Local Welcome Annual report and accounts 2021–2022
Local Welcome CIO is registered as a charity in England and Wales, Registered charity number: 1180770 Unit A, 82 James Carter Road, Mildenhall Industrial Estate, Suffolk, IP28 7DE
Table of contents
| A. | Letters from Chair and CEO | p3 |
|---|---|---|
| B. | Objectives and activities | p8 |
| C. | Achievements and performance | p17 |
| D. | Financial review | p20 |
| E. | Structure, governance and management | p22 |
| F. | Subsequent events and future plans | p25 |
| G. | Annual accounts | p28 |
The trustees present the annual report and financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31 March 2022. The financial statements comply with current statutory requirements and the requirements of the Charity’s governing document.
Letters from Chairand CEO
a) Letters from Chair and CEO
page 4
Chair’s letter
It is my pleasure to be sharing this report with you on behalf of Local Welcome.
Over the last year we have continued to see the impact that the Covid 19 pandemic has brought for communities, organisations and individuals. In February, we saw the beginning of the war in Ukraine which led to a humanitarian crisis that created millions of refugees.
This report highlights how Local Welcome has reflected, learned and adapted throughout the pandemic whilst remaining fiercely committed to its vision, mission and values, and how we have
been able to carefully and successfully restart our meals at a time when human resilience and the power of our communities is needed more than ever.
We are grateful to our funders who have supported us this year and those who have committed to support us in future years. As a small, young charity it means so much to us when funders see the value in our work and back us as a team to achieve our goals. We would like to thank the National Lottery Community Fund, The Dulverton Trust, Herbert Smith Freehills, Samantha Marks, The Rayne Foundation, and St Mark’s church Kennington.
I would like to thank all those that have supported us over the last year - our leaders, members, funders, partners and committed trustees and staff, without you none of the achievements we share in this report would have been possible.
Clare Young
a) Letters from Chair and CEO
CEO’s letter
Crikey, it’s been another tough year.
We made it through a global pandemic; not unscathed, but we made it, and we’re grateful.
During Covid we couldn’t run community meals, so we launched ADHD Together, an impactful online peer support service, based on the learning of our community meals combined with our own lived experiences. We delivered impact, learned a lot, and stayed true to our vision and mission, but in January 2022 we decided to pause this new service, and start the work of relaunching our meals.
Local Welcome started in 2015 as a response to the Syrian refugee crisis. A crisis that was fueled, in part, by Russian bombs. In January 2022, we obviously didn’t know for sure that Russia would invade Ukraine, but we did realise that if an invasion happened, Europe would face another refugee crisis. We also felt that the risks of Covid were reducing enough for in-person gatherings to start again.
From 2015 to 2020 we demonstrated that the shared activity of our community meals can help diverse groups to reduce isolation and quickly build trusting connections, particularly between people seeking sanctuary, and their local host communities.
Our meals have always been a form of simple, local action, building trust in the face of complex global chaos.
In 2020 Covid forced us to pause our meals not knowing if or when they would restart. However, we were clear that our vision was broader than supporting refugees, or running community meals. We wanted to learn if we could translate the impact of our meals into safe online spaces and address wider social challenges. We rooted these decisions in our own lived experiences and expertise, and the needs of our partners, many of whom were focused on the basic needs of refugees for food and safety.
At first glance ADHD Together sounded like a total change of direction, but in reality, it helped us stay true to our mission and learn important lessons about scaling our impact, and working from our lived experience.
Demand for the peer support groups was significant, and the impacts were clear, but unfortunately, they simply weren’t growing fast enough, or generating enough membership income to become sustainable. We knew that we couldn’t operate ADHD Together while relaunching our community meals, so we chose again to pause and respond to changing circumstances.
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a) Letters from Chair and CEO
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Resilience is core to our vision statement, but we couldn’t have known how vital it would be, both for us, and the communities we’re a part of. This period has been full of hard decisions, often made under pressure.
Writing this report is a chance to pause, reflect, and share some learning. Our values of courage and humility are hard to live up to, but they help us to focus on what’s important, even when it’s hard.
When we paused our meals we had groups in 8 UK cities. Since relaunching we’ve recruited more than 1,500 new members, and as we publish this report, we’re planning the launch of our 16th group. We’ve also rebuilt the team to focus on iterating the meals into an even more scalable and adaptable shared activity.
As CEO, I’m grateful for all the support the team has given me personally, and as a team, we’re grateful for the ongoing support of our trustees, partners, and funders.
We think the need for diverse, resilient and powerful communities is greater than ever, and that shared activities, tools and rituals can help us reduce isolation, build trust, develop leaders and take common action.
These are the things we’re focused on. They are the vision and mission we’re still committed to, and the impacts we’re learning to amplify and scale.
Ben Pollard
page 7
Our vision is diverse, resilient, and powerful communities, acting together for their common good. Our mission is to design digital infrastructure and shared rituals for community leaders.
b) Objectives and activities
a) Letters from Chair and CEO
page 9
Goal
OPERATE IMPACTFUL, INCLUSIVE RITUALS, THAT ARE MEMBERSHIPFUNDED
Our vision and mission
Our vision is diverse, resilient, and powerful communities acting together for their common good
Our mission is to design digital infrastructure and shared rituals for community leaders
Our purpose and public benefit
Promote social inclusion
People feel more connected to their community and overcome barriers to inclusion e.g. due to their mental health or language skills.
