The Online Memorial and Museum of Prisoners of War
The objects of the CIO # 1200975 are:
To advance the education of the public on the subject of prisoners of war by:
a. Providing a permanent, online Memorial & Museum of Prisoners of War by maintaining and regularly updating an interactive, historical and educational internet resource which enables the collection and preservation of information concerning prisoners of war
b. By organising seminars, conferences and tours that educate the public on the experiences of prisoners of war, and to pursue any other activities that support these purposes.
c. The commemoration and remembrance for the public benefit, of former prisoners of war and the sacrifices they made
ANNUAL REPORT 2024 - 2025
List of Trustees October 2024:
Dave Lovell (Chair), Brian Cooper (Treasurer), Robert Sharratt, Katie Foster, Ian Bowley, Michael Sharratt. A total of six.
List of Trustees October 2025:
Dave Lovell (Chair), Peter Scott (Treasurer), Alan Warburton, Allan Hunn, John Smith, Katie Foster, Michael Sharratt, Rhian French, Robert Sharratt, Stacey Astill. A total of ten.
During this year, Brian Cooper retired for personal reasons. Philip Baker was appointed but subsequently retired for personal reasons. The trustees express their gratitude and appreciation for their significant contribution to the charity.
Background
In our third year we have built upon the foundations established during 2023/2024.
At the 2024 Annual General Meeting we set the following priorities:
-
a) Preparing for POW80 a commemorative event marking 80 years since the release of British, Commonwealth and Dominion, prisoners of war (POW) held in Europe;
-
b) Improving web functionality;
-
c) Recruiting additional trustees with necessary skills and knowledge;
-
d) Establishing a 3-year strategy for funding & development;
-
e) Advancing the public education of the POW experiences with commemoration and remembrance events and conferences.
The Trustees continue to meet online every 2 months, with some discussions, via email, between meetings. During 2025 the trustees held five meetings.
We continue to depend upon volunteers as we build and add information to our website and Facebook groups. This has proved to be a rich source of information and a contact point for people, around the world, who are interested in researching their family history and the experience of relatives during WWII.
Page 1 of 4
The Online Memorial and Museum of Prisoners of War
Achievements
During the year our trustees, voluntary researchers and data loaders have made significant progress in achieving these priorities. We thank each of them.
POW80 took place on 7th June 2025 at the Midland Hotel Manchester. 140 tickets were sold for the event, with delegates attending from Britain, Commonwealth and Dominion Countries.
Six expert speakers gave excellent talks on:
-
The lived experiences of a POW,
-
What happened in the Work Camps,
-
Creativity in captivity,
-
Escape and Evasion,
-
The Mental Health of POWs upon their return,
-
The Long March and POW liberation.
An A4 brochure, consisting of 28pps, was printed at no cost to the charity, thanks to a generous donation, and issued to all delegates.
The conference was concluded with the speakers answering questions from delegates. There was insufficient time to answer all of these during the session, so the remaining questions & answers were compiled and sent to delegates after the event.
The feedback from speakers and delegates was very positive.
The event provided a good opportunity for delegates to make connections with people with similar interests and provided much information to help them research their own family members who were POWs.
The conference sessions were, thanks to several generous donations, video recorded and subsequently made available online to delegates.
The trustees confirm their thanks to all those taking part, especially the speakers.
Website functionality and development https://www.prisonersofwarmuseum.com/
In November 2024 we were successful in securing a, £7,000 donation from the Sir Roger de Haan Charitable Trust, with the money given to support development of the website and availability of additional content.
We used this to move the site from a shared to a dedicated server. This significantly improved the response time from site queries. However, as a result of a very significant BOT attack, we took the decision to put the service behind a ‘Cloudfare’ user verification service.
In June one of our volunteers uploaded a second batch of some 50,000 additional POWs. records from the TNA. Giving us a total of 129,759 POW records.
Some of the grant was also used to commercially scan personal accounts and associated historical material donated to us by .
Website traffic has of course fluctuated, significantly so in the latter part of the year with the introduction of Cloudfare.
User numbers for the year are below
Page 2 of 4
The Online Memorial and Museum of Prisoners of War
The Charity is registered with the Information Commission Office and has appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO). Resources, both Trustees and volunteers have worked upon our website/databases to add information and to eliminate duplicates and resolve errors in the TNA source data.
Recruiting additional Trustees with necessary skills and knowledge.
A skills audit was produced, outlining existing trustee skills and experience, and was used as the focus for the recruitment of new trustees to complement our skill mix. Five new trustees were selected and approved as trustees. Induction has been completed.
Towards the end of the year, we set up six working groups, each comprising several trustees, to look into potential activities for the future. The intention is for these to feed into a three Year Strategy for Funding and Development.
| Topic | Composition |
|---|---|
| 1. Business Model | Alan Warburton, Peter Scott |
| 2. Funding | Alan Warburton, John Smith,Katie Foster. |
| 3. Educational Activities | Stacey Astill, John Smith |
| 4. Public Affairs | Rhian French, Dave Lovell |
| 5. Future Events / Tours | Allan Hunn, Peter Scott |
| 6. Membership | Alan Warburton, Peter Scott |
These will report back to the full board in November 2025
Page 3 of 4
The Online Memorial and Museum of Prisoners of War
The Online Memorial and Museum of Prisoners of War
Statement of Accounts 01 November 2024 to 31 October 2025
Opening Balance (as at 31 October 2024)
8,107.29
| Income | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Budgeted Donations (Direct Debit) | 985.53 | ||
| Other Donations |
3109.12 | ||
| Lamsdorf Tour 2026 (via Stripe) | 946.88 | ||
| Donations via Paypal |
1,091.61 | ||
| Donations via Book Royalties (PB) | 373.33 | ||
| POW80 |
9710.00 | ||
| De Haan Grant |
7,000.00 | ||
| Citibank Charitable Giving | 200.00 | ||
| HMRC Gift Aid | 252.15 | ||
| Miscellaneous (Amazon test) | 0.01 | 23,668.63 | 31,775.93 |
| Less Expenditure | |||
| Operating costs | |||
| Website Costs |
2,186.20 | ||
| ICO Registration | 35.00 | ||
| Domain Name | 13.85 | ||
| Other Costs | |||
| Document Options | 284.88 | ||
| Miscellaneous* | 109.50 | ||
| POW80 |
16,319.76 | 18,949.19 | 12,826.73 |
Balance Carried Forward (31.10.25)
12,826.73
Surplus/deficit on year (£12,826.73 – 8,107.29) = £4,719.45
- Notes:
Miscellaneous expenditure of £109.50 refers to expenditure in relation to the Christmas Raffle Document Options refers to the scanning of archive documents arranged by David Lovell
Page 4 of 4