Financial Report for 1[st] April 2025 to 31[st] March 2026 for AGM 6[th] June 2026
Income
Table 1 - Sources of income
| Category | Item | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Grants | FiPL * | £4,458.49 |
| Stretton Focus ** | £1,450.00 | |
| Donations | From 12 supporters *** | £1,673.00 |
| AGM donation | £62.25 | |
| Wayleaves | £35.07 | |
| Interest | £61.09 | |
| Grand total | £7,739.90 | |
| Total after assigning FIPL £4,458.49 to 2024/25 | £3,281.41 |
- FiPL (Farming in Protected Landscapes) granted £6,947.78 in 2024/25 towards the cost of design and production of two interpretative boards, for gate installation and for electric fencing. The work was completed during 2024/25 but the balance of £4,458 was not paid until 2025/26.
** Stretton Focus granted £1,450 to cover the cost of surgery on a few trees, identified during a tree safety survey, that needed work to be done in order to maintain them in good health and condition and to ensure public safety.
*** The donations from twelve of our supporters, for which we are most grateful, provided a major contribution to our income as shown in Table 1. Six of the supporters are in a position to allow us to claim Gift Aid. A claim will shortly be made to HMRC.
Expenses
Table 2a - Expenses for field work at High Leasowes
| Category | Activity |
Expense |
|---|---|---|
| Mature trees | Survey and tree surgery* | £1,475.00 |
| Young trees, hedgerows | Planting and restoring | £631.24 |
| CCTV | Protecting young trees | £148.38 |
| Hedge cutting | £151.20 | |
| Fixtures | Bench, bat boxes, signs | £488.66 |
| Pond | Life buoy, deep signs | £278.47 |
| Total | £3,172.95 |
- Using £950 of the grant from Stretton Focus. Remaining work completed in early 2026/27.
Table 2b - Administrative expenses
| Category | Items | Expense |
|---|---|---|
| Tools, safety clothing | £12.49 | |
| Insurance | £364.92 | |
| Legal | Farm business tenancy | £480.00 |
| Meetings | Committee and AGM | £179.00 |
| Stationery, postage | £38.70 | |
| Sundries | Including two £30 gift tokens | £128.69 |
| Total | £1,203.80 | |
| Grand Total - (Tables | 2a and 2b) | £4,376.75* |
- Income raised during the year contributed £3,281.41 to the cost of expenses. There was thus a small shortfall of £1,095.34.
Bank Balance
Table 3 - Start and end of year balances
| Current | Savings | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account | Account | ||
| Brought forward 1stApril 2025 | £7,050.93 | £5,000.00 | £12,050.93 |
| Ending 31stMarch 2026 | £5,352.99 | £10,061.09* | £15,414.08 |
- £5,000 transferred to Savings Account in June.
The High Leasowes Trust's bank account was first opened in February 2024 with a deposit of £15,034 received from MMCLT for half of the Gift Aid held from donations for the original purchase of High Leasowes. Table 3 shows how 2025/26 ended with a balance of £15,414, slightly more than when the bank account was first opened.
Budget for 2026/27
We have prepared a budget of £5,250 for anticipated expenses for 2026/27. This includes £1,500 for bat box scanners to which a grant of £1,000 has been received from Shropshire Hills Landscape Trust. Church Stretton Rotary has also kindly donated £250 towards field work expenses.
Summary
The High Leasowes Trust's financial position remains stable having successfully managed our expenses with the aid of grants and individual supporter donations.
Finally, I thank Graham Cowley for carrying out an independent examination of the accounts.
John Rowlands (Treasurer) 19[th] May 2026
Page 2 of 2
AGM Financial Report 2025-26
The High Leasowes Trust - Chair’s Report 01.04.2025 - 31.03.2026
I am pleased to report that during this year we were able to make further improvements to habitats at High Leasowes and we continued to have excellent community engagement and support.
Our Treasurer will report to you that our financial position is good and that this will equip us for work in the year ahead.
Management and Trustee meetings
Sandra Whitlock was the Chair of the Board for the duration of the period, with administrative support provided by Paul Osborne and Peter Whitlock. At the end of the reporting period the Board comprised seven Trustees and three co-opted board members.
Sadly, Chris Naylor stood down as a Trustee during the reporting period as he was elected as a County Councillor and found that this took more of his free time. The High Leasowes Trust is grateful to him for his service and wishes him well for the future.