Tackle isolation and loneliness
People at risk of loneliness find a social outlet that helps them feel part of their community and increases their wellbeing.
Activate new leaders within
communities
People who had never considered themselves community leaders start to lead, increasing their confidence and building local capacity.
2021-22 Objectives
Our objectives and activities during the year were divided into two chapters: the first part focused on ADHD Together, the second on resetting our objectives and refocusing our energies on Local Welcome meals.
Period Objectives
- April 2021 – 1. Develop ADHD December Together peer-support 2021 groups
2. Develop health-based partnerships for ADHD Together
3. Increase organisational capacity and resilience
4. Build digital infrastructure
5. Pause ADHD Together peer-support groups
January
2022 –
March
6. Relaunch Local Welcome refugee meals
2022
7. Redevelop refugee meal partnerships
a) Letters from Chair and CEO
page 10
1. Develop ADHD Together peer-support groups
What we did:
ADHD Together offers structured online meetings that help people with ADHD to connect, and support each other, in a safe nonjudgmental space.
Throughout 2021 we developed and improved the ADHD Together support group model, based on feedback from members and leaders, and input from health professionals.
We had run our first ADHD Together session in November 2020, and by March 2021, there had been 22 ADHD Together sessions across three groups, with 96 members attending at least once. Building on this successful launch, we turned our focus to developing new leaders and building the systems for them to safely run peer support sessions without a member of Local Welcome staff in the room. To enable this we developed online training sessions and ‘leader forums’, as a way to bring together leaders from different groups to share knowledge, learning and feedback.
Despite Covid making in-person gathering impossible, we had chosen to recruit people into local online groups to allow the possibility for groups to meet face-to-face in the future.
As part of these online, place-based groups we also ran tests in new cities to explore how much people would be willing to pay for sessions, particularly in low-income communities outside of London.
As well as running these various pricing tests, we also worked to iterate and improve the structure of the sessions themselves. This included broadening the selection of questions, and adding an open discussion section to allow leaders and members to focus on topics that emerge from participants’ answers to the structured questions.
In total 848 tickets had been made available and 75 % of these were allocated.
What we learned:
We learned that, particularly as the pandemic continued, many people with ADHD were struggling with isolation and mental health challenges. Demand remained high for our service, and particularly among adults who had sought out a diagnosis during the pandemic.
We had already learned in the previous reporting period that structured online peer support groups can have real impact, but we also learned that online groups in particular can prove more accessible for some people than in-person gatherings. Partly because of this increased accessibility, we were also delighted
by the continued diversity of the groups we built. This included diversities of age, gender, ethnicity, education level and income.
In the sessions themselves, we found that structured coaching questions can help people feel seen, heard and respected, and also make it easier for peer-leaders, with no professional training, to hold a space where connection and positive reflection can flourish.
Perhaps the greatest impact we observed was the positive experience that participants reported when simply sharing a space with people facing similar challenges. Participants found it profoundly impactful to hear stories they could personally identify with, particularly regarding situations in which they too had often felt misunderstood, judged, and isolated. This is an area that we hope to research further if or when we revisit peer-support groups, either in person, or online.
a) Letters from Chair and CEO
page 11
2. Develop health-based partnerships for ADHD Together
What we did:
By March 2020 we had begun a new partnership with South London and Maudsley NHS Trust (SLaM). The Maudsley Hospital is England’s leading centre for the treatment of ADHD, and other neurological and mental health conditions.
During the course of the year we worked with the clinical directors to design a pilot aimed at referring young adults with ADHD to our groups. The pilot was supported by researchers from King’s College London, King’s Improvement Science (KIS) research programme on secondment to SLaM.
In the pilot, SLaM referred young adults to our online peer support service to test the feasibility, sustainability and impact of the specific partnership, and of online structured peer support.
Our intentions were to explore possible avenues of NHS funding, replicating similar partnerships across the UK, and in future to develop support groups for a broader range of conditions and lived experiences.
What we learned:
We were pleased with how quickly the partnership developed, and the willingness of the clinical staff to engage with such a new service. As with many forms of partnership, it was the trusting personal relationships we formed with the clinical directors that made the most difference in helping us to navigate complex NHS processes and procedures.
However, despite this support, the NHS overall was extremely challenging to collaborate with. This was mostly due to their lack of technical capacity, but also because there seemed to be no precedent for innovative collaboration with small charities or community groups in areas that strayed too close to having genuine clinical impact. Perhaps this is understandable in terms of maintaining clinical standards, but it was frustrating to realise that our partnership, receiving no NHS funding, was partly blocked from proceeding further because our model started to compete with far more expensive services that clinical psychologists had been commissioned to deliver.
Despite these challenges, we would be open to exploring NHS partnerships again in the future, but would approach them more cautiously, and would seek to involve commissioners in our partnership conversations at the earliest possible stage.
3. Increase organisational capacity and resilience
What we did:
Following attempts to recruit two new permanent roles, we chose to increase our team capacity in other ways. We contracted product and tech support from various agencies and contractors, and hosted a fellow from Year Here. We also developed new risk management processes, in areas which include financial operations, cybersecurity and intellectual property. We issued 17 new HR policies.
