2025-01-31-accounts - Wombat Cricket Club

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– Wombat Cricket Club (CIO) Charity No. 1187872

Trustees’ Annual Report for the period from: 01st February 2024 – 31st January 2025

Wombat Cricket Club CIO Annual Report contents page

Page	2	Objectives, Trustees & Management Structure
Page	3	Activities
Page	4	Volunteers & Finance
Page	6	Financial Statements – Income & Expenditure
Page	8	Financial Statements – Balance Sheet,
Page	9	Risks & Future Objectives & Signatory

Objectives

For the public benefit, the promotion of community participation in healthy recreation by the provision of facilities for playing cricket.

To promote community participation in sport by the provision of facilities for playing cricket and to maintain the Wombat Cricket Club and ground sustainably to ensure cricket is played at the facility in perpetuity.

Charitable Trustees

Re elected 12 February 2024

Mr Jeff Burbidge Mr Graham Byers Mr Alan Ranger Mr Nathan Welch Mr Paul York-Smith

Newley elected 18 March 2024

Dr Jane Hamlin (Chair)

Resigned 12 February 2024

Mr David Balch Mr Jon Bendle Mr Malcolm Pressly-Smith

Mr Raymond Osmond

Management Structure change

At the AGM on the 19[th] February 2024, The Trustees proposed a change to the charities management structure because of the rapid expansion of the club and related increase in workloads.. The proposal was to split The Trustees’ oversight roles from the day to day management roles. A new General Committee reporting to The Trustees was proposed, with defined roles, to encourage more members to get involved in the day to day management of the charity bringing extra resource, creative ideas and new skills. This proposal was accepted unanimously by the members and implemented straight away with the election of new General Committee members at the AGM. Currently two of The Trustees are serving on the General Committee, including the treasurer, to ensure continuity between the trustees and the General Committee. The Trustees feel this change has improved available resources and skill sets available to them.

Activities

Provides a sporting opportunity in cricket for young people and adults, which promotes health and wellbeing and social cohesion. The activities include providing opportunities for people with disabilities.

Wombat Cricket Club fields an adult men’s cricket team with mixed abilities and plays 3040 friendly cricket matches on Wednesdays and Sundays throughout the playing season. Our team continues to attract new members and prosper.

In 2023 an adult women’s cricket team was formed. This is a team with mixed abilities and plays 15-20 softball cricket matches throughout the playing season. They have also entered a softball knockout cup competition and hosted a women’s cricket softball festival. The team has integrated women from previous softball cricket taster sessions with several new members and has been an enormous success, winning their league in 2024. The Women’s section is well supported, and we are confident that the team will continue to prosper and potentially develop to include a women’s hardball team in the future.

In 2024 our junior coaching programme continued. We ran the ECB All Stars cricket coaching program for 5- to 8-year-old children. This involved hosting and coaching 42 junior members and their families who attended the club on Friday nights for 9 weeks. Alongside All Stars we also ran two ECB Dynamos cricket coaching programs on Friday nights for 9 weeks. In all we had 42 participants split over two groups, one specific to boys aged 8-11 years and the other specific to girls of the same age.

Another highlight of 2024 has been the establishment of our new U11 team, a significant milestone for Wombat Cricket Club. This team represents the future of our club, and it is a joy to see the next generation of cricketers developing their skills, teamwork, and love for the game. Their success is a testament to the strong foundation we are building in youth cricket. We must now strive to engage with the parents and their families to support the activity, to ensure we attract new volunteers to the club.

These junior initiatives play a critical role in shaping our club’s future, as they provide an accessible and fun environment for children to engage with cricket from an early age. As we continue to grow these programmes, it is clear that our investment in junior cricket is not only beneficial for the development of players but also plays a key role in ensuring the financial sustainability of our club.

Wombat CC again hosted and provided facilities for representative cricket teams on the Somerset CCC Pathway Programme (Under 10s – Under 17s) and Somerset Senior teams. Our volunteers prepare and facilitate the match day experience for both players and their families, and we continue to receive positive feedback from all users of the ground.

