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2020-12-31-accounts

Registered Charity Number: 1181333

Tinsley Community Allotment

ANNUAL REPORT AND UNAUDITED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 December 2020

Tinsley Community Allotment

Contents

Page
Legal and administrative information 1
Trustees' annual report 2 - 11
Independent Examiner’s Report to the Truste es 12
Receipts and payments account 13
Statement of assets and liabilities 14
Notes to the accounts 15

VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Legal and administrative information for the year ended 31 December 2020

Trustees Name Timothy Shortland Rodney Heslop Sheila Sutherland Michael Steadman Mary Sewell

Position Chair Treasurer Secretary

Other key personnel

Jacqui Dace Jess Banham

Community Allotment Worker Community Allotment Worker

Charity number 1181333

Principal address

C/o Tinsley Forum 120-126 Bawtry Road Sheffield S9 1UE

Independent examiner

Susan Cochrane, FCA On behalf of: VAS Community Accountancy The Circle 33 Rockingham Lane Sheffield S1 4FW

1

VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Trustees' annual report For the year ended 31 December 2020

The trustees submit their annual report and the financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2020.

Structure, governance and management

Tinsley Community Allotment is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation which registered with the Charity Commission on 21 December 2018. Tinsley Community Allotment is governed by the rules and regulations set down in its governing document as last updated on 21 December 2018.

The organisation started operating in February 2019, previously it was operated as part of the Tinsley Tree project. 2019 was a year of transitioning from one organisation to the other, so wages for the two self employed allotment workers continued to be paid by Tinsley Tree Project until March 2020, insurance was covered by Tinsley Tree Project until June 2020 and the accountant at VAS taken on in 2020. Tinsley Community Allotment set up a bank account on 17/04/2019 with the first transaction being on 07/10/2019.

Method of Recruitment and Appointment of Trustees

Trustees are recruited through putting out requests within the allotment, gardening and horticultural network in Sheffield. Trustees are appointed by invitation to attend a meeting, with information regarding the roles and responsibilities having been shared prior to the meeting. Appointment includes signing a trustee declaration.

Charitable objectives and activities

The objects of the charity are:

  1. to further or benefit the residents of Tinsley, South Yorkshire without distinction of gender, sexual orientation, race or of political, religious or other opinions by providing allotment facilities in the interests of social welfare for recreational leisure time occupation with the objective of improving life for the residents.

  2. to advance the education of the public, in particular young people, by providing practical horticultural activities with links to the national curriculum.

The activities we do to meet our objectives are:

Tinsley Community Allotment is open on Friday mornings offering educational and experiential sessions to school children from the local primary school – Tinsley Meadows Primary Academy. Two groups attend each week during term time and we occasionally offer one-off sessions to whole year groups (split into smaller groups) linking with particular national curriculum themes in school. Activities offered to these children include: sowing and planting; riddling compost; leaf collecting and composting; weeding, watering and harvesting; themed scavenger hunts; art and craft.

The allotment is also open on Friday afternoons to the general public. These sessions are aimed more towards local adults during term time, but are generally open to all. Volunteers attend sessions and help with all tasks on the allotment: sowing, planting, tidying, composting and planning what to grow. They are offered harvested produce to take home with them at the end of the sessions. The allotment is also offered as a space for relaxing, socialising and learning about horticulture.

2

VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Trustees' annual report For the year ended 31 December 2020

The activities we do to meet our objectives (continued)

Activities undertaken at Tinsley Community Allotment address a number of differing priorities within the local area, including:

Improvement to health, wellbeing and self-esteem – the undertaking of organic food cultivation provides excellent opportunities to undertake gentle exercise and also can improve diet and reduce levels of obesity. Improvements to wellbeing and self-esteem are widely documented.

Building communities – our activity is open to all of the community and, most recently, has involved people between the ages of 1 and 70 years of different genders. Our volunteers are also ethnically diverse. As such, our project supports local community cohesion by bringing people together for a common goal.