What we learned:
We learned that our small team was more resilient and had more growth capacity than we ever imagined. Our increased organisational resilience can’t be separated from the fact that our small team has weathered some intense storms together. Some key team members left the organisation in 2021, and those of us who stayed have each taken on significantly more responsibility, learning countless new skills along the way. We’ve achieved this with support from trustees, by investing in individual growth, and by trusting our values-based culture and innovative ways of working.
a) Letters from Chair and CEO
page 12
4. Build digital infrastructure
What we did (2021):
We started creating bespoke digital tools to enable us to scale our work more efficiently and effectively. This marks an exciting departure from our previous technology approach of adapting commercially available software as best we could, towards building bespoke tools specifically designed to meet our needs.
What we learned (2021):
The first example of this in the ADHD Together context was when we used Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to embed video conferencing software into our own web pages alongside a bespoke timer, for our ADHD Together groups. This first experiment not only improved the experience for ADHD Together leaders, but also gave us valuable learning we could later apply to our meals when we relaunched in the new year.
What we did (2022):
In the new year, it was clear that the digital services that had previously helped us scale to 8 meal groups were reaching the limits of their capacity, so we made the decision to bring software engineering skills into the team directly. We recruited a part-time developer, allowing
us to create bespoke digital tools that put more power in the hands of our leaders. For example, our developer created a leader dashboard visible on our website, which shows groups how close they are to being ready to launch.
In addition to this new technology approach, we evolved the responsibilities of our core team; freeing them up to own high-value technical tasks by delegating administrative tasks to our new Member Support Officer roles. This allows us to further increase capacity and reduce costs in the following areas:
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Our Member Support Officers are on-call on Sundays, and handle correspondence with leaders, members and guests.
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Our CEO leads the digital product management, on top of his other duties.
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Our operations lead has responsibility for managing our systems infrastructure, and now supervises the member support officers in the day-to-day delivery of meals.
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Our delivery manager has responsibility for financial management, organisational resilience and good governance, as well as supporting fundraising and venue recruitment.
What we learned (2022):
As we applied this new technology approach to the meals context, we learned about the need to build digital tools that connect leaders while equipping them to deliver shared tasks. In the past, our processes have often required leaders to come to us when they need information or guidance. Our increased capacity is helping us to build new tools that allow leaders to take more responsibility and ownership, without compromising on safety or culture, while continuing to offer guidance and support on a larger scale.
a) Letters from Chair and CEO
page 13
5. Pause ADHD Together peer-support groups
What we did:
By December 2021 ADHD Together groups were growing, meeting a real need, and creating significant impacts. A small number of participants had started paying £50 per month to join the groups, and this represented a potential route to sustainability that we had ended 2021 intending to pursue.
Unfortunately we found that not enough people were willing or able to consistently lead groups, and not enough people were willing to contribute financially to making the groups sustainable. We were also concerned that we would exclude too many people if we remained committed to financial sustainability at the expense of inclusivity.
This, along with reducing Covid restrictions in January 2022, contributed to our decision to put the groups on hold, and start planning the relaunch of our community meals.
financially sustainable will require more design and development time, and therefore significant additional funding.
We would like to return to this area of work in the future, and are already incorporating several areas of learning into our current relaunch of community meals.
Irrespective of relaunching ‘lived experience’ groups, we also hope to maintain relationships with South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, and King’s College London, our primary research and development partners for our work with young adults.
At the time of publication, we have begun work on a new simplified design, for an inclusive, shared ritual that we hope can be adaptable enough to create sustainable groups, not just with refugees, migrants and supportive locals, but also allows us to relaunch a form of in-person peer support groups that build on our learning with ADHD Together.
What we learned:
We learned that there is significant unmet need for lived experience support groups, particularly for neurodivergent communities and young people transitioning to adulthood. Yet adapting our model to be both affordable and
a) Letters from Chair and CEO
page 14
6. Relaunch Local Welcome refugee meals
What we did:
Our decision to pause ADHD Together was also driven by our assessment that Covid risks were reaching an acceptable level to start relaunching Local Welcome meals.
Face-to-face, in-person community activities were becoming, not only possible again, but needed more than ever to help address the trauma and isolations so many of us had experienced during the pandemic. We chose to again focus these meals on refugees as they were particularly affected in this way, and we saw that the need was likely to grow given the situation in Ukraine.
In March 2020 we had paused refugee meal groups in 8 UK cities. In March 2022, building on our learning from ADHD Together, and our increased capacity, we launched a Facebook ad campaign in 16 cities and recruited over 1,000 new leaders and members in the first month. This put us in good stead to relaunch groups at a faster rate than before, being able to return to a pre-Covid level of service delivery in 2022 whilst incurring fewer group and operating costs than in 2020.
What we learned:
We learned that it’s possible to pause a service, adapt to significant challenges, and then relaunch an improved version to scale more quickly.
Growing ADHD Together groups required us to develop online training sessions and ongoing support structures for new leaders. We also developed ‘leader forums’, as a way to bring together small groups of leaders from different areas and groups to share knowledge, learning and feedback. It’s an example of how work on ADHD Together helped us to relaunch meal groups and develop more scalable infrastructure.
Our growth in resilience and capacity gives us hope that we can continue to adapt and evolve in the future, by responding to fast changing needs in uncertain times.
a) Letters from Chair and CEO
page 15
7. Redevelop refugee meal partnerships
What we did:
Partnerships are fundamental to what we’ve achieved so far and to our future growth plans (which reflects why our main funder during the period was the Partnerships programme of the National Lottery Community Fund). So in January 2022, we started the work of rebuilding relationships with refugee sector partners.
