers. Within our Ranger community 8.2% identify as having a disability, 18.6% identify as LGBTIQ+, 17.0% come from a lower socio-economic background, 12 religion/faith groups and 25 ethnic communities are represented.

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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 taken 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 economic, cost of living and 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 diversifying and identifying new approaches to fundraising and income generation to boost 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 2023

The Trustees present their report and the financial statements for the year ended 30 June 2023.

Aims

The National Park City Foundation aims to popularise the concept of National Park Cities (NPCs) amongst citizens of cities and urban areas around the world, inspiring grassroots movements to form and work with communities, governments, and businesses to make more cities greener, healthier and wilder. Building on the success of London and Adelaide as the first two National Park Cities the Foundation has the ambition to realise more National Park Cities in the UK and internationally, by:

  1. Directly supporting London National Park City as a viable long-term grassroots movement making London greener, healthier and wilder.

  2. Supporting a growing community of active Rangers in every London Borough.

  3. Creating the conditions for self-sustaining grassroots movement building within London National Park City.

  4. Supporting the delivery of 25 National Park Cities around the world by 2025.

  5. Securing long-term sustainable funding from a diverse set of income streams.

  6. Ensuring effective operation of National Park City Foundation, supporting the development of Staff, Trustees and Volunteers.

Principal activities

During the year to 30 June 2023 the Foundation focused on:

  1. Inspiring Londoners to connect with and care for urban nature within their local communities, understanding the value and benefits of nature connection.

  2. Expanding the scale, reach and diversity of our Ranger community.

  3. Enhancing the ability of Rangers to develop and deliver Ranger-led projects within local communities.

  4. Developing and enhancing the skills and confidence of Rangers to support change within their local communities.

  5. Enabling whole communities to take practical climate and biodiversity action together within their neighbourhoods.

  6. Fundraising to support the above activities and to support Ranger led activities.

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Making London National Park greener, healthier and wilder

London National Park City is a primary project of the National Park City Foundation. Our aim is to support the growth and development of London National Park City for everyone making London greener, healthier and wilder.

We have formed our new strategy for London around three open and participatory programmes:

PLACEMAKING: Showcasing London as the world’s first National Park City via London wide campaigns and movement building activity.

RANGERS: Supporting our volunteers to lead outdoor activities, nature engagement, climate actions, and health and wellbeing activities in their communities.

NEIGHBOURHOODS: Working collaboratively with London Boroughs to connect individuals, families, educators, community leaders, campaigners, cultural and arts groups with urban nature.

Our intent is to inspire and motivate more people to take practical climate and biodiversity action in their own communities, by sharing stories illustrating the people, places and activities making London National Park City..

We invested significant effort in establishing a sustainable programme of external communication, targeting increased awareness that London is the world’s first National Park City, and telling a greater variety of individual stories about what that means to Londoners day to day.

We put in place a CRM system, updated all public facing websites, and launched our own learning network using Mighty Networks online community and course-building software at community.nationalparkcity.org.

With the support of an inspiring group of current PhD and Masters students from a number of Universities, including Plymouth University, Exeter University, University College London, Royal College of Art, Sheffield University, and other further afield institutions we’ve established our volunteer Research and Learning group. As part of their studies, they monitor and assess the work of London National Park City and are supporting us in publishing original research and incorporating current best practices, policy and external research in how we carry out our day-to-day work. They will translate these findings into learning interventions to support broad community development.

We ran our most significant public awareness campaign ever over the summer – #DoLondonDifferently featured creative work celebrating over 40 grassroots organisations. Thanks to the generous support of JCDecaux who provided us with £575,000 equivalent media spend (half of which in this financial year), we ran a two-month digital outdoor campaign featuring grassroots groups, delivering over 35 million impressions on 96 high-profile billboard sites across the capital.

In the latter half of the year we worked closely with Hemingway Design and Team London Bridge on preparing for the inaugural In A Field By A Bridge festival which coincided with our 4th Anniversary in July 2023. Over 30,000 people attended, and we curated a host of public workshops, talks, walks and art activities hosted by our volunteer Rangers, and colleagues in many of the community groups we celebrated through our #DoLondonDifferently campaign.

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We completed our fourth round of recruitment which has brought the total number of volunteer Rangers to 160 across all London boroughs. We are grateful to Timberland and King Baudouin Foundation for their support for this programme during the year.

Our Rangers contributed extensively to our online community sharing events and activities they led, or attended. With the support of Right Thing Media we were able to offer small grants for a number of Ranger-led activities including:

We’ve begun to establish our Neighbourhoods programme, building new connections with London Boroughs, the Green Infrastructure team at the Greater London Authority and the Mayor’s office. This programme is intended to help communities come together to incorporate National Park City thinking at a local level in their streets and neighbourhoods. We’ve begun to create opportunities for support from new corporate partners, along with established community and environmental organisations.

We worked with the Glass-house Community Led Design and Open University to make use of their cross-pollination methodology for identifying and mapping community strengths and opportunities. This will be an important way of working for us with communities across London and fifteen of our Rangers attended our first cross-pollination training event in the spring. We intend to extend this training to at least a third of our Rangers in the coming months.