The following people held office at the end of the reporting period 31st March 2026:
Trustees:
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Sandra Whitlock (Chair)
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John Rowlands (Treasurer)
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Paul Osborne (Secretary)
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Graham Porter (Grants and Fund-raising)
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Peter Whitlock (Admin)
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Ruth Lawrence (work party leader, farming adviser)
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Alison Jones (Agro-environment adviser).
Co-opted board members:
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Mike Carter (Management planning, environmental adviser)
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Jane Goodman (Representative from iDEA and low carbon consultant)
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Caroline Windley (Community engagement)
I would like to thank all the Board Members for their hard work, support and commitment during this period.
Structure of The High Leasowes Trust
The High Leasowes Trust is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation established on 20th February 2024.
The Board aims to have a mix of skills, experience and knowledge. We have therefore appointed people with experience of farming, conservation, agroenvironmental management, fund-raising and financial management amongst others. Our Constitution enables us to have up to ten Trustees and we also appoint Co-opted Board Members where people can make a significant contribution without the commitment of becoming a Trustee. Vacancies will be advertised to our members and supporters, and in Stretton Focus and Community Messaging. The Trust welcomes applications for anyone seeking to join the committee and invites interested persons to apply via email, setting out their interests and experience.
Membership
On 31st March 2026 the Trust had 144 members. We do not charge a Membership Fee as we do not want this to be a barrier to Membership, especially as many Members have already donated generously for the purchase and maintenance of High Leasowes.
Aims
Our vision is to create an area rich in wildlife and a place that people can enjoy. We are creating and improving a variety of different feeding, shelter and nesting opportunities and a mosaic of habitats in which different creatures might find space to live.
We also want High Leasowes to be a place that people enjoy visiting for a quiet walk or to sit on a bench and appreciate the views, listen to bird song and enjoy nature.
Activities
Our charitable objectives are to encourage biodiversity through our management of High Leasowes and to do so also for public benefit. Taking public benefit first:
During the year we offered a range of activities for young people and our supporters to help them to understand more about High Leasowes and some of the wildlife that lives there. These activities included:
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Providing a guided walk led by Pete Carty to identify birds by sound and by sight, which was enjoyed by 17 of our supporters
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Engaging with the younger members of our Community, working with the Cubs to build bat boxes which were then erected on trees at High Leasowes. Later in the year the Cubs visited High Leasowes for a nature surveying walk, and we also arranged visits from both Brownies and Guides who followed a nature discovery trail and hunted bugs in the meadows.
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Organising a bat detection walk for 24 adults.
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Arranging for Mike Shurmer and Graham Wenman to do moth trapping and inviting our supporters to join us next morning to see what they had caught.
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Conducting two guided walks, one for our supporters and another for Churches Together, which gave 50 people a greater understanding of High Leasowes.
We also:
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Installed one more bench as requested by Jill Turner-Jones, using donations by her and one other Member.
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Addressed the risks posed by diseased trees. Sadly this meant that two of our old ash trees had to be pollarded but this work ensured that the permissive paths could stay open. A generous grant by Focus Community Grants and donations by our supporters covered the cost of this work, for which we are very grateful.
During the year our volunteers worked hard to encourage biodiversity and helped to provide habitat for nature through tasks which included:
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Restoring another section of hedgerow, replanting gaps and adding hedgerow trees.
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Creating dead-hedges using the brash and cut timber following the tree surgery. This effectively ‘tidies away’ the brash whilst providing cover and habitat for a wide range of species.
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Tree planting to replace the trees lost to the heat and drought last summer.
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Arranging a late cut for the meadows which enabled more flowers to set seed to help floral diversity.
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Sowing locally-gathered native seed across the fields; some of this was broadcast and some was sown into pre-strimmed patches to try to increase germination rates.
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Surveying the bird boxes.
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Installing 12 Bat boxes - one of which was found to contain a hibernating bat when it was surveyed by a licensed bat worker prior to tree surgery.
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Trialled sheep grazing in our northernmost field. This did not quite go according to plan and will be tried again this autumn.
Some aspects of our work, such as tree planting, also help to combat the increasing carbon in our atmosphere, while providing shade, improving air quality and creating an attractive woodland edge.