Between January-March 2022, we secured refugee ‘guest’ referral partners in 15+ locations. This includes local partners (such as Oasis in Cardiff and Refuweegee in Glasgow), and national partners (such as Migrant Help and Save The Children).
When the war in Ukraine broke out, we worked with Save the Children UK (who featured us in a blogpost) and the Church of England (who featured us in a toolkit) to accelerate the growth of new groups that could support people fleeing the conflict. (We have since developed a formal partnership with Save the Children UK, see Subsequent events and future plans, below). We are also continuing conversations with the leadership of the Church of England schools network, The Sanctuary Foundation, the Association of Ukranians in Great Britain, and Homes for Ukraine.
We are partnering with schools for some of our venues - for example a primary school in Wakefield, and a performing arts school in Croydon. We expect these meal groups to deliver additional outcomes for the school community in terms of increased parental engagement and increased educational outcomes for EAL pupils. In time, we hope that these partnerships may also help us to explore a new version of our ‘lived experience’ groups, including ADHD Together.
What we learned:
Before Covid, we also recruited a number of leaders who were recent school leavers looking for their first experience of civic leadership. ADHD Together also taught us a lot about the challenges facing young people as they transition into adult life, so we hope in future to integrate this learning into a more diverse cohort of members and leaders.
When we received funding from the National Lottery Community Fund in March 2020, we planned to expand the meal groups to cater for isolated older people, and vulnerable young people. We’ve since realised that we can deliver more value to these groups, at least in the short term, by including them in meals with refugees. This decision is partly based on the high proportion of our leaders who are retirees looking for new meaningful ways to use their
time, or wanting to make new connections, particularly after the isolation of the Covid pandemic.
Therefore, in the short-term we are going to develop further ways to broaden the diversity of those participating in our shared activities, for example by engaging elderly congregation members of faith groups, and by exploring partnerships with venues that include older people by default such as sheltered living, and elderly care homes.
page 16
a) Letters from Chair and CEO
ADHD Together outputs
Local Welcome meal outputs
740 signups
1,197 signups
83 sessions
160 leader applicants
866 hours of social contact
16 cities
Achievements and performance
c) Achievements and performance
page 18
User demand
Having an impact
Our ambition is to scale up to the point where we are a 100% membership funded organisation. We can only do this if there’s demand and people are able to pay, and we can only achieve our purposes through social outcomes. The impact we have lies at the intersection of these three things.
By March 2022, we were still in the early stages of relaunching Local Welcome meals. The numbers speak for themselves when it comes to a demonstrable demand for our service: 1,197 signups in the first month, across 16 cities, including 160 people who wanted to be trained to organise and lead these meals.
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SOCIAL
OUTCOME
IMPACT
USER FINANCIAL
DEMAND VALUE
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Social outcomes
All our capacity since relaunching Local Welcome meals has gone into starting new groups (although since meals restarted, we review user feedback weekly following each meal). We commissioned independent research into the impact of our meals by The Social Investment Consultancy in 2019, and are confident that the meals continue to have the impacts found in that report. (The research is still available on our website: www.localwelcome. org/impact).
We intend to build on what we’re learning from member and leader feedback by investigating, researching and evidencing social outcomes more thoroughly during 2023.
“I liked chatting and engaging with the kids especially. It seemed to give the parents a nice reprieve as well, which made it even nicer.”
c) Achievements and performance
page 19
Financial value
Local Welcome meal groups were relaunched in a tough economic climate, with rising inflation and a growing cost-of-living crisis. Despite that context, we knew that the only way we could plot a new path to self-funding would be through asking members and leaders to pay a revised subscription price which reflected the increased cost of our operations. Therefore, we have been greatly encouraged by the response to changes we made regarding leader and member payments:
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We changed the price of a ticket and subscription to £7 (from £5 pre-Covid), to reflect inflation
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We asked people who wanted to apply to be a leader to begin their £7 subscription from the outset - even before their group was operating meals. (In 2019-20, we would wait for a potential leader to have completed the training process before asking them to pay). This was treated as an up-front investment in the costs of starting the group.
In the first two weeks of our relaunch, £7 58 people set up a monthly subscription to be a leader for their Local Welcome group.
After just two weeks of running our recruitment campaign in March 2022, we already had 58 leader applicants who had started their £7 monthly subscription - we believe this is a strong indication that the service delivers financial value, alongside user demand and social outcomes.
d) Financial review
d) Financial Review
page 21
Our financial results for the year are set out in the Statement of Financial Activities. Our net income was £52,696 (2021 deficit £26,276). We finished the year with unrestricted net funds of £13,009 (2021 £11,395) and restricted net funds of £81,081 (2021 £30,000).
Funders and supporters
We are grateful to our funders who have supported us this year and those who have committed to support us in future years. As a small, young charity it means so much to us when funders see the value in our work and back us as a team to achieve our goals. We would like to thank:
Note: The grants of those above are listed in the accounts, with exception of St Mark’s Kennington, to whom we are grateful for subsidising the rent of our office space.
Reserves policy
At any time, we aim to maintain a total of one full month of normal expenditure in reserves. For any elements of our work over the following 12 months fully covered by existing restricted funds, we do not need to also hold unrestricted funds.
One full month’s normal expenditure is an approximation for the following more detailed calculation:
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One month of permanent salaries and related employment costs
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One month of contractor costs
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Minimum notice period for rent
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Minimum notice period for recurring supplier contracts
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Zero months of one-off costs
The one month of overall costs is therefore considered a good estimate as no staff currently have a notice period longer than 30 days. Also the only recurring supplier contracts with more than 30 days’ notice are relatively small values. If either of those changed, we may need to increase the number of month’s reserves accordingly.
