||**Trustees' Annual Report**|**Trustees' Annual Report**|**Trustees' Annual Report**|**Trustees' Annual Report**|**Trustees' Annual Report**|**for theperiod**|**for theperiod**|**for theperiod**| |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| ||**From**|Period start date|||**To**|Period end date||| |||02|04|2023||01|04|2024| ## Section A Reference and administration details **Charity name** Stevenage and North Herts Talking News **Other names charity is known by** **Registered charity number (if any)** 1184417 **Charity's principal address** 8 Chambers Lane Ickleford **Postcode SG5 3YA** ## **Names of the charity trustees who manage the charity** ||1
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7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
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20|**Trustee name**|**Office (if any)**|**Dates acted if not for whole**
**year**|**Name of person (or body) entitled**
**to appoint trustee (ifany)**| |---|---|---|---|---|---| |||Ian Hanks|Chair||| |||WendyRoskilly|Treasurer||| |||Neil Dodds|Committee
member||| |||Colin Blake|Committee
member||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| |||**Names of the trustees for the charity, if any, (for example, any custodian trustees)**|||| |||**Name**||**Dates acted if not for whole year**|| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| March **2012** **TAR** 1 ## **Names and addresses of advisers (Optional information)** **Type of adviser Name Address Name of chief executive or names of senior staff members (Optional information)** ## **Section B Structure, governance and management** ## **Description of the charity’s trusts** Type of governing document Constitution (dated February 2020) - (eg. trust deed, constitution) CIO (Foundation) How the charity is constituted (eg. trust, association, company) Elected by members at Annual General Meeting Trustee selection methods - (eg. appointed by, elected by) ## **Additional governance issues (Optional information)** The charity is managed by a committee which is made up of the trustees You **may choose** to include and other committee members elected at the AGM. additional information, where relevant, about: Stevenage and North Herts Talking News is a member of the Talking News Federation. - policies and procedures adopted for the induction and training of trustees; - training of trustees; We have written policies on Safeguarding (reviewed April 2024), Policy and Procedures (reviewed April 2023), Privacy (reviewed April 2023), and - the charity’s organisational a GDPR Statement (reviewed April 2023). - structure and any wider network with which the charity works; - relationship with any related parties; - trustees’ consideration of major risks and the system and procedures to manage them. ## **Section C Objectives and activities** **Summary of the objects of the charity set out in its governing document** To provide to the blind or the partially sighted or those labouring under some temporary or permanent incapacity or disability which makes reading a strain, a weekly newspaper and magazine through a recorded device. **Summary of the main activities undertaken for the public benefit in relation to TAR** To achieve our objects we: March **2012** 2 - recruit, train and organise a team of volunteers as readers, article writers, editors, technicians and dispatchers; - gather articles and items from our local papers and other sources; - distribute these to the volunteer readers who record in their own homes using their own smartphones; - obtain recordings of articles from a variety of national magazines by subscription to the RNIB; **these objects (include within this section the statutory declaration that trustees have had regard to the guidance issued by the Charity Commission on public benefit)** - compile and adjust the sound on all the audio recordings to produce a master copy; - duplicate on to the required number of memory sticks; - distribute these to the listeners each week via the ‘Articles for the Blind’ postal service; - attract and recruit new blind and partially sighted listeners, introduce them to the service, loan them a suitable media player to listen to their recordings, and keep in touch with them to ensure the service is meeting their needs. - maintain a confidential register of listeners, having regard to GDPR guidelines; - seek funds as needed to pay for equipment needed to maintain the service, through grants from funding bodies and donations. ## **Additional details of objectives and activities (Optional information)** All our members are volunteers, we do not have any paid employees. You **may choose** to include further statements, where relevant, about: - policy on grantmaking; - policy programme related investment; - contribution made by volunteers. ## Section D Achievements and performance March **2012** **TAR** 3 ## Section D Achievements and performance **Summary of the main achievements of the charity during the year**  Our established team of 27 volunteers has been consistently supportive and reliable, with many proactively helping to promote our service.  While a number of our listeners have stopped using the service over the year, often due to worsening health, others have joined and our average number of listeners remains consistent.  We continue to maintain our website which allows potential new listeners and their families to learn more about the service we offer.  We have advertised and promoted our service through local publications and libraries, and by visits to organisations including a Macular Society group and OPALS meetings for older residents.  We continue to maintain a dedicated phone account for our charity manned by a rota of committee members.  The number of new listeners joining the service fluctuates but continues to be affected by the closure of many clubs and support groups where potential listeners might previously have heard about us.  We continued to use our system of remote working so that readers, editors, compilers and dispatchers could work independently from home using their own smartphones and email. This means that we avoid the cost of expensive equipment or premises, and allows our volunteers to manage their own work within a set time frame.  In addition to distributing our weekly editions to our listeners via memory sticks, we continued to publish them on the BWBF Talking News platform. This allows our volunteer readers to hear the finished product and monitor their own performance.  