Poverty and welfare – our activity assists local poverty and welfare by empowering local people to cultivate their own food. All organic fruit and vegetable crops are shared with volunteers on a regular basis. Eating and tasting is also undertaken.

Environment – the activity demonstrates excellent horticultural practice, introducing the principles of organic food cultivation and also recycles all of its green waste in order to produce compost and leaf mould.

Public Benefit Statement

The trustees have had due regard to the Charity Commission guidance on public benefit reporting in deciding what activities the charity should undertake. This report illustrates the activities undertaken to support the public benefit requirement.

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VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Trustees ' annual report - continued For the year ended 31 December 2020

Achievements and performance Numbers

We have had 91 different visitors this year, 55 of these being adults and 36 children.

In this unusual year with Covid-19, our numbers have been restricted due to being closed to the general public since 23[rd] March 2020 and only having a limited opening for volunteers since August.

The sessions for pupils from Tinsley Meadows Primary Academy began at the start of March. During these sessions we had 23 pupils and 2 members of staff attending the allotment site for activities including riddling compost and sowing broad beans. Unfortunately, these sessions stopped after two weeks and the school have not been able to send pupils back to us for the remainder of 2020.

Our 2 long term committed volunteers, who have been involved with the allotment for many years, continued to come to the allotment during lockdown to water and tend plants when no one else was on site. One returned to sessions in July, while the other returned in September. In August we opened our doors to some of our regular volunteers, following Covid-19 guidelines for health and safety of our volunteers and taking guidance from similar organisations including Social Farms & Gardens and the National Allotment Society to create our own guidelines for what needed to be in place in order to open our doors again. One of our newer volunteers attended these sessions. We have also had occasional visits from individuals looking for social contact. With all of these, we have followed social distancing guidelines.

We also had a trustee meeting on site, allowing our trustees to see what we had been working on during the year.

We offered free harvested produce to local people in August 2020 – having 27 adults and 5 children taking free produce home. We also provided harvested produce to Darnall Well Being in conjunction with their distribution of 125 Sheffield Healthy Hampers to Tinsley families in receipt of benefits.

Gender, Ethnicity

All details are approximate as we do not formally record this information.

Gender

Overall the gender of visitors has continued to be around 70% female and 30% male.

Ethnicity

The local population is made up of roughly 40% from Pakistan, 40% from Slovakia and 20% White British. 96% of school children in Tinsley are from BME groups.

This year we had two classes from Tinsley Meadows Primary School, all of which are set up for children with English as a second language. These groups are mainly comprised of children from Slovakia with a few children of Asian, Eastern European or other origins.

Our regular volunteers are White British and Kurdish. The occasional visitors were a mixture of Pakistani, Polish, Kurdish and White British.

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VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Trustees ' annual report - continued For the year ended 31 December 2020

Activities

Online presence

During lockdown we developed work on the social media presence of Tinsley Community Allotment (Facebook and Twitter), sharing regular updates about the allotment and suggesting activity ideas for children to do at home whilst schools were closed. Tinsley Meadows also shared these activities on their social media sites. These posts were well received - our Twitter post on a bug hunting activity, for example, reached 824 people. We also started making and posting videos on YouTube with the most popular being a video explaining how to grow pea shoots at home. These online activities ensured that we could continue to fulfil our charity’s objects in terms of ‘advancing the education of the public, in particular young people, by providing practical horticultural activities with links to the national curriculum’ under this year’s restricted circumstances.

Construction & maintenance

5

VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Trustees ' annual report - continued For the year ended 31 December 2020

Activities (continued)

Growing

During the lockdown we sowed seeds and raised plants at home for transplanting out later at the allotment. We began to visit the allotment again on 16th April in order to continue with maintenance and planting, in preparation for the possibility of reopening to the public. This also enabled us to offer regular volunteers access to harvests of crops.

