Cambridge Harriers CIO Trustees Annual report
For the year ended 31[st] March 2022
A charitable incorporated organisation registered in England, number 1186795 Registered address: 60a Glenhurst Avenue, Bexley, Kent DA5 3QW
Objectives and Activities
Under the terms of the Constitution dated 25[th] September 2019, the Trustees have the responsibility of pursuing the objective of the Charity which is to provide community based athletics and associated leisure activities.
Cambridge Harriers was formed in 1890 and so is over 130 years old and has helped many thousands of people enjoy the sport of athletics over this time
The club is based in the Greenwich and Bexley Boroughs of South East London with a track base at Sutcliffe Park Athletics Track in Eltham and a clubhouse in Bexley Village. There is a membership of over 400 and active sections participating in Track and Field events, Cross Country, Fell Running, Road Running and Race Walking.
Structure, Governance and Management
The club became a charitable incorporated organisation in December 2019 and is managed by a group of trustees, who are supported by a team of dedicated volunteer coaches, team managers, officials and administrators. The club which was previously an unincorporated association donated all its assets to the charity.
In 2021 the trustees moved the club’s day to day management from a monthly committee meeting to a 3 monthly board meeting whilst appointing trustees in charge of various portfolios and giving them more power to develop their respective area of the club. The board make up is as follows and we would like to express our thanks for all those who stepped up to these roles.
Mick Bond (elected Chair) and in charge of Track and Field Portfolio
Clem Dixon Endurance portfolio Peter Wishart Coaching portfolio Lisa Atkinson Marketing Portfolio Barry Ferguson Officials Portfolio Dom Fiore finance and General purposes portfolio Sir Alastair MacDonald Malcolm Coomber Mark Cross Christian Poulton (club secretary) Phil Pape (club treasurer) Christine Bond David Reader
The charity employs no staff
In accordance with the Constitution one third of the trustees have to stand down at the AGM but can apply for re election. Those standing down and seeking re election are Alasdair Macdonald, Barry Ferguson, Christine Bond, Christian Poulton and Phil Pape.
Dom Fiore is standing down whilst David Fisher is seeking election
Achievements and Performance - Chairman’s Report
The year started in April 21 as the UK emerged from the latest Government lockdown due to Covid. And I am pleased to be able to say that the club appears to have survived well and is now thriving again with membership numbers actually at the highest they have been since 2015 at 430.
As Chairman I believe this is largely down to improvement in promotion of the club via social media and the schools program we organise, along with better organisation and delivery of our coaching program making for a better first and lasting impression for new members.
The club has an excellent catchment area, access to top class facilities, a growing coaching team and a dedicated band of volunteer team managers, officials, and helpers. Bizarrely the Covid period had also seen the club prosper financially due to several Government grants to support Sports clubs and this will be touched on in the financial report
I believe we are well placed to continue helping all our members with their athletic journey and to make an impression on the National Athletics scene.
I would like to personally thank all those who have acted as trustees for the year especially those who have taken on responsibility for portfolio’s and who’s own reports are provided below plus I would also like to thank our long standing membership secretary Noel Carmody who’s hard work has overseen a seamless transition to an on line membership scheme during the year
Portfolio Reports
Finance and General Purposes by Phil Pape
First of all, we now have a new Club Secretary in Christian Poulton who has taken over from Mark Cross whom we thank for all the hard work he put in during his tenure of the role. The transition between the two went very smoothly. Christian has also become a Trustee of the Club.
The club finances continue to grow and a surplus of £11,514 was made during the financial year which meant we were able to hold membership fees at their existing level. New equipment, mainly the photo finish camara, costing £15,628 was purchased and the events we organised brought in a net £6,678. Overall our Bank balances stood at £65,973 at the 31[st] March 2022.
We will be looking for a new Treasurer from April 2024 as I intend to step down from this role on 31[st] March 2024.
Membership levels have seen a recovery during the year lead by the Starter and Intermediate sessions that we now provide.
The Club House continues to bring in income to cover it’s running costs and the licenced bar has also helped achieve this. The old weights room that is now used as storage will be replaced shortly as it has got past its sell buy date.
Endurance by Clem Dixon
We had a successful cross-country season with record participation and many good performances. However, participation was skewed in our favour with both the Nationals and the Southerns being local to us this year. Looking at the statistics for Kent races only (where it is more legitimate to make year on year comparisons), this shows that numbers were declining pre covid and that although there has been a bounce-back we are still below the peak of four years ago. This is true across all categories. As for performance: on their day our senior women are the best team in the county but they lack strength in depth and suffer when key individuals are missing, as a result they finished 2[nd] to Tonbridge in the League. Conversely the senior men have good strength in depth and can usually be relied upon to take 4[th] place but lack the star names that could lead to breaking into the big three (Tonbridge, Blackheath & Bromley, Medway & Maidstone). The trick to getting a high league position in the young age groups is to field a complete team at all fixtures, we only managed to do this with the Under 13s, the girls finishing 4[th] and the boys 7[th] . Our targets for the coming season are to return to or exceed our peak participation levels of four years ago, for the senior women to challenge Tonbridge in the League, for the senior men to break into the top three on a regular basis and for the young age groups to field complete teams at most fixtures. The increase in membership that we have experienced post-Covid shows these to be realistic targets.
