2021-12-31-accounts

ANNUAL REPORT

For the year ended 31 December 2021

The Parish of Alne

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Trustees’ Annual Report

2021 Report for the Parish of Alne

Aims and purposes

The Parochial Church Council (PCC) has the responsibility of cooperating with the priest-in-charge, the Reverend Deborah Coyne, in promoting within the ecclesiastical parish, the whole mission of the Church, pastoral, evangelistic, social and ecumenical.

Objectives and Activities

The PCC is committed to enabling as many people as possible to worship at our churches and to become part of our parish community. The PCC maintains an overview of worship throughout the parish and makes suggestions on how our services can involve the many groups that live within our parish. Our services and worship put faith into practice through prayer and scripture, music and sacrament.

When planning our activities for the year, we have considered the Commission’s guidance on public benefit and, in particular, the supplementary guidance on charities for the advancement of religion.

In particular, we try to enable ordinary people to live out their faith as part of our parish community through:

• Worship and prayer; learning about the Gospel; and developing their knowledge and trust in Jesus.

• Provision of pastoral care for people living in the parish.

• Missionary and outreach work.

To facilitate this work, it is important that we maintain the fabric of the three churches within the parish; St. Mary’s Alne, St. Stephen’s Aldwark and St. Michael’s Tollerton.

Achievements and Performance

Worship and Prayer

The PCC is keen to offer a range of Sunday services across the three churches over the course of the year that our community find both beneficial and spiritually fulfilling. Services at St. Stephens and St. Mary’s are more traditional whereas at St. Michaels are more modern, family-friendly and less formal, with guitar led worship singing modern worship songs. All three churches aim to have a service of Holy Communion at least once a month.

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All are welcome to attend our regular services. At present there are 85 parishioners on the Church Electoral Roll.

2021 was, like 2020, an exceptional year due to the restrictions imposed due to Covid-19. For the majority of the year it was not possible to hold in-person services. In addition, our Priest-in-Charge, Revd Debbie Coyne, was off work for the whole year with a long-term illness.

Prior to in-person services being possible, and whilst our Priest-in-Charge was off work with long-term illness, our curate held services via Zoom. These were provided for all the parishes for which Revd Coyne is Priest-in-Charge. Though far from being the same as in-person services, these were well attended throughout the period. In addition, the content of these services was provided on the Benefice website and so were accessible at any subsequent time.

In-person services re-started on June 27[th] and continued throughout the rest of 2021, initially following a pattern of a service every Sunday at St. Michael’s, with services on alternating Sundays at St. Mary’s and St. Stephen’s. later in the year, St. Stephens reduced to a single service each month.

St. Mary’s was opened for private prayer and for general visitors on a daily basis.

As well as our regular services, we enable our community to celebrate and thank God at the milestones of the journey through life. Through baptism we thank God for the gift of life, in marriage public vows are exchanged with God’s blessing and through funeral services friends and family express their grief and give thanks for the life which is now complete in this world and to commend the person into God’s keeping. Marriages are a particularly important aspect of the ministry at St. Stephen’s, where couples frequently arrange their reception after the service at the local Aldwark Manor Hotel. Many of the couples attend for 6 months in order to qualify to be married in the parish and this provides a wonderful opportunity for them to hear the Gospel. Many return later to have their children baptised, travelling many miles to do so.

The number of weddings was affected by Covid-19, and whilst some couples rearranged their wedding having been postponed as a result of the pandemic, some decided just to cancel. In total 8 marriages were conducted (5 at St. Stephen’s and 3 at St. Mary’s); 9 funerals took place (8 of which were at St. Mary’s and 7 baptisms (3 at St. Stephens and 4 at St. Mary’s)

Deanery Synod

One member of the PCC sits on the deanery synod. This provides the PCC with an important link between the parish and the wider structures of the church. Of particular importance this year was the review carried out by the Diocese, which requested the views of all PCC’s and Alne PCC met specifically to discuss our feedback and duly fed this back to the Diocese and to the Synod.

Pastoral Care

Some members of our parish are unable to attend church due to sickness or age. Our Curate visited all church members who have requested it, to celebrate communion with them either at their homes or in hospital and she also visited many parishioners offering prayer or just a chat.

Mission and Evangelism

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St. Michael’s Tollerton donates 10% of its income to local, national or international Christian Missionary charities.

Our parish magazine is distributed monthly to all parishioners freely. The magazine keeps our parishioners informed of the important matters affecting our Church and articles that help develop knowledge and trust in Jesus. It also includes local community news. Again, we followed guidelines issued by the Diocese that the church should not deliver printed material due to Covid-19, so magazines were made available at the church gate and other selected locations in the villages instead, until door to door delivery recommenced later in the year.

All three churches actively seek to engage with the village communities. St. Mary’s participated in the annual Street Fayre, hosting ‘Alne, past and & present’, book and plant stalls, an organ recital, bell ringing and brass rubbing, attracting a good number of both adults and children. In addition, St. Mary’s participated in the village Open Gardens event and hosted a cello concert, and the major festival services (Remembrance Day, a Harvest Festival for Children and the Christingle service on Christmas Eve) attract many parishioners. Additional restoration funds were also raised for the church by a villager doing a sponsored channel swim, which boosted donations for the year significantly.

All three churches contributed to a “Christmas Tree Angel’ appeal, by which toys were purchased as gifts for disadvantaged children in York, arranged through the Salvation Army. A great number of parishioners contributed to this initiative and it was very effective at raising the profile of the 3 churches in a positive way.