We grew a variety of vegetables, herbs, fruit & flowers: Squashes – courgettes, pumpkin Brassicas – purple sprouting broccoli, pak choi, kale Legumes - French beans, broad beans

Onions & Roots – carrots, onions, garlic, leeks, beetroot, sweet potato, chard

Salad crops - tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, lettuces, chillies, rocket, radish, spinach, American land cress, red mizuna

Herbs - curry plant, rosemary, parsley, lemon balm, mint, chamomile Other vegetables - Sweetcorn, Greek cress, potatoes, quinoa Flowers – Calendula, sunflowers, nasturtium, geraniums,

The fruit growing in the orchard area includes apples, pears and plums. In the main allotment we have strawberries, blueberries, greengages, rhubarb, raspberries, plums, redcurrants, blackcurrants, gooseberries and cherries.

We grew both hardy and half hardy annual flowers including cornflowers, marigolds, nasturtiums and sunflowers. We also maintained Brachycombe, rocket, nasturtiums, dianthus and calendula in the ‘TCA’ bed near the entrance and planted out Caliope red geraniums.

The harvested produce was given to volunteers, visitors, members of Tinsley Forum and local people in the community throughout the year and as part of our free food bags donations and collaborating with Darnall Well Being’s ‘Sheffield Healthy Hampers’ during the school summer holidays.

School activities

Due to Covid-19 and lockdown, we only managed to run two school sessions with different groups. The activities we carried out with each group were riddling compost and leaf mould and sowing broad beans.

We trialled our new feedback station with the pupils. The station has three faces – green smiley, amber neutral and red sad – with posting holes under each. The children were given marbles to post. We received in total 20 green, 2 amber and 1 red. All of the pupils enjoyed the posting activity with some asking to have more marbles to post!

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VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Trustees ' annual report - continued For the year ended 31 December 2020

Activities (continued)

Links with the community

We have aimed to consolidate our links with the community during these difficult times.

Prior to lockdown we continued our research into starting a new pre-school families session. We attended Tinsley Meadows Nursery to advertise the planned session and then carried out a survey online with regards to timings. We were all set to start our trial sessions in the summer term, when lockdown began and the plans had to be put on hold.

We continued to have occasional visits from the Tinsley Area PC before lockdown. In October we had a visit from two PC’s, one of whom went home with our prize pumpkin to carve.

In August we got in touch with Yvonne Whitter from Darnall Well Being and provided free harvested produce to accompany the 125 Sheffield Healthy Hampers given to families on low incomes in the Tinsley area. Our produce was given as an addition to these hampers for the larger families in the area.

We also set up our weekly free harvest table at the entrance to the allotment in August and advertised locally on the street, as well as social media advertising (ours and Darnall Well Being’s

media pages). This was well attended by local people, the majority of whom had not visited the allotment before.

In September we made contact with Fiona Spotwood from Manor and Castle Development Trust - Best Start with regards to collaboration with parents and toddlers in the Tinsley area. They offered food bags for local families to collect on a fortnightly basis from Tinsley Forum. For the Halloween collection, Fiona set up a Halloween hunt for the families on the allotment with a pumpkin prize for each child. We had four children on the site for this activity and donated our bumper pumpkin to one of the local PCs.

Evaluation

This year has been difficult for everyone but we feel we have still managed to have a productive season at the allotment. While we have not been able to have as many visitors to the site, we have tried to see this as an opportunity to do other things. For example, it allowed us to let the poppies grow wild across the paths which looked amazing and hopefully increased the numbers of pollinators. It also allowed us to undertake some structural changes and have the time to do some bigger clearing and tidying jobs.

Our main changes to the allotment site were the structural alterations to the raised beds, the construction of the reading den and the building of the tippy tap. We have moved some of the donated planters from Meadowhall outside the entrance, and a regular visitor has started to use two of them to grow coriander.

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VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Trustees ' annual report - continued For the year ended 31 December 2020

Evaluation (continued)

She has expressed how much she appreciates being able to come with her grandson to sow, water and look after her crop, at times to suit her, when the allotment might be closed.

