Catterick Village Preschool Annual charity report. September 2023 - July 2024
This report is to cover the financial year September 2023 to July 2024. During this time the following committee members are as follows:
Mike Nicholson Fiona Nicholson Poppy Dowling
The following staff members are as follows:
Sam Lawrie - Manager and safeguarding lead Beverley Heslop - Deputy manager and SENCO lead Sue Mill and Hayley Trott - Early Years Practitioners.
Training:
All staff have completed all the required training that is required to continue in Early Years practice. These are as follows:
Safeguarding Health and Safety Food and Hygiene Data protection in Early Years Drug and Alcohol awareness Breast ironing FGM Fire awareness training.
Policies:
All policies have been reviewed through out the year using the available updates from the Early Year Learning Alliance.
Transition for Children.
The transition for our children starting primary school this September 2024 has been achieved. The teacher from the Michael Syddall School has had a visit to the setting and all information has been shared about any concerns or safeguarding issues. Transition information has been sent to parents about dates and times for the children to visit their new school. Staff have written reports for parents to share with their child’s new schools. Beverley Heslop our SENCO has completed four EHCAR plans for support and these have all been achieved. All information has been shared with the child’s new setting.
Summary of the setting.
The setting has been struggling over the past few years due to the following reasons:
Rising costs of insurances, building, contents, and liability insurance. Rising costs in utilities bills, electricity. Phone, internet, water rates.
Rising costs in minimum living wages and pensions, tax and national insurance contributions. Rising costs of daily supplies and resources needed to run the setting.
The above information has had a big impact on the setting due to most of the children attending claiming Early Years funding from NYCC. Unfortunately, this barely covered the cost of the running of the Preschool. We have struggled getting people to join our committee, which made fundraising hard to achieve. Pam Nicholson (wife of our Chairperson) has arranged many events to try to raise extra funds. However, without the support of parents this has been a difficult task for the last few years.
This year we were made aware of the local primary school through an advertisement that they were opening their own preschool with wrap around care September 2024.
This has had an impact on the settings waiting list.
We had contacted NYCC financial team for support in the last financial year September 2022 to July 2023 and with a breakdown of costs and children receiving funding we were advised to cut down on our staff of five members to four members and to look at ways of cutting other costs in resources. We put out letters explaining to our parents and carers for help with donations of snacks and resources to help the setting.
The manager, Deputy manager, and the chairperson Mike Nicholson with (Pam Nicholson invited for support)held a meeting to share the concerns about the future running of the setting. Through this meeting the chairperson advised the manager of the setting to ring the parents on the waiting list to see if they were still interested in a place for their child and for letters to be set out to our parents attending the setting at this time, who would be returning for the Autumn term 2024.
In March 2024, we were still struggling and after ringing around the parents on the waiting list and sending letters to our parents for children returning for the next school year September 2024 to ask if they would still be attending our setting. The information gained from this was very disappointing due to the setting having only three children left on the waiting list and most of the children transferring over to the new preschool.
It was also at this point where three members of staff said that they would be leaving two of these members of staff put their notices in writing, stating that they would be leaving at the end of the summer term July 2024. We held an Emergency General Meeting where all concerns were shared about the financial running of the setting and the task of trying to secure new staff, one of these being a management role.
With not being able to secure new staff and lack of children on the waiting list, the very hard decision was made to close Catterick Village Preschool at the end of the summer term 2024.
The manager of the setting contacted NYCC and informed them of the closure of the setting. All funding for the financial year would be paid to the preschool by the end of the summer term 2024.
The Chairperson seek advice from Lawcall/Early Years Alliance to gain advice for closure of the setting and payment to staff such as holiday pay and redundancy pay for those who would be entitled. The selling of resources and equipment and donation of the preschool building.
At this moment in time July 2025, the donation of the preschool building to the local primary school is still a work in progress. Due to the hard work of the chairperson Mike Nicholson and his Wife Pam Nicholson, all equipment and resources have been sold and all the funds have been paid into the preschool accounts. (Please see information from our independent accountant) financial reports sent with report on the charity commission.
Kind regards
The Preschool Trustees.