St. Michaels initiated a “pray one for me” initiative, delivering cards to all houses in the village inviting parishioners to respond with their prayer requests. St. Michael’s also produced a “Welcome to Tollerton” booklet, incorporating both church and general village information, copies of which are delivered to newcomers into the village. Special services were arranged, which took place in the Village hall rather than the church; the first to remember those who were lost, particularly in the last two years due to Covid-19 and the second a carol service where children brought the ‘baby Jesus rocks’ they had found (the theme being ”Have you found Baby Jesus?”).

St. Stephen’s, in addition to their wedding and baptism ministry, held their annual Carol Service, which again attracted many parishioners who would not otherwise attend church services.

Reserves policy

It is PCC policy to maintain a balance on unrestricted funds which equates to at least six months unrestricted payments. It is held to smooth out fluctuations in cash flow and to meet emergencies. This was achieved by all three churches individually in 2020 and by the PCC in 2021.

Safeguarding

The PCC has complied with the duty to have ‘due regard’ for the House of Bishops’ Safeguarding Policy and Practice Guidance. GodZone (the ‘Sunday

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School’ at St. Michael’s Tollerton, was held on just six occasions in the latter part of 2021.

Optional

Information

Volunteers

We would like to thank all the volunteers who work so hard to make our parish the lively and vibrant community it is.

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Structure, governance and management

The Parochial Church Council is a corporate body established by the Church of England. The PCC operates under the Parochial Church Council Powers Measure.

The method of appointment of PCC members is set out in the Church Representation Rules. The membership of the PCC consists of the Priest-in-Charge (our vicar), churchwardens, the curate and members elected by those members of the congregation who are on the electoral roll of the church. All those who are members of the congregation are encouraged to register on the Electoral Roll and stand for election to the PCC.

The PCC members are responsible for supervising the decisions on all matters of general concern and importance to the parish including deciding on how the funds of the PCC are to be spent. Delegated to DCC’s

The full PCC met 4 times during the year in addition to the APCM which was held in May by Zoom. Each of the three individual churches are managed by their own church councils.

Administrative information

The Parish of Alne is part of the Diocese of York within the Church of England. The correspondence address is Church Office, St. Michael’s Church, Newton Road Tollerton York YO61 1QX. The PCC is a body corporate (PCC Powers Measure 1956, Church Representation Rules 2011) and a charity currently registered with the Charity Commission.

PCC members who have served at any time from 1st January 2021 until December 2021 are:

Ex Officio members: Priest-in-Charge: Reverend Deborah Coyne (Chair) Curate: Reverend Carmel Gittens Warden: vacancy Warden: vacancy Deputy-warden Mr Arthur Harland (Lay Chair of PCC, warden of St. Michael’s, Tollerton, Deanery Synod representative)

Deputy-warden Mrs Alison Dowson (warden of St. Michael’s, Tollerton)

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Elected members:

Mr Bill Ormerod Mrs Carol Watson (Parish Safeguarding Officer) Mrs Vivienne Bird (from 3[rd] March 2021) Mr David Finnegan (Treasurer, from 3rd March 2021) Mrs Maggie Bond (from 28[th] June 2021) Mrs Sharon Oliver (from 3rd March 2021)

Financial Accounts

In 2021 the three church accounts were merged, so that Alne PCC became the single account under which the finances of all three churches were managed. The procedures to be used were formally proposed and adopted at the PCC meeting held 3[rd] March 2021 and the process of integrating the historically three separate financial accounts was completed by mid-year, including retro-fitting the first half-year accounts for all three individual churches into the new single account, enabling the whole year to be reported on as single entity.

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March 2022

Parochial Church Council of Alne

Full Year Financial Performance for 2021

These accounts have been Independently Examined and the signed declaration is attached.

Alne PCC is the charity that administers funds for the three churches of St Mary’s Alne, St Stephen’s Aldwark and St Michael’s Tollerton. This is the first year these arrangements have taken place so the accounts do not show comparisons with previous years.

It should be remembered that 2020 and 2021 were severely disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

1. The main account is the General Fund and this began the year with £54,313 (£34,905 + £19,408 designated for Mission and Building Maintenance)

2. During the year it received a total income of £48,170 which was made up of around

3. £33,500 in donations that were increased by a tax refund of £5,960 from HMRC

4. £8600 in miscellaneous income and wedding/funeral fees.

Total income was significantly lower than expected, largely due to the effects of coronavirus on church activities.

During the year the General Fund paid out a total of £44,400 (£37,443 + £6,967) which was made up of

• £25,000 as our Freewill Offering to the York Diocese for our clergy and other support but this falls very short of the actual costs incurred by the diocese for us.

• £2,055 as charitable donations for mission based work that we could not do.

• £2,684 as the costs of weddings and funerals

• £1,375 as the costs of the Parish Magazine

• £5,100 as the costs of running the three churches (heat, light, insurance, licences etc)

• £1,210 as our contribution to the Benefice Ministry Team expenses.

• £6,967 on repairing and maintaining the three churches (designated funds)

Thus the General Fund made a surplus of around £3,700 in 2021 which means it closed the year with £58,396 in the bank (£45,632 + £12,764 designated for Mission and Building Maintenance).

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1. In addition to the PCC’s General Fund, each church has a fund that is legally restricted to either Building Repairs and Improvements (for both Alne and Aldwark churches) or to that at Tollerton plus Mission activities. These funds are detailed in the statement of assets below. The Restricted Funds started the year with £116,585 and received £5,512 in donations, grants and a legacy before spending £15,666 on major woodworm repairs, various improvements in line with their Five Year Programmes and a retention payment. It is likely that additional funds will be required at two churches within a year or so.

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