## **FRIENDS OF ST JOHN, PARSON DROVE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING – 2024/25 – 25 JULY 25**
## **Welcome**
Welcome everyone, and a big thank you for coming to our third AGM, covering the year 24/25. When we started clearing the churchyard over 4 years ago now, and organizing our first ever event in the church which was a very successful arts and crafts fair, little did we think that we would now be going from strength to strength not only as a CCT friends group but now as a fully registered charity.
As I say this is our third AGM, and as usual we have a bit of business to get through, but we’ll keep it as brief as we can so we can then tuck into some delicious nibbles and a glass or two of wine, or maybe a pint of draught, yes that’s draught beer, on tap at our new bar which you might have noticed when you came in, it is rather subtle. We are a little disappointed that its so small, hahaha! Thanks to the CCT for letting us have their pop-up bar on permanent loan. When I say pop up, it actually takes a good couple of days to actually pop it up!
As always we will keep it simple this year, so we don’t have any speakers as such, except us lot sat up here. But if any of you would like to come up and do a turn on the stage later please do, you won’t be the first.
Before we get to the chair’s report, that’ll be me! I would just like to introduce you to our committee, if you don’t already know them…. Jackie – our secretary, you may remember her giving us her Mary Poppins at our Disney quiz, Adrian – our treasurer, keeping an overseeing eye on the pennies and making sure I don’t spend too much, Pam – our safeguarding lead and queen of the raffle, and Tony – our inhouse cheffie extraordinaire, and Bridget, our font of all knowledge about the history of the village and the fens. Bridget has sent her apologies as she can’t be with us this evening.
## **Chair’s report for the year 24/25**
So firstly, yes its still me I’m afraid, with the chair’s report for 24/25. As I said we want to keep things brief this evening so I will just give you a few highlights of the year. Our aims are to raise money to look after this wonderful old building, and to ensure we breathe life back into it after it being out of use for so long. I hope you think we’re doing a good job?
As well as this our events are designed to bring not just our village community together but to bring together people from surrounding villages and areas. And I think we have continued to do this pretty well in this last year.
We have had far too many events to mention, some more successful than others, but all have been well supported by your good selves. But I will just name a few…
Sunday markets, our first ever Summerfest, our highly successful music festival, quiz nights, live music nights, 4, yes 4! outdoor and indoor theatres. So who can remember what they were??
Midsummer Nights Dream, the Wizard of Oz, the chilling Snow Queen and who can forget the spellbinding Beowulf – not that I had a clue what was going on, but it was very entertaining.
Our fantastic afternoon tea raised £660 for Breast Cancer Now!
We took a break from our black tie dinners but le cheffie excelled again for our 2 murder mystery dinners. These were excellent events with one set at a Hollywood Halloween Vampire party and the other in an Agatha Christie style hotel, with lots of people dressing up for the occasions.
Easter and Christmas events were very well attended, and our first Heritage Open Days weekend was also very successful in September last year, and yes we will be doing the same this year under the theme of architecture.
As well as these events we have been recognized for our hard work and efforts, and we were nominated for the local Pride in Fenland and national CCT awards, although we didn’t win we were very proud to be nominated again, and not at all gutted that we didn’t win! MUCH!!
And one major achievement this year was the purchase of our toilets! If you haven’t tried them out already you’re on for a treat! After a couple of years of the delightful thunderboxes we now have proper flushing, yes properly flushing toilets! Huzzah!!
Just to finish I hope you will agree that 24/25 was another very successful year for the Friends of St John. Thank you.
## **Treasurer’s report**
Moving on to the next item I will hand over to Adrian our treasurer.
## **Changes to the constitution, policies**
You may remember last year we were in the process of becoming a registered charity. Well that process is now complete.
Our constitution is based on the charity commission template with our previous constitution forming our byelaws. There are no changes required to the constitution or our policies.
As a registered charity we can now claim gift aid on all your donations giving us an extra 25p for every £1 we receive.
## **Officer appointments**
Our current constitution allows for up to 6 committee members, myself, Adrian, Jackie, Pam, Bridget and Tony. All of us are now trustees of the charity. The 6 of us have all agreed to continue as committee members and trustees.
I would like to propose that the 6 of us continue as committee members and as trustees, seconder?....Agreed?
I would add that we are always looking for volunteers to help out at all of our events, please let us know if you would like to volunteer for this or other tasks, so please don’t be shy.
## **Current year 25/26**
So what about our current year? Just a quick update, so far we have had…. A fab easter egg hunt in the church and churchyard, 2 quiz nights – our D-Day and then our Disney themed quizzes – all with live music.