Once again, we took part again in the national “Cultivation Street” competition and this time we were voted first regional and then national winners. David Domoney made a hastily scheduled visit with a Sunday Mirror photographer, which we thought was to judge the allotment, but which turned out to be to announce us as winners and handover the obligatory giant cheque. We have now received the prize money and we are using it to improve the allotment. We plan to purchase a new raised pond and a solar irrigation watering kit and have already fitted a new skin for the polytunnel.

We have tried to maintain our relationship with Tinsley Meadows School despite not being able to have the children visit. They have frequently promoted our social media posts and have said that they hope to be able to return in the spring this year. We got in touch following the government’s Roadmap announcement and are waiting to hear back with regards to whether the school groups will be able to return to onsite visits and if so, when this might be able to happen. We have also suggested to them that we are willing to help them with their own plans for building a rooftop garden.

This year we have continued to improve harvesting and sharing our produce. At first, we thought we should scale back how much we grew, as we were concerned that the lockdown restrictions would mean crops went to waste. In fact, we soon realised that people were very keen to come and collect produce from the allotment gate. While we are wary of people solely coming to collect food and not engaging with the allotment in other ways, we think overall this has been a positive step. Nothing has been wasted and several people have found out about us who didn’t know we existed before. Some parents with young children have said they would like to return when we can open normally again. Several people have

come in to look around and see what we do, and overall, we feel like this shows funders that we have engaged with the community as much as possible during the Covid restrictions.

Impact of COVID-19

Since 23[rd] March 2020, and up to the time of the approval of the annual report and financial statements the UK has experienced a period of social distancing and self-isolation, alongside national lockdowns, in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, which has had a profound effect on the practical functioning of the charity.

8

VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Trustees ' annual report - continued For the year ended 31 December 2020

Impact of Covid 19 (continued)

Tinsley Community Allotment followed the government’s guidance at the start of the first lockdown and we closed our doors to the public on Monday 23rd March 2020.

We had previously begun our sessions for pupils from Tinsley Meadows Primary Academy at the start of the new growing season on Friday 6th March. During these sessions we had 23 pupils attending the allotment site for activities including riddling compost and sowing broad beans. We only managed to carry out two sessions before closing, as the school cancelled their visit on Friday 20th March amid concerns about the increased spread of Covid 19. Although the numbers of visitors to the site have been greatly curtailed due to the Covid 19 outbreak, we have still met our proposed number of pupil beneficiaries (up to 60 for a three year period 2020 - 2022) as stated in our application for grant funding from British Land.

During the first lockdown we sowed seeds and raised plants at home for transplanting out later at the allotment. We developed work on the social media presence of Tinsley Community Allotment (Facebook and Twitter), sharing regular updates about the allotment and suggesting activity ideas for children to do at home whilst schools were closed. Tinsley Meadows have also been sharing these activities on their social media sites. These posts have been well received - our Twitter post on a bug hunting activity, for example, reached 824 people. We have also started making and posting videos on YouTube with the most popular being a video explaining how to grow pea shoots at home. These online activities have ensured that we can continue to fulfil our charity’s objects in terms of ‘advancing the education of the public, in particular young people, by providing practical horticultural activities with links to the national curriculum’ under the current circumstances.

The allotment workers began to visit the allotment again on 16th April 2020 in order to continue with maintenance and planting, in preparation for the possibility of reopening to the public. This has also enabled us to offer regular volunteers access to harvests of crops. All of these activities have been carried out following social distancing and health and safety guidelines for the workers.

During the summer of 2020, we took guidance from similar organisations including Social Farms & Gardens and the National Allotment Society to create our own guidelines for what Health and Safety measures needed to be in place in order to open our doors again. We set up a Covid safe environment on the allotment during the summer holidays and re-opened our gates to invited volunteers on 27[th] August. Only one family took up the offer, but they continued to attend until 25[th] September when we closed our sessions to the public, as we do each year.

In March 2021 we got in touch with Tinsley Meadows Primary Academy and are awaiting their response with regards to whether pupils will be able to return with the proposed lifting of restrictions in the coming months. If this is not possible due to issues of taking groups out of school, we will suggest bringing sowing activities into school, in order to fulfil our grant funder’s requirements.