At March 2022 this would have equated to unrestricted reserves of £16,533 (2021 £21,421) compared to our actual unrestricted reserves of £13,009 (2021 £11,395).
Financial impact of Covid-19
Our focus on ADHD Together during much of the 2020/21 and 2021/22 financial years meant that we did not use the entire two-year £487,600 grant we had previously secured from the National Lottery Community Fund during the period. However, the Lottery approved of our plan to relaunch Local Welcome meals, and granted us an extension to keep using the remaining funds until September 2022. Similarly, two other grants secured just before the pandemic have been released for scaling the Local Welcome meal model. The Dulverton Trust paid us a grant of £30,000 two years earlier and we were able to start using the funds in 2021/22. Another grant for £30,000 had been awarded by the Rayne Foundation but not paid at the time; we have now drawn this down in July 2022.
During the 2020/21 financial year, most funders understandably switched their focus to support organisations providing direct support for people impacted by the pandemic, and this trend continued into 2021/22. We were therefore excluded from the vast majority of funding available to charities during the year.
It is our intention to build back to the level of unrestricted reserves set out in the reserves policy.
Structure? governance and management
e) Structure, governance and management
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Structure
Local Welcome is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) and it operates under the provisions set out in our constitution.
Team
We have a small, multidisciplinary staff team with a mix of backgrounds, skills, and levels of experience led by our founder and CEO, Ben Pollard. Find out more about our team. We had an average of 3.3 full time equivalent (FTE) team members throughout the year (2021 5.1 FTE).
We have built the kind of multidisciplinary team found in the technology sector because our organisation is rooted in principles like ‘humancentred design’, enabling a project to evolve throughout the delivery period based on cycles of testing, learning and adapting. The aim is to design, build, and grow a service without having to increase the size of the team, achieving greater economies of scale over time. This is why in many ways we don’t reflect the usual structure of a typical charity. We’ve chosen to invest in people with a mix of skills and experience including from the charity, education, design and technology sectors.
We were especially grateful to Claire Brown and Helen Brown for their incredibly valuable service to Local Welcome. We also appreciated the short-term additional capacity supplied by Landa George and Brandon Jackson.
Team resource during the year broken down by role:
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Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar
Ben Pollard - CEO (1 FTE, 0.8 from January)
Claire Brown - Comms (0.7 FTE)
Andrew Chaplin - Delivery manager (0.9 FTE, 0.8 from January)
Celia Mellow - Operations lead (1 FTE)
Landa George - Year Here fellow (0.8 FTE)
Helen Brown - Admin Support (0.2 FTE)
Brandon Jackson - Product advisor (0.2 FTE)
Alec Molloy - Developer (0.2 FTE)
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e) Structure, governance and management
page 24
Furlough
The trustees placed Ben, Celia and Andrew on flexi-furlough for a short period in May 2021, and Ben again in July 2021. This reflected reduced operational requirements at that time whilst ADHD Together sessions were running less frequently and whilst certain routine tasks were underway. Oversight of these tasks in this period was carried out by other staff in consultation with the trustees.
Governance
Our trustees met 6 times during the year (about every 8 weeks). They regularly review finances, policy, strategy, progress against Objectives and Key Results, as well as safeguarding policy and practice. Find out more about our trustees.
Many of our trustees had served for a number of years and in 2020/21 we had started a plan to bring in a number of new trustees. Three new trustees had joined us in early 2021, and this allowed others to step down. This process is continuing in 2022. In September 2021 Nasser Youssef and Martin Dittus left the board, followed by Bekele Woyecha in February 2022. We are very appreciative of their service.
We are grateful for Kylie Havelock taking over the position of Martin Dittus as Secretary. At the time of writing, we are excited to have just identified two further potential trustees, Claire Price (who would be our first leader-trustee) and Sana Rao; and we expect to appoint them both shortly.
Management
The day-to-day management of Local Welcome is undertaken by the team of paid staff, led by the CEO.
f) Subsequent events and future plans
f) Subsequent events and future plans
page 26
Since the end of the reporting period (March 2022) we have continued the relaunch of our community meals described above (see Objectives & Activities). Here is a summary of the main areas of work involved and some examples of our recent activities and our plans for the months ahead:
Recruiting new members
Restarting Local Welcome meals has required a significant investment over recent months in recruiting and onboarding new leaders, members, guests and venues. Although ‘on paper’ this is the relaunch of a service that we were forced to pause in February 2020, viewed from the perspective of most of the people who have joined, this is a brand new initiative. Fewer than 20% of leaders this year had been leaders before. Most members and guests are also new, as are the majority of the venues hosting our meals. In this context, returning to the same level of delivery in a shorter space of time and with a smaller team is a significant achievement.
Releasing an updated and improved version of the cooking ritual
As meals have restarted and as kits have been sent out to the respective venues, we have supplied groups with a new version of the
equipment, along with a new ‘leader guide’. (This release capitalised on consolidation work done during the pandemic, which is described in the Activities section of our 2020-21 annual report). The improvements delivered through the new kit and guide have included clearer and more accessible instructions; smoother transitions between the setup, cooking, eating and packdown stages; and new recipes to increase variety and keep people engaged.