A Plant Sale and Sunday market, another murder mystery, a night with the Rummuns, Barsix entertained us all with a fantastic night of live music night, ….. and there’s still lots more to come.
We have our traditional outdoor theatre on 23[rd] August, and hopefully a Christmas one, a repeat of our fabulous afternoon tea for breast cancer charities, and lots more – you’ll need to book early as always, just pop us an email.
And on Saturday 2[nd] August its our BIGGIE! SUMMER-FEST. A live music and beer festival with music from 1pm, we’ve had to start earlier to fit everyone in, through to 10pm. We have live bands, singers, a choir,
children’s theatre performances, bucking bronco rodeo, and lots, lots more.
In September we will be linking up again with the John Peck Society and Heritage Open Days, to bring you a weekend of heritage events here in the church, and as its part of the Heritage Open Days its all free!!
So just a couple more things to tell you……don’t forget you can hire the church for all kinds of events, whatever you have in mind just give us a shout and we can help. Catering is no problem. You can even get married in here and we can sort the reception too, and we can always lend you a tent you can put up out back for the honeymoon!
We have just hosted the most amazing wedding reception in here, you can still see bits of confetti here and there. I had to put my party pooper hat on when it got to 1am and there was no sign of it stopping. I think they would still be in here now if we let them carry on! Hopefully this will lead to more bookings so that we can continue to get the church used more and more.
## **AOB or Questions**
Does anyone have any other business or any questions?
**So finally from me I would just like to say a huge thank you to you all, not just for being here this evening but for supporting us with everything we do. If you’re not already a member please do join, we have forms at the back, and you can renew your membership here too. And lastly an even hooooger thank you to the committee, Jackie, Pam, Tony, Adrian and Bridget. And as always not forgetting the one and only Mo, who has been there from the very start helping us with everything we do – we couldn’t do it without you! Thank you for coming this evening, now is the moment we’ve all been waiting for, its time for drinks and nibbles.**
||**Cfwd**|**2024**|||||||||**2025**|||**TOTALS**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|||**_APR_**|**_MAY_**|**_JUN_**|**_JUL_**|**_AUG_**|**_SEP_**|**_OCT_**|**_NOV_**|**_DEC_**|**_JAN_**|**_FEB_**|**_MAR_**||
|**EXPENDITURE**|||||||||||||||
|Licences and Charges||||||||70.00||82.48|35.74|35.74|35.74||
|Web Site||28.80|28.80|28.80|28.80|10.80|10.80|10.80|10.80|118.80|32.40|32.40|80.40||
|Catering||||||||675.00|330.00|350.00|||||
|CateringSupplies||210.26||756.86|1,449.73|651.44|40.00|94.00|739.62|470.25|||344.37||
|Equipment|||504.00|15.00|305.44|48.52|1,297.81|9,144.99|452.04|183.32|||229.44||
|Advertising|||||283.19||||121.82|||106.82|||
|Performers|||790.00|100.00|505.00|950.00|750.00|700.00|840.00|900.00|1,020.00||||
|Repairs & Maintenance||||78.00|280.00|119.89|108.00|264.00|3,000.00|80.00|||601.00||
|Gas|||||||||||||||
|SumUp /Bank Charges|||||||||||||4.11||
|Donations||700.00|||||660.00||19.00|||1,200.00|100.00||
|**_Total Expenditure_**|**_39,220.01_**|**939.06**|**1,322.80**|**978.66**|**2,852.16**|**1,780.65**|**2,866.61**|**10,958.79**|**5,513.28**|**2,184.85**|**1,088.14**|**1,374.96**|**1,395.06**|**72,475.03**|
|**INCOME**|||||||||||||||
|Events||384.00
-|612.00
-|807.61
-|2,281.87
-|1,815.11
-|705.15
-|339.84
-|2,925.60
-|2,634.00
-|-|-|945.00
-||
|_Egg Hunt_|||||||||||||||
|_Quiz_||||_198.30_
_-_||||_339.84_
_-_|||||313.00
-||
|_Black Tie Dinner_|||||||||||||||
|_Market_||_384.00_
_-_||||_361.10_
_-_||||_240.00_
_-_|||200.00
-||
|_Coronation Event_|||||||||||||||
|_Theatre_||||_260.48_
_-_||_253.01_
_-_|_328.01_
_-_||_428.88_
_-_||||||
|_Plant Sale_||||_348.83_
_-_|||||||||||
|_Band_|||_612.00_
_-_||||||||||||
|_AGM_|||||||||||||||
|_Afternoon Tea_||||||_1,201.00_
_-_|||||||||
|_Wreath Workshop_|||||||||_984.00_
_-_||||||
|_Christmas Fayre_|||||||||||||||
|_Christmas Concert_||||||||||_321.00_
_-_|||||
|_SummerFest_|||||_2,281.87_
_-_||||||||||
|_HODS_|||||||_377.14_
_-_||||||||
|_Murder_|||||||||_1,512.72_
_-_||||||