The project to rejuvenate our fell running section is still work in progress. It has not been aided this year by many of the races being impossible for newcomers to get into because entry lists were already full with those with rolled over entries from covid cancellations.
There have been many noteworthy road-running performances culminating in a first place for the senior women in the Southern relay championships. The project to make our road running section more cohesive is also work in progress.
Coaching by Peter Wishart
To date we have added one Assistant Club coach, and one qualified Leader in Running Fitness to the coaching structure. These coaches are actively assisting qualified coaches as part of the mentoring process outlined in the Framework.
This coming year we expected to have one coach progressing to a Club Coach license, whilst another senior athlete is applying for an Assistant Club Coach course, however the availability of courses has stalled progress
The Strategic Framework document has been issued to all coaches. Regarding the mentoring, we have had informal discussions with various coaches, and the idea has generally been well received.
To date we have spent £462.60 on 10 winter jackets for our coaches.
Course costs will be available once the application process has been completed.
Our coaching structure at Sutcliffe Park has attracted the interest of non-member coaches; one of whom has expressed interest in joining us.
Our current Academy lead coach will be moving on later in the year, we are actively exploring options so that the successful Academy program continues.
ATHLETES
The Academy, comprising the Tuesday Starters six-week course, and the Thursday Intermediate (advanced) session, has proved to be successful.
The Starters: at the beginning of the year numbers were down, as was anticipated for the post-holiday period. This allowed the two young assistants to continue developing their coaching skills in planning and coaching activities, supervised by the lead coach. As attendance picked up, the assistants have been able to play a greater role in the coaching activities.
The Intermediate group has experienced similar low numbers for January/February, but there has been a steady increase over the Spring. There are now 16 regular participants.
To date the Academy program has resulted in at least 24 new junior athletes joining the club ; thus proving to be, not just an important recruitment platform, but essentially the means by which we develop physical literacy and athleticism in our youngsters.
Marketing and Promotion by Lisa Atkinson
Web Site:- After a lot of background work our new website went live Jan 2021 and continues to be updated where necessary.. The site is much more user friendly for both contributors and readers and offers a good shop window for our club and communication tool for all our members
Social Media:- Instagram accounts have been setup for all athletic disciplines and are proving popular amongst our active members. Our public and private Facebook accounts are also getting more active
2021 included a bespoke video promotion released on Facebook along with postcard style promotional leaflets for handing out at Sutcliffe Park, School events Parkruns etc
Schools Program:- We ran another successful Greenwich Schools programme , organising 6 events and taking Borough teams to three London Championships. The program encourages Schools to do Athletics and continues to be one of our most productive sources of new talented members
New Member Pack- An updated and more current Welcome Pack has been created and is now in use for new members.
Going forward:
-
new banners need to be designed
-
visual information at the track needs to be updated
Ofcials by Barry Ferguson
Electronic Timing System
During the year we invested in a new photo finish camera to give us better pictures indoors and outdoors when light levels are low. We had a number of issues initially, but these have been largely overcome and the new camera has worked well during the season. Fuad Busoir got his level two photo finish license and is now our main operator for events and dealing with our suppliers – Timetronics ltd. We have hired out the system on four occasions this year generating useful revenue for the club whilst the system has been invaluable for our indoor and outdoor open meetings and provided electronic timing at all our home matches
Ofcials
We continue to work hard trying to recruit new officials and in 2020 -21 had 2 enrolled for courses, track judge and starter/marksman. This is an area of big concern however as we along with other clubs struggle at times to put on meetings to the standard our athletes should expect
Our longstanding Timekeeper Tony Wright has unfortunate been unwell but after a period in hospital is now making good progress, He says he is looking forward to getting back to timekeeping duties.