Although still not open to the public, Tinsley Community Allotment are currently looking at how this will be possible in the coming months, whilst adhering to the current guidelines.

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VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Trustees ' annual report - continued For the year ended 31 December 2020

Impact of Covid 19 (continued)

On 1st April 2020, we contacted both of our main grant providers to keep them informed of the situation regarding Covid-19. We updated British Land on the allotment’s activities mid-year, providing information about how the school children had been engaged with our project since the lockdown, and completed a grant monitoring form in early 2021. They have recently confirmed that they will be releasing the agreed grant for 2021. With regards to the EOn fund, we are currently waiting for a monitoring form request for the previous funds and have been told that new funds will probably be released when groups can start working with the public again.

Our largest change financially is that Tinsley Tree Project, who we had been a part of until we set up as a charity, has had to wind down as a business. Their trustees agreed that the reserves that they held would be passed to Tinsley Community Allotment. This means that we have been given a substantial donation of £50,000 which we have been utilising alongside our grant funds, as reserves to enable the continued functioning of Tinsley Community Allotment in to the years to come.

Due to the donation from Tinsley Tree Project, we consider that Tinsley Community Allotment will be able to continue for the next 12 months.

Plans for the future

Due to the pandemic, all plans for the future have to be flexible and will be adjusted to reflect prevailing government guidelines and restrictions. The Government’s recently produced roadmap to ease lockdown restrictions will hopefully impact on what we will be able to do in 2021.

Our ideal plan would be to return to our normal way of working, which is to offer sessions to pupils from Tinsley Meadows Primary Academy during the mornings in term time and to open to the public in the afternoons on one day a week. We would start to pilot our new family pre-school session for half a day a week in the spring/summer months to maximise attendee potential and we would pay the allotment workers half a day a week admin time. We would continue to develop our online presence with videos and social media posts. We also hope to reinstate the harvest table outside the allotment gate, but this would need to wait until the growing season is further on and there are more crops to offer. Our plan is to grow fast growing salads to try to make this date as early as possible.

The contingency plan during the pandemic is to start to invite some of the regular volunteers back to the allotment once groups of people are allowed to meet in outdoor spaces again. This would be trialled with a small number of regulars and monitored before hopefully extending the sessions to bring in more people. As social distancing is more difficult with children, we will put our pre-school session on hold until it is safe for groups to gather, or until restrictions are lifted. We will continue to offer other ways that we can engage people with the activities of the allotment, whether through social media, offering harvests locally or any other ideas we develop.

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VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Trustees ' annual report - continued For the year ended 31 December 2020

Plans for the future (continued)

Financially we will continue to pay our staff for two days a week from the start of March until the end of September and then pay them for one day a week until the end of 2021. In 2022 we propose to employ the staff for 20 weeks at one day a week and 30 weeks at two days a week. All of these will be at the new agreed pay scale. We will continue to apply for grants from British Land and Eon and possibly Sheffield City Council Ward Pot, as well as investigating any other funding streams that are relevant to the project.

Reserves policy

We have reviewed our Reserves Policy and, after assessing the risk profile of our income streams and fixed and variable costs, have introduced a new reserves policy target at a range between £4083 and £13983 a year. This will enable the allotment to continue with current grant levels for approximately a range of between 11 and 3.2 years working on the current reserves in the bank. Based on the current forecast for number of days employed into 2022 and grant levels remaining the same, our reserves will be used within 4.75 years.

11

VAS Community Accountancy

Independent Examiner’s Report to the Trustees of Tinsley Community Allotment (“the Charity”)

I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the Charity for the period ended 31 December 2020 which are set out on pages 13 to 15.

Responsibilities and basis of report

As the charity trustees 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.

Independent examiner’s statement

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that, in any material respect:

  1. accounting records were not kept 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.