Developing new partnerships
As mentioned in section 7 of Objectives and Activities, building new partnerships is integral to restarting our meal groups. We have developed relationships with the Association of Ukranians in Great Britain to broaden our networks for refugee guest invitations, and a large number of local and regional organisations such as Refuweegee, who host our Glasgow meals. We have also developed relationships with a variety of schools to explore their potential as venues, and in June, we began a formal partnership with Save the Children UK. The partnership forms a part of their response to the Ukraine crisis and focuses on our shared objectives to:
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Welcome refugee families to the UK and help grow the community welcoming movement
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Develop and devolve an effective community
run mechanism of localised participatory politics
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Promoting rights and justice for refugees and other migrants by identifying and tackling structures and systems that may deny them their rights.
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Demonstrate civil literacy in action.
f) Subsequent events and future plans
Recruiting new people to our team and our board
The way our team has developed and shifted roles and responsibilities in response to delivery needs has been discussed in section 4 of Objectives and Activities. As well as recruiting Member Support Officers, we have since secured additional team capacity, namely in communications, service design, fundraising, and CEO support. As noted above (in Structure, Governance and Management) we are also excited to have identified two new trustees.
As a small charity, we are proud of our recruitment processes which we consider reflect a mature and values-oriented organisation.
Iterating the system to be more scalable, with lower capital inputs
In October, we began a new research and design phase aiming to find new ways to reduce the costs and complexity of the current meal ritual, whilst maintaining its impact. The impetus of this strategic focus is that the system we operate must be able to scale to self-funding - that is, by growing the number of groups while maintaining the size of the team, membership fees will generate sufficient operating surplus to cover the running costs of the charity.
Key advisors
We are grateful for the support and guidance of our advisors:
Legal
Herbert Smith Freehills LLP Richard Norridge Exchange House Primrose Street London, EC2A 2EG
Safeguarding
Samantha Marks Safeguarding trainer and consultant
Independent examiner
Nicola Anderson FCA FCIE 189 Baldwins Lane Croxley Green Rickmansworth Herts, WD3 3LL
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g) Annual accounts
g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO
page 29
The trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charitable company and to enable it to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Charities Act 2011. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charitable company and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.
Trustees’ responsibilities in the preparation of financial statements For the year ended 31 March 2022
The trustees are responsible for preparing the trustees’ Report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (UK Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).
The above report was approved by the trustees on Wednesday 16 November 2022 and signed on their behalf by
Charity law requires the trustees to prepare financial statements which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charity and of its income and expenditure for the period. In preparing these financial statements, the trustees are required to
C Young Chair
-
Select suitable accounting policies, observing the methods and principles set out in the Charities SORP, and apply them consistently
-
Make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent
-
State whether applicable accounting standards have been followed subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements; and
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Prepare financial statements on a going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to assume that the company will continue on that basis.
g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO
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Independent Examiner’s Report to the Trustees For the year ended 31 March 2022
I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of Local Welcome CIO (charity no.1180770) for the year ended 31 March 2022 which are set out on pages 31 to 43.
Responsibilities and basis of report
As the charity trustees of the charity, 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 2011 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.
preference to the Accounting and Reporting by Charities Statement of Recommended Practice issued 1 April 2005 which is referred to in the extant regulations but has now been withdrawn.
I understand that this has been done in order for the financial statements to provide a true and fair view in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Practice effective for reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2019.
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
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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.
Nicola Anderson FCA FCIE
Chartered Accountant and Independent Examiner 189 Baldwins Lane Croxley Green Rickmansworth Herts. WD3 3LL
Dated: Wednesday 16 November 2022
Independent examiner’s statement
Your attention is drawn to the fact that the charity has prepared financial statements in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS102) in
g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO
page 31
Statement of financial activities For the year ended 31 March 2022
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2022 2021
Note Restricted Funds Unrestricted Total Total
Funds Funds Funds
£ £ £ £
Income from:
Donations 2 247,668 1,212 248,880 261,994
Charitable activities 3 - 558 558 (169)
Bank interest - 54 54 120
Total income 247,668 1,823 249,491 261,945
Expenditure on:
Raising funds 17,189 - 17,189 41,539
Direct charitable activities 179,398 209 179,607 246,681
Total expenditure 4 196,586 209 196,796 288,221
Net income (deficit) for the year 5 51,081 1,614 52,696 (26,276)
Reconciliation of funds
Funds brought forward 30,000 11,395 41,395 67,670
Funds carried forward 12 81,081 13,009 94,090 41,395
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The notes on pages 33 to 43 form part of these accounts.
g) Annual accounts ~~–~~ Local Welcome CIO
page 32
Balance Sheet As at 31 March 2022
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2022 2021
Note £ £ £ £
Fixed Assets 8 - -
Current Assets
Debtors and prepayments 9 1,360 2,338
Cash at bank and in hand 10 101,220 51,344
102,580 53,682
Creditors: Amounts due within one year 11 (8,489) (12,287)
Net current assets 94,090 41,395
Net assets 94,090 41,395
Funds of the charity:
Restricted funds 81,081 30,000
Unrestricted funds 13,009 11,395
Total funds 12 94,090 41,395
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The notes on pages 33 to 43 form part of these accounts
The financial statements on pages 31 to 43 were approved by the trustees and authorised for issue on Wednesday 16 November 2022 and are signed on its behalf by:
Clare Young Nick Gretton Chair Treasurer
g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO
page 33
Notes to the accounts For the year ended 31 March 2022
1. Accounting policies
Basis of accounting
The accounts have been prepared under the historical cost convention with items recognised at cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant note(s) to these accounts.