We have continued to extend the content of our editions beyond the local papers and the RNIB magazine recordings, by finding, and encouraging our volunteers to find, items from other sources which will be of interest to our listeners.  We have continued to liaise with other talking news groups and shared material with a number of them.  Through online searches and forums we researched different media players as possible replacements for the Sonic 2 which is no longer available. We bought three players to assess, and decided on one of them, the Synapptic V2, as the best available machine at present, although not ideal. We bought six of these players and have already distributed five to new listeners. ## **Section E Financial review** March **2012** **TAR** 4 We need to hold reserves of unrestricted available funds which are **Brief statement of the** sufficient to allow us to operate for a full year without any new income. **charity’s policy on reserves** Taking into account annual running costs currently totalling £731, and equipment and consumables for loan to up to 20 new listeners per year currently totalling around £75 per listener, the minimum amount of unrestricted reserves we should hold at any time is £3,000, which can however include the value of equipment and consumables held in stock. ## **Details of any funds materially in deficit** ## **Further financial review details (Optional information)** You **may choose** to include additional information, where relevant about: - the charity’s principal sources of funds (including any fundraising); We received modest donations from listeners and their families which were used to partially offset our running costs. We did not undertake any fundraising during 2023/4, meaning that our payments exceeded our receipts, so we plan to seek funding from granting bodies during 2024/5. - how expenditure has supported the key objectives of the charity; - investment policy and objectives including any ethical investment policy adopted. ## **Section F Other optional information** ## **Section G Declaration** **The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees’ report above.** **Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees** |**Signature(s)**
**Full name(s)**
**Position (eg Secretary, Chair,**
**etc)**
**Date**|Circulated to all trustees via email and agreed at an online committee
meeting.|Circulated to all trustees via email and agreed at an online committee
meeting.| |---|---|---| ||Ian Hanks|Wendy H Roskilly| ||Chair|Treasurer| ||29 August 2024|| March **2012** **TAR** 5 ||**Charity Name**
|**Charity Name**
|**Charity Name**
|**No (if any)**|**CC16a**| |---|---|---|---|---|---| ||**For the period**
**from**|Period start date
02.04.23|**To**|Period end date
01.04.24|| ||||||| |**Section A Receipts and payments**|||||| |**A1 Receipts**
Donations
**99**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**99**
**-**
**-**
**_Sub total_ -**
**_Total receipts_ 99**
**A3 Payments**
RNIB magazine subscription
**170**
Royal Mail(PO Box annual fee)
**330**
TalkingNews Federation subscription
**42**
TNF conference online access
**25**
Website andphone
**83**
Players to be assessed to replace Sonic2
**73**
7 x Synappticplayers for listener use
**283**
Memorysticks
**52**
Consumables and sundries
**143**
Travel expenses
**81**
**_Sub total_ 1,282**
**-**
**-**
**_Sub total_ -**
**_Total payments_ 1,282**
**_Net of receipts/(payments)_ - 1,183**
**A5 Transfers between funds**
**-**
**A6 Cash funds last year end**
**-**
**_Cash funds this year end_ 4,195**
**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**to the nearest £**
**_Sub total_**_(Gross income for AR)_
**A2 Asset and investment sales,**
**(see table).**

**A4 Asset and investment**
**purchases, (see table)**||**to the nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Restricted**
**funds**|**to the nearest £**
**Endowment**
**funds**|**Total funds**
**to the nearest £**
**99**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**99**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**99**
**170**
**330**
**42**
**25**
**83**
**73**
**283**
**52**
**143**
**81**
**1,282**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**1,282**
**- 1,183**
**-**
**-**
**4,195**|**Last year**
**to the nearest £**| ||||**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**|**99**|**-**| |||||**-**|**-**| |||||**-**|**-**| |||||**-**|**-**| |||||**-**|**-**| |||||**-**|**-**| |||||**-**|**-**| |||||**-**|**-**| |||||**99**|**1,393**| ||||||| ||||**-**
**-**
**-**|**-**|| |||||**-**|**-**| |||||**-**|**-**| ||||||| ||||**-**|**99**|**1,393**| ||||||| ||||**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**|**170**|**-**| |||||**330**|**-**| |||||**42**|**-**| |||||**25**|| |||||**83**|**-**| |||||**73**|**-**| |||||**283**|**-**| |||||**52**|**-**| |||||**143**|**-**| |||||**81**|**-**| |||||**1,282**|**1,695**| ||||||| ||||**-**
**-**
**-**|**-**|| |||||**-**|| |||||**-**|**-**| ||||||| ||||**-**|**1,282**|**1,695**| ||||||| |||**-**|**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**|**- 1,183**|**- 302**| |||**-**||**-**|**-**| |||**-**||**-**|**5,680**| |||**-**||**4,195**|**5,378**| ## **Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period** |**Categories**
**B1 Cash funds**
**B2 Other monetary assets**
**B3 Investment assets**
**B5 Liabilities**
**B4 Assets retained for the**
**charity’s own use**|**Details**
**Details**
**Details**
**Details**
**Details**
**_Total cash funds_**
(agree balances with receipts and payments
account(s))|**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
Agreement Error
**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**Fund to which**
**asset belongs**
**Fund to which**
**asset belongs**
**Fund to which**
**liability relates**|**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
OK
**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Cost (optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Cost (optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**Amount due**
**(optional)**|**to nearest £**
**Endowment**
**funds**| |---|---|---|---|---| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||OK| |||||**to nearest £**
**Endowment**
**funds**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**Current value**
**(optional)**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**Current value**
**(optional)**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**-**| |||||**When due**
**(optional)**| ||||**-**|| ||||**-**|| ||||**-**|| ||||**-**|| ||||**-**|| Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees Signature Print Name Date of approval