## Trustees Annual Report 2024/2025 ## Bedford Street Community Company Ltd Bedford Street Community Company Limited (A company limited by guarantee) Financial Statements For the Year Ended 31 March 2025 Contents - Legal and Administrative Information - Report of the Management Committee - Statement of Financial Activities Balance Sheet Notes forming part of the financial statements. ## **Report of the Management Committee for the year ended 31 March 2025** The Management Committee presents its directors’ report and independently examined financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2025. ## **Reference and Administrative Information** Charity Name: Bedford Street Community Company Ltd. Charity registration number: 1177026. Company registration number: 06118581 Registered Office and operational address: Foryd Centre, Princes Street,Rhyl LL181LS. **Management Committee** – Ms Nicola Jones Chair, Ms Katie Davies Treasurer, Mr M Hughes Trustee, Ms H Walker Trustee. Accountants – Mr S. P. Kell Unit 7a, Lon Parcwr, Ruthin LL15 1NJ Our charity’s purposes as set out in the objects contained in the company’s memorandum of association are: ## **Our Aims and objectives** To further or benefit the residents of Rhyl and the surrounding area, without distinction of sex, sexual orientation, race or of political, religious or other opinions by associating together the said residents and the local authorities, voluntary and other organisations in a common effort to advance education and to provide facilities in the interests of social welfare for recreation and leisure time occupation with the objective of improving the conditions of life for the residents and The prevention and relief of poverty and financial hardship in Rhyl and the surrounding area, Our aims fully reflect the purposes that the charity was set up to further. ## **Ensuring our work delivers our aims.** We review our aims, objectives and activities each year. This review looks at what we achieved and the outcomes of our work in the previous 12 months. The review looks at the success of each key activity and the benefits they have brought to those groups of people we are set up to help. The review also helps us ensure our aim, objectives and activities remained focused on our stated purposes. We have referred to the guidance contained in the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit when reviewing our aim and objectives and in planning our future activities. In particular, the trustees consider how planned activities will contribute to the aims and objectives they have set. ## **How our activities deliver public benefit.** The focus of our work remains to provide benefit and money advice to the local community, to support clients with finding employment by providing advice, support and guidance with employment searches, applications and CVs, to offer good quality work experience and volunteering opportunities, to provide food support for those facing food insecurity, to provide a community transport and lunch club facility for our older clients and to have a community café that is a warm and welcoming social hub of the community. ## **Amount of persons using the centre.** From April 2024 to March2025, the number of persons accessing the centre has increased from 11,450 to 12,100. The increase appears to be due to the issues caused by the Cost of Living crisis which has caused a huge increase in demand for our services particularly benefits advice and food support and the significant increase in residents using our community café and community bakery. **Employment advice and training.** We have provided advice on employment and training to over 135 persons with most support being required with job applications and the preparation of CVs. We have delivered support to those seeking employment by providing regular updates on our website re new job listings and training courses and have been able to offer accredited training courses on Level 1 and 2 Food Hygiene, Allergen Awareness and Customer Service Level 1via our Community Bakery and Community Café. Over the last 12 months we have delivered 28 accredited qualifications within the bakery and community café. . ## **Benefits and Money Advice.** The demand for our Benefit and Welfare advisor services has grown significantly. Our advisor has been mainly helping clients with Personal Independence claims, Pension Credits, discretionary payments and personal grants and have several trained volunteers to deal with basic claims such as Universal Credit. Over this period we have provided support to over 1150 individuals and successfully claimed over £960,000 in benefits for local people. ## **Food Bank** Our last year from March 2024 to beginning of April 2025 has been extremely challenging for our food bank with referrals again up by 35%. People have been struggling due to loss of or reduction in income due the rise in the cost of living and increased energy and housing costs. A great deal of our resources have gone to continuing to support those residents in temporary accommodation, some of whom have been there for over 12 months. This has proved challenging as most are now living in local hotels where there are limited cooking options and many have only a kettle. Referrals are still on the increase and we now have at least 28 agencies referring their clients to us. At Christmas we secured funding to supply 120 Christmas Hampers to the local community and provided toys for 50 families. Referrals came from local councillors, older persons groups, social services, family support services and housing associations. Working with Denbighshire County Council, we have helped establish COGOG, a food network for the county which is helping us to coordinate supplies with other food agencies. We have had funding from this partnership to triple the amount of food we can receive from Fareshare which had radically increased the amount of food support that we can deliver to local residents. This funding has now finished and we have decided to purchase a smaller membership of Fareshare funded from our reserves. We have been successful with several small bids to COGOG for equipment for the bakery, food for the café and a pilot scheme for a community grocery. ## **Community Café.