And of course all this work creates opportunities for community engagement, whether this be through volunteering, guided walks, bat walks and engaging with young people - hoping to inspire in them a love of and fascination for the natural world.
Volunteers
By April this year we had been looking after High Leasowes for three years. The work that we do there is almost completely reliant on volunteers and we are delighted that many volunteers continue to come regularly and willingly contribute to work as diverse as making habitat heaps, dead-hedging, seed sowing, hedgerow renovation, meadow weeding, bracken control, tree planting, clearing brash and surveying. Quite a few volunteers who had never encountered dead-hedges before are now expert dead-hedgers!
We could not manage High Leasowes without the invaluable support of these volunteers. Foremost amongst these were the 69 different volunteers from the local community who provided their time and energy to caring for High Leasowes. We were also grateful to work parties from local businesses Agilent, iDEA and Stantech. In total, these volunteers contributed almost 600 hours of their time and energy to looking after High Leasowes in the 12 month period.
Participants of Shropshire Wild Teams. The Parish Paths Partnership and our tree surgeon James Cox also provided invaluable support. We are grateful to you all, particularly those volunteers who regularly help to care for High Leasowes. We are also grateful to John Baines for his commitment to recording wildlife at High Leasowes and for the regular supply of photographs.
I would like to thank all of these volunteers, whose willingness to support this project ensures that High Leasowes is well cared for.
Challenges
Our work in this period was adversely affected by the heat and drought of last year’s summer, which resulted in the loss of a large number of newly planted trees. Despite the drought, nearly all the trees and hedgerow plants that had been in the ground for over a year managed to survive and are doing well. The drought also resulted in a poor hay crop, but in a year in which grass was in short supply a local farmer was glad to take it. We don’t know what challenges the changing climate will bring, but by planting a
diversity of hedgerow plants, trees and flowers we improve the chances of survival of at least some species.
In the face of on-going damage and removal of newly planted trees we were faced with little choice but to continue surveillance using CCTV. We sincerely hope that this won’t be necessary for much longer and that the person who is responsible for this damage will realise that their activities not only damages the environment but is extremely hurtful both to our volunteers and also to those people who should be able to enjoy walking at High Leasowes without having their presence recorded.
Our pond, created by Shropshire Wildlife Trust with funding from Natural England in the winter of 2024/2025, was a disappointment as it failed to hold much water. After rain the pond filled quickly, but drained away equally quickly, leaving a much shallower pool than intended. Last winter the contractor returned to try to block any possible outflowing land drains. We hope that this will at least partially resolve the problem and that the result will be an attractive feature which provides important habitat for water-dwelling creatures.
Looking to the future
This year we are looking forward to more engagement with young people: we will be welcoming a number of youngsters to join us looking for bats and also other activities. It is really important to engage young people in naturebased activities in the hope of inspiring at least some of them to take an interest in nature as they grow up. If they are encouraged to notice wildlife they might then develop an interest in nature and a desire to care for the nature that surrounds them. I hope so.
At the end of the summer, after the hay has been made, we intend once again to trial grazing sheep on one of our fields, Watling Leyes North, for a few weeks after the hay has been taken. Grazing the fields has important environmental benefits as the sheep will continue to reduce the grass whilst also disturbing the soil in a way which is beneficial for both flowers and invertebrates. These sheep are the property of and will be cared for by a local grazier. To protect the sheep we have decided that most of the permissive paths in this one field only will be closed during the grazing period of about 6-8 weeks. This not only protects the sheep from disturbance by dogs but also reduces the risk that they might contract tapeworm or neosporosis which can be carried in dog faeces. The paths will be reopened once the livestock have been removed. We were grateful for your support for this initiative last year and hope that you will support this once again.
In terms of our management of the fields we will continue to manage the hedgerows to ensure their health and longevity and plan to renovate another
stretch of hedge and hopefully to lay another section. We will continue our management of the meadows to encourage greater floral diversity and to reduce the vigour of the coarser grasses. All of these actions will help to ensure that we improve the range and quality of habitats at High Leasowes, which hopefully will be of benefit to wildlife.
As Chair I am very proud of our Committee and community for working so hard to look after High Leasowes and I wish to extend my sincere and grateful thanks to our Members and everyone who has contributed their time, energy or money to help us to manage these beautiful fields.
Sandra Whitlock Chair, The High Leasowes Trust
June 2026