Track and Field by Mick Bond
The summer of 2021 saw the return of League competition albeit in a scaled down way. With leagues operating locally there was no promotion or relegation to worry about, but we still fared well in all areas. Our pre-season young athletes meeting saw over 120 athletes competing half of which were non-members and many of whom subsequently joined. Our summer open meetings were very well supported as were the indoor 60’s during the winter of 2021-22. Club members were offered discount rates for the events, and both made excellent contributions to the club’s finances
The track at Sutcliffe was full re opened but our use of the indoor area was restricted to just two evenings as week as the operators GLL moved their Gymnastics program out of Thomas Tallis School and into the indoor athletics hall. We have waged n on going lobbying campaign to officers at GLL, the Royal Borough of Greenwich and local MP’s and this seems to be bearing fruit with GLL looking seriously at other options for the gymnastics
I would like to thank all those who have acted as Team managers during the year, officiated at meetings or put in the leg work to make our indoor and outdoor meetings successful.
Cambridge Harriers 1186795
Receipts and payments accounts For the period Period start date Period end date To from 1-Apr-21 31-Mar-22
Section A Receipts and payments
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Unrestricted Restricted Endowment
Total funds
funds funds funds
to the nearest
to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £
£
A1 Receipts
Membership and EA registration fees 19,430 - - 19,430
Events 20,294 - - 20,294
Hire of Club House 3,414 - - 3,414
Donations,grants & Interest 12,020 - - 12,020
School events 4,830 - - 4,830
Kit Sales 2,859 - - 2,859
Social Events 1,022 - - 1,022
Srart up balances - - - -
63,869 - - 63,869
Sub total (Gross income for AR)
A2 Asset and investment sales,
(see table).
- - - -
- - - -
Sub total - - - -
Total receipts 63,869 - - 63,869
A3 Payments
Trach Hire and Entry Fees 13,616 - - 13,616
Club house costs 3,964 - - 3,964
Equiopment 15,628 - - 15,628
Kit purchases 4,358 - - 4,358
Servuces 4,290 - - 4,290
School events 1,512 - - 1,512
Coaching 5,081 - - 5,081
Administration 3,906 - - 3,906
- - - -
Sub total [ 52,355 ] - - 52,355
A4 Asset and investment
purchases, (see table)
- - - -
- - - -
Sub total [ - ] - - -
Total payments 52,355 - - 52,355
Net of receipts/(payments) 11,514 - - 11,514
A5 Transfers between funds - - - -
A6 Cash funds last year end 54,459 - - 54,459
Cash funds this year end 65,973 - - 65,973
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Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period
| Unrestricted | Restricted | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Categories | Details | funds | funds | ||
| B1 Cash funds | Bank accounts | Total cash funds | to nearest £ 65,973 - - 65,973 |
to nearest £ - - - - |
|
| (agree balances with receipts and payments account(s)) |
OK | OK | |||
| Unrestricted | Restricted | ||||
| funds | funds | ||||
| B2 Other monetary assets | Details | to nearest £ - - - - - - |
to nearest £ - - - - - - |
||
| B3 Investment assets | Details | Fund to which asset belongs |
Cost (optional) - - - - - |
||
| B4 Assets retained for the | Details Club House |
8500 Fund to which asset belongs |
Cost (optional) - |
||
| charity’s own use | Photo Finish Mini Bus Sundry Equipment |
16000 9000 4000 |
- - - - - - - - |
||
| Fund to which | Amount due | ||||
| B5 Liabilities | Details | liability relates | - - - - - (optional) |
||
| Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees |
Signature | Name | |||
| es Phillip Pae | Phillip Pape |
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CC16a
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Last year
to the nearest £
4,518 9,678 1,999 22,890 - 453 - 30,492 70,030
70,030
9,138 2,862 588 - 1,231 - 20 1,732 - 15,571
15,571 54,459 - - 54,459
Endowment funds
to nearest £ 54,459 - - 54,459
Agreement Error
Endowment funds
to nearest £ - - - - - -
Current value (optional) - - - - -
Current value (optional) 8,500 3,000 10,000 1,000 - - - - - When due (optional)
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Date of
approval
5/20/2022
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Independent examiner's report on the accounts
Section A Independent Examiner’s Report
Report to the trustees/ Charity Name members of Cambridge Harriers CIO On accounts for the year 31 March 2022 Charity no 1186795 ended (if any) Set out on pages 1 and 2 (remember to include the page numbers of additional sheets)
I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity (“the Trust”) for the year ended 31/03/2022.
- Responsibilities and As the charity trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation basis of report of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (“the Act”).
I report in respect of my examination of the Trust’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination, I have followed 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:
-
accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Act or
-
the accounts do not accord with the accounting records
I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.
Date: 07 June 2022 Signed: Name: Michael Ellsmore Relevant professional Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy [ qualification(s) or body CIPFA] (if any): Address:[5 Fairford Avenue ] Bexleyheath, Kent, Da76qn
October 2018
IER
1
Section B Disclosure
Only complete if the examiner needs to highlight matters of concern (see CC32, Independent examination of charity accounts: directions and guidance for examiners).
Give here brief details of any items that the examiner wishes to disclose .
October 2018
IER
2