** Footfall in the café has increased and is up by approximately 10% from 2023/24. This may seem a small increase however we were already virtually at capacity. To combat the rise in food poverty and the increasing cost of living, we have continued the provision of our Lunch Club every Wednesday and are serving over 80 lunches– this is open to all and is widely used by families, older persons and those living in hostels and other temporary housing. We still offer our breakfast on Thursdays and Fridays and are now serving up to 100 people per day. In consultation with residents and service users we have increased the cost of our meals to £1.50. This does not seem to have had any impact on the numbers attending and is still affordable for the local community. The café is now open 4 days per week. Thanks to additional funding we are now able to offer a takeaway service on a Tuesday which benefits between 40 and 60 members of the local community each week. ## **Community Transport.** Funding was received to continue this project for 2024/25 and we hope that this will continue for the following year. The funding is for approximately £12,500 which pays the salary of a part time driver. The minimal charges applied fund the insurance, fuel and repairs of the vehicle. The number of journeys decreased to 5,200 in 2024/25 however the journeys were longer and brought in more revenue. We are expanding our partnerships with Social Services and the Local Health Board making more hospital journeys and have expanded the area we cover to include more parts of Prestatyn, Kinmel Bay, Dyserth, St Asaph and Rhuddlan. ## **Volunteers** We now have 31 volunteers who work at the centre/bakery on a regular basis. We have managed to recruit further additional new volunteers for reception, foodbank, community bakery and community café. We have a dedicated volunteer coordinator who focuses on recruitment and training which has helped to bolster the number of volunteers and to provide a comprehensive training programme. This year 3 of our volunteers have moved into employment. ## **Community Bakery** . This has been a very busy year for the bakery with every training day available filled with local residents, community groups, local schools and SEN educational establishments. We have offered taster days, community themed baking events and family days. We have been able to sell high quality, handmade products at affordable prices and donate any unsold items to our foodbank. We now provide support for over 45 organisations – and this year have worked with more young people with additional needs, people with mental health issues, veterans, care homes and refugee groups **Accounts** Accounts to March 31st 2025 are provided with this annual report. ## **Financial Review** The majority of monies received by the organisation is in the form of grant funding and is restricted funding. We received £76,500 from The National Community Lottery as funding for project manager, benefits adviser and other core costs, £12,500 for the salary of the Community Transport driver and running costs for the Community Vehicle and have received £20,000 from Principality building society towards the cost of the Bakery. The remaining funding comes in the form of smaller grants, many of which were directly related to providing services to deal with Cost of Living or food poverty issues. There has been an increase in the income generated by the Community Cafe and a slight increase in the income generated by Community Transport mainly due to the higher number and longer nature of journeys taken. ## **Investment Policy** Aside from retaining an amount in reserves each year, equivalent to 3 months running costs, most of the charity’s funds are to be spent in the short term so there are no funds for long term investment ## **Reserves Policy** The Charity has a reserve of £69,962 this year of which £48,000 is designated reserves to cover 3 months salaries, running costs, redundancy costs and any minor repair costs to building. Free reserves stand at £21,962 which will be used for any new projects or any of our charitable purposes. ## **Structure** The organisation is a charitable company limited by guarantee, incorporated on 20th February 2007 and registered as a charity on 8 6th February 2018. The company was established under a Memorandum of Association which established the objects and powers of the charitable company and is governed under its Articles of Association. In the event of the company being wound up members are required to contribute an amount not exceeding £1. ## **Recruitment and Appointment of Management Committee** The directors of the company are also charity trustees for the purposes of charity law and under the company’s Articles are known as members of the Management Committee. Under the requirements of the Memorandum and Articles of Association the members of the Management Committee are elected to serve for a period of three years after which they must be re-elected at the next Annual General Meeting. All member of the Management Committee give their time voluntarily and received no benefits from the charity. Any expenses reclaimed from the charity will be set out in the accounts. ## **Future Plans** The focus of our plans in the short term will be to concentrate specifically on finding funding for the centre. Many of the funders have now moved to invitation only grants and others have refined their criteria to deal with very specific target groups. Funding for organisations who provide support for a broad spectrum of the local community is becoming more difficult to obtain. This means that the Project Director is having to increase the number of bids submitted for smaller pots of funding. ## **Other** The Trustees would like to thank all the volunteers, without whom the Foryd Centre and Use Your Loaf Bakery would be unable to deliver such welcoming, caring and much needed services. Signed on behalf of the Board of Trustees 21/01/2025 Signed ……NICOLA JONES (CHAIRPERSON)……………………………….. Signed......FIONA DAVIES (PROJECT MANAGER)................................. Limit¢d Company acc￿ 25.1- B53 Full Accounts ye25-1.PDF fiWIICJusa￿rw￿}OwnI0w￿B53Y￿1FUI1YdOAcCovA￿/￿￿CIfj... 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