Disclaimer

The charity have disclosed the known impacts of the current COVID-19 outbreak and have concluded that the charity can continue for a period of at least twelve months from the date when the financial statements are authorised for issue. However, because not all future events or conditions can be predicted, this statement is not a guarantee as to the charity’s ability to continue as a going concern. For example, it is difficult to evaluate all of the potential implications of the current COVID-19 outbreak on the charity’s activities, income, volunteers, suppliers and the wider economy.

Signed:

Susan Cochrane FCA

On behalf of Voluntary Action Sheffield Community Accountancy The Circle 33, Rockingham Lane Sheffield S1 4FW

Date: 09/06/2021

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VAS Community Accountancy

Tinsley Community Allotment

Receipts & payments account

For the period ended 31 December 2020

Notes
Receipts
Grants & donations
2
Total receipts
Payments
Equipment
Resources
Seeds & plants
Insurance
Sessional Support wages
Admin
Other
Total payments
Net receipts for the year
Total funds brought forward
Total funds carried forward		 Unrestricted
fund
£
50,000		 Restricted
fund
£
1,500
1,500
401
25
29
-
4,200
-
-
4,655
(3,155)
3,155
-		 Total
2020
£
51,500
51,500
577
25
53
123
6,096
2,450
310
9,634
41,866
3,155
45,021		 Total
2019
£
3,499
50,000 3,499
176
-
24
123
1,896
2,450
310		 258
86
-
-
-
-
-
4,979 344
45,021
-		 3,155
-
45,021 3,155

VAS Community Accountancy

13

Tinsley Community Allotment

Statement of assets and liabilities

As at 31 December 2020

Cash assets
Balances at bank:
Current account
Total
Liabilities
Creditors
Accountancy and independent examination		 2020
£
45,021
45,021
2020
£
807
840
1,647		 2019
£
3,155
3,155
2019
£
-
300
300

These Financial Statements are accepted by the trustees on _____ Signed on behalf of the Board of Trustees by:

Print name: Trustee

VAS Community Accountancy

14

Tinsley Community Allotment

Notes to the accounts

For the period ended 31 December 2020

1 Receipts & payments account

Receipts and payments accounts are statements that summarise the movement of cash into and out of the organisation during the financial year. In this context "cash" includes cash equivalents, for example, bank accounts where cash can be readily withdrawn to pay for debts as they become due.

2 Grants & donations

Grants & donations
Donations
Sheffield City Council Ward Pot
E-on Community Fund
British Land Grant		 Unrestricted
funds
£
50,000
-
-
-
50,000		 Restricted
funds
£
-
-
-
1,500
1,500		 2020
Total
£
50,000
-
-
1,500
51,500		 2019
Total
£
-
499
3,000
-
3,499

3 Restricted funds

Sheffield City Council Ward Pot
E-on Community Fund
British Land Grant		 Opening
balance
1-Jan-20
£
155
3,000
-
155		 Receipts
£
-
-
1,500
-		 Payments
£
(155)
(3,000)
(1,500)
(3,155)		 Closing
balance
31-12-20
£
-
-
-
-

Sheffield City Council Ward Pot

Funding to purchase equipment and resources for the allotment

E-on Community Fund

Funding to pay for staff costs for educational and experiential sessions to be held during 2020.

British Land Grant

Funding to enable the running or a programme of organic fruit and vegetable cultivation sessions for local school children.

Prior year

Sheffield City Council Ward Pot
E-on Community Fund		 Opening
balance
£
-
-
-		 Receipts
£
499
3,000
3,499		 Payments
£
(344)
-
(344)		 Closing
balance
31-12-19
£
155
3,000
3,155

4 Trustees' remuneration

Trustees received no expenses, remuneration or benefits in this period.

5 Transactions with related parties

A donation of £50,000 was received from Tinsley Tree Project of which S Sutherland, a trustee, is a director. Tinsley Community Allotment was run as part of the Tinsley Tree Project until being set up as a charity in 2018 and, in addition to the donation, Tinsley Tree Project have supported Tinsley Community Allotment as detailed in the trustees' annual report.

VAS Community Accountancy

15