To support our objectives, we continue to provide both a training and match venue for Somerset Visually Impaired Cricket Club (SVICC) and are a Disability Cricket Champion club adhering to the standards proposed by the Somerset Cricket Foundation.

All activities and sessions are provided and staffed by unpaid volunteers who also gain from the experience by contributing to their local community.

Extensive work continued to improve the pitch and outfield. Players and spectators continue to comment on these improvements and how impressive the facility looks and plays.

This year we continued with various project improvements to the ground and its facilities. We installed new doors on the changing rooms creating more privacy, better access for the SVICC and improved security. We improved our hardcore area and pathways making it more usable for storing equipment and safer to move between buildings. We secured a major boundary wall by repointing most of it to remove the risk of it collapsing into the ground. We installed a dishwasher to help with event hosting. We also laid the groundwork for the funding of additional projects for year-end 31 January 2026 including the installation of solar panels, the refurbishment of the driveway from the main road to the club house and the upgrading of our scoreboard facilities to an integrated “play cricket” electronic scoreboard.

Volunteers

Our club is run entirely by volunteers, has no paid members of staff and the charity does not provide any financial grants.

Our volunteers perform many tasks including:

Charity and club administration.
Organising net practice, fixtures, teams prior to and on match days.
Pitch and outfield maintenance.
Training and coaching children and the coaching courses required.
Machinery maintenance and servicing.
Staffing the clubhouse and ancillary facilities on match days.
Opening, closing, and staffing the facility when hosting other teams.
Cleaning the facility.
Administration required for capital projects and the time required to manage these projects.

Finance

We have run the club in such a way over the last year so that, with playing membership subscriptions and sponsorship contributions, we have made a small profit and not had to use any of the clubs’ long-term savings.

We have invested any profit from activities back into improving the quality of the infrastructure of the club, the pitch and outfield. We wish to maintain this momentum and have re-assessed our immediate and future needs.

We continue to hold at least one year of running costs as a reserve in our savings account. This would cover insurance, utility bills, pitch, and ground renovation costs, building maintenance and machinery servicing. We were particularly conscious of this given the Covid-19 pandemic, and if we were to experience future seasons where cricket is unable to be played or has a reduced playing capacity, then revenue into the charity will be limited.

Our revenue comes from the following sources:

Subscriptions from playing & social membership.
Sponsorship from local businesses.
Subscription from junior coaching sessions.
Bar and BBQ supporting on field activities
Ground hire.
Match Day clubhouse income.
Fund-raising activities e.g., quiz nights.
Grants from cricket and public sector organisations.

Currently the club is in a positive financial position and has plans for future development of ground and cricket related items in addition to those already mentioned such as new nets to support the juniors expansion, underground water supply to the square, lane fence replacement, clock tower renovation and a robotic outfield mower once solar panels have been installed.

Independent Examiners Report

With the completion of the major one-off capital projects (New Garage, Club House extension and refurbishment) which were mainly funded by crowd funding, grants and sponsorship, income fell below £25,000 for the second year. As a result, there was no voluntary Independent Examiners Report requested by the trustees this year as was the case in the previous year.

Income will be above £25,000 for Year End to 31[st] January 2026 due to a significant grant to fund the solar power project so a statutory Independent Examiners Report will be completed next year.

Wombat Cricket Club CIO – Financial Statements on 31[st] January 2025

Income & Expenditure Detail:

to January 2025 to January 2024

Sum of Value
Income/ Expense Category What	Total	Total
Income Playing Activities Bar Game & Nets Subs AllStars & Dynamos Annual Dinner Playing Activities Total Ground Assets Ground Assets Ground Assets Total Grants/Sponsors/ Fundraising Quiz Night Sponsorship Small Grants Grants/Sponsors/ Fundraising Total Projects Club House Project - Crowd Funding Projects Total	10,591 3,580 2,500 2,311 1,656	7,826 2,893 1,530 2,098 1,553
	20,638	15,901
	-	550
	-	550
	318 156 500	1,217 2,220 500
	974	3,937
	-	2,800
	-	2,800
Income Total	21,612	23,187
Expense Playing Activities Bar Game & Nets AllStars & Dynamos Defib Annual Dinner Playing Activities Total Maintenance Building Maint (incl Insurance) Machinery Maintenance (incl Fuel) Pitch Work Maintenance Total Maintenance - Utilities Electric Water Maintenance - Utilities Total	(5,332) (1,017) (160) (151) (1,394)	(4,461) (1,157) (132) (389) (1,206)
	(8,054)	(7,346)
	(1,159) (744) (1,589)	(1,541) (1,218) (2,996)
	(3,492)	(5,755)
	(818) (264)	(976) (398)
	(1,082)	(1,374)

Sum of Value		Both	accounts
Income/ Expense Category	What	General	Restricted	Total
Expense Grants/Sponsors/ Fundraising Grants/Sponsors/ Fundraising Total Projects Projects Total Ground Assets Ground Assets Total	Quiz Night EWCT Grant 2022 Sponsorship	(210) (22) (211)	- - -	(307) (429) (132)
		(443)	-	(443)
	Club House project Dishwasher project Hardcore Area project Boundary wall pointing project	(1,049) (56) (1,373) (843)	- - - -	(1,049) (56) (1,373) (843)
		(3,321)	-	(3,321)
	Ground Assets	(2,551)	-	(2,551)
		(2,551)	-	(2,551)
Expense Total		(18,443)	(500)	(18,943)
Grand Total		2,669	-	2,669

		Current	Savings
	Bank Opening Bank Close Net Income/(Expense)	12,250 14,918 2,668	12,605 12,605 -	2,668 1

Wombat Cricket Club CIO – Balance Sheet on 31[st] January 2025

Simple Wombat Balance Sheet @ 31.01.2025	Jan 2025 64,514 56,800 7,714 16,842 15,042 1,800 14,918 12,605 3,210 4,236 4,659 *12,105* 500 500
Property Being Ground Purchase Fees Assets (Items > £1000) Being Tractor & Cutting Deck Mower Slitter Cassette Cash & Cash Equivalents Current Account Including General Running profit Cash Savings Account Being Unrestricted Pre Trust Reserves Covid Funding Sponsorship/fund raising/23 Subs *Restricted* Disability Grant	Jan 2025	Jan 2024
	64,514 56,800 7,714 16,842 15,042 1,800 14,918 12,605 3,210 4,236 4,659 *12,105* 500 500	64,514 56,800 7,714 15,042 15,042 12,250 12,605 3,210 4,236 4,659 *12,105* 500 500

Risks

The club sees two main risks for the future but feel that we are in a strong position compared to other clubs in our sector, these being:

1) Financial risk of maintaining the facility is always a challenge but we have successfully managed this since taking on the facility in 2016.
2) Competition of leisure time and dwindling interest in community sport and recreation is also a risk. We are not seeing this at present with our thriving membership and junior cricket provision.

Currently there are no uncertainties about the charity’s continuation, and we believe we still have a strong club with a good volunteer base and momentum to drive the charity forward.

Future Objectives

We will continue to invest in the facility to try to maintain a ground and clubhouse that is functional for all users. We will modernise our sporting facility and keep it to the highest standard possible to encourage future sport and recreation and achieve our goals.

We will develop and expand our junior cricket offer to the community to engage and inspire more young people to enjoy the sport and nurture their interests in the game. In addition, we recognise cricket should be a sport for all, and we aim to both progress our disability cricket offer and expand our female offer at both junior and senior level. We will continue our strong existing relationship with the Somerset Cricket Foundation and seek to collaborate with them in developing all our future cricketing activities.

The Trustees of Wombat Cricket Club (CIO) have followed all guidance issued by the Charity Commission and feel that the range of activities highlighted above demonstrate our ability and commitment to deliver public benefit to our local community.

Trustees report approved by Board.

Authorised signatory:

………………………………………………………………………………………

Dr Jane Hamlin Chair of The Board of Trustees – Wombat Cricket Club CIO