2025-12-31-accounts - Harpurhey Community Church

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Annual Report

Administrative Information

Name of Charity; Harpurhey Community Church

Charity registration number; 1213836

Address; Carisbrook Street, Harpurhey , Manchester , M9 5UX

Names of trustees;

Val Stubbs- Treasurer
Stephanie Gilson- Church Secretary
Claire Atkinson- Safeguarding Trustee
Steve Johnson- Property and Maintenance Trustee
Gordon Stubbs- Charity Trustee
Simon Brawn- Pastor

Structure of Charity;

Harpurhey Community Church is a charity led by our members, which meet in the form of a quarterly church forum 4 times a year. Here as a group of people we discuss, pray and vote on the direction of the church and the opportunities of God’s work the Church chooses to take within our community. These forums are arranged and hosted by our team of trustees named above, known as the ‘Operations Team’, which meet monthly to discuss and action the day to day running of the Church and the logistics of carrying out the vision of the Church. We also have a ‘Ministries Team’ which consist of team leaders from our main ministry outreach projects outlined below under ‘Objectives and Activities’ that meet regularly throughout the year to pray and seek God’s will together on how our ministries will best reach and serve our community.

This year saw our organisation become a registered charity and as a result the new constitution setup consisting of an Operations team, Ministry team and Elders team was approved via a vote at the church forum and our trustee members were re-elected into their positions for the next 3 years. Trustees and elders must be members of the church and are recruited to their roles via an application process involving discussion of a role description and volunteer suitability with the Operations Team. They are then required to comply with our safer recruitment safeguarding protocols and then finally are voted in by a member majority vote at a church forum meeting.

Trustees typically serve a minimum of 3 years before another member majority vote at a church forum is required for either re-election or replacement with an alternative applicant.

Aims and purposes

The logo we use at HCC represents our charity, which is a lifestyle we intentionally live out. We are purposeful about following Jesus, who we believe was the most loving, joyful and kind person that has ever walked the earth.

The three circles in our logo stand for three core intentions we plan into our lives together, they help keep us focused on living a Jesus centred life.

Yellow = Community

We believe that living in community is God's intention for us as people. We are committed to developing inclusive community where we live. We believe that "The Kingdom" Jesus talked so much about is the key to healthy communities.

Green = Co-Mission

Jesus' mission was to reconnect people with God and to show people what God is really like. As people following Jesus we are intentional about helping people find their way back to God. If we do a good job we will bring love, kindness, joy, hope and peace. Jesus' mission has become our mission.

Red = Communion By this we mean intentional focus on the relationship we have with God through Jesus Christ. Through the leading of the Holy Spirit and study of the Bible we can develop our personal relationships with God.

Objectives and Activities

From an outflow of our core beliefs, our main objective is to be committed to reaching the people of Harpurhey and the surrounding areas within our community where they are at, and providing pastorally, spiritually and physically for those in need and aim to support people into the life that God has planned for them. All of our regular weekly activities have this main objective centred at the heart of them.

Sunday Morning Worship

We run a weekly Sunday service. We often have on average 100-200 attendees weekly. The aim of this service is to come together, worship God and give teaching from the Bible, as well as offer a space for prayer and social connection for anyone attending. We are currently thanking God to be able to have a massive and active kids and youth ministry with up to 100 people under 18 attending at our services, with specific activities targeted to ages to teach and support the younger population about God.

Community Grocery

In 2024 we partnered with The Message Charity in order to bring a Community Grocery to Harpurhey. This is an active hub that runs within our church for the community to bridge the gap between food banks and the rising living costs for anyone struggling. The community grocery not only is a place to buy amenities at a much discounted rate, but also a place where our volunteers can meet people where they are and offer them a welcoming, warm space and a loving heart where they can feel encouraged and supported. From the community Grocery we have

been able to host ‘wrap around support’ to help people in need gain the essential skills needed to succeed, such as cooking classes and life skills courses which were successful and we hope to do more of next year. We would like to acknowledge with special thanks our amazing Grocery team leaders Stefanie Schrank and Les Walas who have done such a great job supporting the people of Harpurhey through our community Grocery, and have done a great job of getting people connected from the grocery into our church activities.