|_Film Show_|||||||||||||_432.00_
_-_||
||||||||||||||||
||||||||||||||||
||||||||||||||||
||||||||||||||||
||||||||||||||||
|_C&W_||||||||||_2,073.00_
_-_|||||
|Donations||11.00
-|18.00
-|11,079.00
-|28.50
-|370.52
-|267.00
-|3,000.00
-|_366.00_
_-_|177.50
-||2,000.00
-|_110.00_
_-_||
|Membership||||70.00
-|20.00
-||90.00
-||||40.00
-|50.00
-|_110.00_
_-_||
|Miscellaneous||16.50
-|||||13.75
-||_525.50_
_-_||||_105.00_
_-_||
|**_Total Income_**|**_44,955.55_**
**_-_**|**411.50**
**-**|**630.00**
**-**|**11,956.61**
**-**|**2,330.37**
**-**|**2,185.63**
**-**|**1,075.90**
**-**|**3,339.84**
**-**|**3,817.10**
**-**|**2,811.50**
**-**|**40.00**
**-**|**2,050.00**
**-**|**1,270.00**
**-**|**76,874.00**
**-**|
|**Net Total(cumulative)**|**5,735.54**
**-**|**5,207.98**
**-**|**4,515.18**
**-**|**15,493.13**
**-**|**14,971.34**
**-**|**15,376.32**
**-**|**13,585.61**
**-**|**5,966.66**
**-**|**4,270.48**
**-**|**4,897.13**
**-**|**3,848.99**
**-**|**4,524.03**
**-**|**4,398.97**
**-**|**4,398.97**
**-**|
Hummingbird Holt, Langhorns Lane Outwell PE14 8SH
Direct dial: _07999 207 486_ Email: _boyceconsultancy@gmail.com_
Date: 20/07/2025 Reference: Audit 2025
Dear Paul,
Thank you for the opportunity to audit your accounts. This has now been completed and I have summarised some findings below;
## **Do the minutes correspond to the payments made?**
- 26/4/24 £700 donation to CCT is agreed in minutes from 14/05/24.
- 2/10/24 £175 payment to The Ferry Project as agreed in minutes from 19/06/24
- 15/1/25 £1020 payment to This is my Theatre as agreed in minutes from 14/01/25
## _Recommendations_
- You could reference the minute item when you reconcile your bank accounts moving forward to ensure all payments have correct authority.
## **Does the bank reconciliation agree with the payments in and the payments out?**
The balance at the close of the financial year was £-1336.57, which reconciles with the total payments being £33,255.02 and the total receipts being £31918.45, which when added to the closing balance last year of £5735.54 reconciles to the closing balance of funds being £4398.97 at the close of financial year 2024/25.
## _Recommendations_
- Agree a bank reconciliation with every meeting to ensure there are no discrepancies and ensure governance
- Remove the cumulative items from the calculations that include carried forward numbers from last year as they affect your governance.
- Recommend that the expenditure line is totalled to give a second line check to the cumulative total line
## **Is there proper internal governance in place?**
- The group have agreed an internal financial officer of Mr Adrian Chapman at their AGM 05/07/2024
- The group have agreed financial governance regulations in the last financial year
_Thank you for choosing Boyce Consultancy for your business needs. Please do pass on your positive experience to friends and relatives that would benefit from our services. As a reminder, all works completed are tailored to your requests & needs and do not constitute advice. Wherever possible all reasonable steps have been taken to understand the request & surrounding legalities however it is your responsibility to check that it meets your needs. For further information please contact David on the details above._
- The bank accounts are set to two to sign and there are at least three signatories on the account.
## _Recommendations_
- Ensure that online banking reflects the signatory position of the cheques
- Ensure that you annually review the financial regulations within your constitution
Based upon my sample checks of these accounts, I can confirm that I am happy these accounts are prepared in line with regulations and payments are accounted for and that proper governance is in place.
Kind regards,
## David Boyce
David Boyce **Boyce Consultancy**
_Thank you for choosing Boyce Consultancy for your business needs. Please do pass on your positive experience to friends and relatives that would benefit from our services. As a reminder, all works completed are tailored to your requests & needs and do not constitute advice. Wherever possible all reasonable steps have been taken to understand the request & surrounding legalities however it is your responsibility to check that it meets your needs. For further information please contact David on the details above._