The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the Statement of Recommended Practice: Accounting and Reporting by Charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the updated Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) effective 1 January 2019 (SORP FRS102)
The accounts have departed from the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 only to the extent required to provide a true and fair view. This departure has involved applying ‘Statement of Recommended Practice: Accounting and Reporting by Charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS102) effective 1 January 2019’ rather than the version of the Statement of Recommended Practice referred to in the regulation but which has since been withdrawn.
The charity constitutes a public benefit entity as defined by FRS102.
Going concern
The trustees have reviewed the income and expenditure requirements for the charity and are satisfied that the cash position and expected income are adequate to meet ongoing expenses for at least 12 months from the approval of these financial statements and therefore the trustees believe that it is appropriate to prepare the financial statements on a going concern basis.
Statement of cashflows
The trustees have taken advantage of the exemption in accordance with SORP FRS 102 for smaller charities and have not included a statement of cashflows in the accounts.
Significant accounting policies applied in the preparation of these accounts are as follows:
Income
Income is recognised when entitlement passes to the charity, receipt is probable and the amount can be measured.
Donations and unrestricted grants are recognised on the earlier of receipt or due date in accordance with any agreement with the donor or grant funder. Donations and grants are only deferred if they relate exclusively to a future accounting period as determined by the donor.
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g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO Notes to the accounts – for the year ended 31 March 2022
Performance related grants and contracts are recognised when the service has been delivered
Unrestricted funds comprise income received that can be applied by the trustees at their discretion to the general objects of the charity
Expenditure
Expenditure is recognised when a liability is incurred. Irrecoverable VAT is charged against the expenditure heading for which it was incurred.
Event costs include all costs relating to running the events including food, equipment, promotion, venue costs and travel.
Computers and other equipment with costing over £500 and with an estimated useful life in excess of one year are capitalised and depreciated at rates estimated to write off cost, less realisable value, as follows:
— Computers: 3 years
- Other equipment: 5 years
Funds
Restricted funds comprise income received that is restricted by the donor to activities that are narrower than, but within, the charity’s general objects. Expenditure which meets these restrictions is charged against restricted income with any amounts unspent at the yearend carried forward to be applied within the restrictions in future accounting periods.
Financial Instruments
The charity has elected to apply the provisions of Section 11 “Basic Financial Instruments” and Section 12 “Other Financial instruments Issues” of FRS 102, in full, to all of its financial instruments. Financial instruments are classified and accounted for according to the substance of the contractual arrangement as financial assets, financial liabilities or equity instruments. An equity instrument is any contract that evidences a residual interest in the assets of the entity after deducting all of its liabilities.
Basic financial assets, which include other debtors and accrued income are initially measured at transaction price including transaction costs and are subsequently carried at amortised cost.
Basic financial liabilities, which include accruals, are initially measured at transaction price and subsequently measured at amortised cost.
g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO Notes to the accounts – for the year ended 31 March 2022
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2(a). Grants and Donations – Current Year
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Restricted Unrestricted 2022 Total
£ £ £
Government Grants
National Lottery Community Fund 243,800 - 243,800
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (Furlough) 2,543 - 2,543
246,343 - 246,343
Donations
Herbert Smith Freehills LLP 1,150 - 1,150
Individuals 175 1,212 1,387
1,325 1,212 2,537
Total 247,668 1,212 248,880
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2(b). Grants and Donations – Prior Year
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Restricted Unrestricted 2021 Total
£ £ £
Grants
National Lottery Community Fund 243,800 - 243,800
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (Furlough) 9,828 - 9,828
253,628 - 253,628
Donations
Herbert Smith Freehills LLP 5,372 - 5,372
Individuals 175 2,820 2,995
5,547 2,820 8,367
Total 259,174 2,820 261,994
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g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO Notes to the accounts – for the year ended 31 March 2022
page 36
3 Income from charitable activities
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2022 2021
£ £
Participation fees 558 (169)
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4(a). Allocation of Expenditure – Current Year
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Raising Funds Charitable Activities Support Governance 2022 Total
Local ADHD
Welcome Together
meals
£ £ £ £ £ £
Salaries and other staff costs (note 7) 11,762 23,467 73,914 40,720 7,494 157,358
Events 60 3,329 3,527 235 240 7,391
Office 202 3,140 9,016 8,829 664 21,852
Professional fees - - 9,245 150 - 9,395
Independent Examination - - - - 800 800
Depreciation - - - - - -
Total direct costs 12,024 29,937 95,703 49,934 9,198 196,796
Apportionment of support and governance 5,165 12,859 41,108 (49,934) (9,198) -
Total costs 17,189 42,796 136,811 - - 196,796
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g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO
Notes to the accounts – for the year ended 31 March 2022
4(b). Allocation of Expenditure – Prior Year
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Raising Funds Charitable Activities Support Governance 2021 Total
Local Local ADHD
Welcome Together Together
meals walks
£ £ £ £ £ £ £