We’ve begun a new partnership with Phytology and Bethnal Green Nature Reserve which will establish ongoing collaboration with our Rangers at this beautiful and inspiring urban nature site in East London.

We took a pause on our Schools Network and Development Forum whilst we reconsider how best to support and extend these initiatives for the greatest benefit in the future.

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Spreading the National Park City movement around the world

Whilst we lead the London National Park City through the National Park City Foundation, our second primary role is supporting the growth and development of National Park Cities around the world. In December 2021 Adelaide, Australia became the world’s second National Park City. Coordinated by Green Adelaide they 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 in taking a leading role in caring for their Country.

The National Park City Foundation, has continued to evolve our movement with the direct support of our partners World Urban Parks and Salzburg Global Seminar as we work towards realising 25 National Park Cities by 2025.

Significant progress has been made this year by Breda – Netherlands, Glasgow – Scotland, Southampton – England, Chattanooga – USA, and a new addition with Rotterdam – Netherlands. All five cities will receive the status of Nominated National Park Cities having demonstrated sufficient momentum and widespread public support to become National Park Cities.

We’re putting in place a robust and diverse approach to fundraising for the year ahead to support our international movement building. We are working closely with Salzburg Global Seminar on the launch of a new emerging urban leaders programme for the year ahead.

Looking forward to our fifth year

The hard work improving our systems and refocusing our strategy should pay dividends as we enter the fifth year of London being a National Park City. We hope to see at least two if not three new cities joining Adelaide and London as official National Park Cities in the next 12 to 18-months, and many more progressing on their journey in the meantime.

In London we’ll focus on raising public awareness, establishing mutually beneficial partnerships across London to extend and complement the work of our staff and volunteers. An important task will be codifying how we work with partners in a formal Partnership Plan for London, reflecting the organisational principles used by rural National Parks in the UK.

For the next phase of our Rangers programme, we intend to prioritise recruitment and increase the number of Rangers from London's five most deprived local authorities by 25%. We’ll also launch an enhanced training programme and extend our partnerships to increase diversity of participation within our Ranger community.

We’ll work with each London Borough to identify priority communities and recruit volunteers who are already active, or with support could become more active; to ensure we reflect the diverse communities of London in becoming greener, healthier and wilder.

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Our supporters

Our thanks go to:

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FINANCIAL REVIEW

The Foundation’s financial report for the year to 30 June 2023 is on Page 12. 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 grants and donations of £86,440 (2021/22 £74,271) of which £28,394 (2021/22 £31,471) were restricted grants. Total income was £86,633.

Expenditure

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

Expenditure in the year was £152,319 (2021-22 £90,399) of which £70,563 (2021-22 £80,430) was spent on the Ranger programme, supported by donations and grants from Natural England and the King Baudouin Foundation as well as ongoing support from Timberland.

Trustees are confident other sources of funding will be found to continue the Ranger 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 2023 was £79,607 of which £70,936 was unrestricted (2021/2 £145,293, all of which was unrestricted).

Reserves Policy

A new reserves policy was adopted by the board in September 2022 which set out our policy to hold a minimum of unrestricted reserves equivalent to six months committed core expenditure.

At 30th June 2023, unrestricted funds were £70,936 which represented 6.4 months of unrestricted expenditure.

This policy will be reviewed annually.

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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 2023.

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 25 Sept 2023

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NATIONAL PARK CITY FOUNDATION

Receipts and Payments for the 12 months to 30 June 2023

Receipts:
Grants
Donations
Interest
Payments:
Salary costs
Project costs
Events & materials
Admin & IT costs
Volunteer expenses
Contribution to core
Net Receipts/(Payments)
B/Fwd funds
C/Fwd funds		 Restricted
£
30 June 2023
Unrestricted
£
Total
£
28,394
-
28,394
58,046
58,046
-
193
193
28,394
58,239
86,633
17,327
92,242
109,568
2,285
15,227
17,512
-
13,332
13,332
111
11,796
11,907
-
-
-
-
-
-
19,723
132,597
152,319
8,671
(74,358)
(65,686)
0
145,293
145,293
8,671
70,935
79,607		 30 June 2022
Total
£
52,298
21,959
13
74,271
50,138
500
34,867
4,890
4
-
90,399
(16,128)
161,421
145,293

Statement of Assets and Liabilities at 30 June 2023

Cash Funds:
CAF Bank
PayPal
Total cash
Total Assets
Liabilities:
Net Assets and Liabilities		 30 June 2023
Restricted
Unrestricted
Total
£
£
£
8,671
70,915
79,586
0
21
21
8,671
70,936
79,607
8,671
70,936
79,607
0
0
0
8,671
70,936
79,607		 30 June 2022
Total
£
143,602
1,692
145,293
145,293
0
145,293

The Trustees declare that they approved the Trustees Report on the 14th September 2023. Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees:

Navdeep Singh Deol Eilish Kavanagh Chair Treasurer

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