Salaries and other staff costs (note 7) 34,178 77,016 15,403 92,419 30,491 5,759 255,267
Events - 1,107 1,053 2,437 - - 4,597
Office 83 4,792 944 5,662 9,270 - 20,751
Professional fees - 1,192 238 1,430 3,152 446 6,459
Independent Examination - - - - - 800 800
Depreciation 69 72 14 87 87 17 347
Total direct costs 34,330 84,180 17,652 102,036 43,000 7,022 288,221
Apportionment of support and governance 7,209 17,839 3,568 21,407 (43,000) (7,022) -
Total costs 41,539 102,019 21,220 123,443 - - 288,221
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5. Net income
This is stated after charging
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2022 2021
£ £
Independent examiner’s fee 800 800
Depreciation - 347
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6. Trustee expenses, remuneration and related party transactions
No trustee received any remuneration or reimbursement for expenses in the year (2021: none) There were no other related party transactions (2021: none)
g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO Notes to the accounts – for the year ended 31 March 2022
page 38
7. Staff costs and key management remuneration
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2022 2021 2022 2021
Headcount £ £
Staff costs comprise:
Employees – Gross salary 123,482 114,352
- Social security costs 9,255 8,144
- Employer pension contributions 2,727 2,493
Total employee costs 3 3 135,464 124,989
Other staff:
Self-employed contractors 2 4 18,982 129,649
Volunteers’ expenses 339 -
Staff related costs:
Training and recruitment 1,676 587
Travel and subsistence 897 42
5 7 157,358 255,267
The average number of employees and contractors in the year
(based on headcount) spent on each activity was:
Raising Funds 0.4 0.8
Direct activities 3.7 5.3
Support and governance 0.9 0.9
5.0 7.0
Full-time equivalent (based on standard hours worked) 3.3 5.1
Number of employees were paid over £60,000 (gross salary) 1 1
The aggregate remuneration paid to key management in the year,
70,073 69,100
including employer’s national insurance and pension, was:
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g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO Notes to the accounts – for the year ended 31 March 2022
page 39
8. Fixed Assets
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Computer
£
Cost
At 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022 1,389
Depreciation
At 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022 1,389
Net book value
At 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022 -
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9. Debtors
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2022 2021
£ £
Miscellaneous debtors 1,360 2,338
10. Cash at Bank
2022 2021
£ £
Current and deposit accounts 101,220 51,344
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Cash is held in instant access accounts with Metrobank.
g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO Notes to the accounts – for the year ended 31 March 2022
page 40
11. Creditors: amounts due within one year
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2022 2021
£ £
Tax and social security costs 2,930 3,684
Other creditors 4,260 7,665
Accruals 1,300 939
8,489 12,287
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12(a). Movement on funds – current year
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At At
1 April 2021 Income Expenditure 31 March 2022
£ £ £
Restricted Funds
Dulverton Trust 30,000 - 6,667 23,333
National Lottery Community Fund - 243,800 186,052 57,748
Coronavirus Job Support Scheme - 2,543 2,543 -
Professional fees - 1,325 1,325 -
Total restricted funds 30,000 247,668 196,586 81,081
Unrestricted Funds 11,395 1,823 209 13,009
Total funds 41,395 249,491 196,796 94,090
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The charity has been given extensions on the grant periods for Dulverton Trust and National Lottery Community Fund. These grants both fund Local Welcome meals but with geographical restrictions. (NLCF is England only, Dulverton is UK excluding Greater London and Northern Ireland). The remaining funds for both grants are being spent in 2022/23.
g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO Notes to the accounts – for the year ended 31 March 2022
page 41
12(b). Movement on funds – prior year
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At At
1 April 2020 Income Expenditure 31 March 2021
£ £ £
Restricted Funds
Dulverton Trust 30,000 - - 30,000
National Lottery Community Fund - 243,800 (243,800) -
Coronavirus Job Support Scheme - 9,828 (9,828) -
Professional fees - 5,547 (5,547) -
Total restricted funds 30,000 259,174 (259,174) 30,000
Unrestricted Funds 37,670 2,771 (29,047) 11,395
Total funds 67,670 261,945 (288,221) 41,395
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13(a).Analysis of net assets by fund – current year
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Restricted Unrestricted Total
funds funds funds
£ £ £
Fixed Assets - - -
Debtors 1,360 - 1,360
Cash at bank 88,211 13,009 101,220
Creditors: amounts due within one year (8,489) - (8,489)
81,081 13,009 94,090
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g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO Notes to the accounts – for the year ended 31 March 2022
page 42
13(b). Analysis of net assets by fund – prior year
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Restricted Unrestricted Total
funds funds funds
2021
£ £ £
Fixed Assets - - -
Debtors 2,338 - 2,338
Cash at bank 39,949 11,395 51,344
Creditors: amounts due within one year (12,287) - (12,287)
30,000 11,395 41,395
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14 Government and local authority grants
At 31 March 2022 the charity held £57,748 (2021: £nil) in unspent government grants as explained in note 12(a).
g) Annual accounts – Local Welcome CIO Notes to the accounts – for the year ended 31 March 2022
page 43
15. Statement of Financial Activities – prior year
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Note Restricted Unrestricted Total
Funds Funds Funds
2021
£ £ £
Income from:
Donations 2 259,174 2,820 261,994
Charitable activities 3 - (169) (169)
Bank interest - 120 120
Total income 259,174 2,771 261,945
Expenditure on:
Raising funds 12,962 28,577 41,539
Direct charitable activities 246,212 469 246,681
Total expenditure 4 259,174 29,047 288,221
Net income (deficit) for the year 5 - (26,276) (26,276)
Reconciliation of funds
Funds brought forward 30,000 37,670 67,670
Funds carried forward 12 30,000 11,395 41,395
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