Gospel Communities

Gospel communities are the way we grow as followers of Jesus together at HCC. They are small communities connected in a variety of creative ways that are gathered around the values of our church. They often meet in people’s homes or in church at different times throughout the week and offer a smaller group Bible study where people can discuss the Bible’s teaching and support each other in living out the gospel in a meaningful way, as well as providing social support in the form of friendship and accountability to one another and often sharing a meal together.

Community Space

Community space runs once weekly and is an ‘open door’ to the community. It has come to be known to all as ‘little church’ and offers a safe and welcoming place within the church walls for anyone who may need it. All are offered a free breakfast, lunch and refreshments during which there is an informal church service offering spiritual support to anyone that chooses to join into this also. This has been a great honour for us to be able to offer support to our more vulnerable people of the community and make them feel welcomed and loved just as Jesus would do. We would like to give special thanks to Grace Forster who has been instrumental in setting up and leading this ministry. Many of our attendees on Sunday have been connected to us through Community Space and it is a great testament to creating a church space to show God’s love to meet people where they are at and not just on a Sunday morning.

Baby Café

Our more recent venture starting this year is our Baby Café in an aim to support primary caregivers and new expectant mums in our area. It was identified that post-natal depression, anxiety and lack of support for new mums was an issue within our area, so we endeavoured to set up a safe place for these people to come with their babies to get a friendly welcome, support and meet others to develop friendships. Our baby café runs once weekly and provides a play area for babies as well as providing a free lunch and refreshments for all visitors to create a friendly space for care-givers of newborns to relax and socialise and get connected to the

support they may need. We would like to acknowledge Audrey Johnson in her efforts to set up and run this new ministry to reach another part of our community.

Week of Prayer Events

Our quarterly ‘Week of Prayer’ events have gained momentum, where we host an evening of prayer every night for an entire week. We have been able to make connections with other local churches who have come together with us to lead services throughout this week at our church praying for various matters within our community and making valuable friendships with other local churches. This year saw a ‘youth night’ within this where our youth led us in prayer and worship for Harpurhey which was great to be part of. We would like to acknowledge Keith Forster for creating and facilitating this event for us.

Mission teams and Evangelism

Thanks to our busy schedule of community centred activities, we were able to host 2 different mission teams from The Message for a week at a time, giving them valuable experience in evangelism and community. These teams met with members of the community by helping with our weekly activities as well as work with our Community Pastor and Youth Worker to go out into the streets of Harpurhey praying for people and spreading God’s love to all.

In other activities, we have approved and elected in our Ethos Statement at a church forum and also chose to re-join the Evangelical Alliance, as well as continued our connection with the Baptist Union and NWBA.

Achievements and Performance

We have had a stable number of active members in 2025 of 53 members and hosted a few baptism services throughout the year. Our Sunday morning Services have seen on average 130 people attending and our young people’s ministries have thrived this year in particular. Our youth sessions during Sunday morning services has seen up to 22 individuals attending and up to 37 attendees weekly in our Junior Church. We are proud also to have established our Creche ministry with up to 9 attendees on Some Sunday mornings throughout 2025. Thanks to the blessing of The Message Trust, we have been able to employ a dedicated youth worker this year to help build on this ministry. We have also been able to host a ‘Youth Alpha’ organised by our youth worker which was successful in engaging with youth in the local area.

This year we elected to join with ‘Maximise’, which is a family of churches intentionally working together and supporting one another in God’s mission locally and globally. As a result, our church members had the opportunity to attend the maximise weekend away and also their separate women’s and men’s day events which was great to receive teaching and make connections with people in other churches in the North West. From this connection we partnered with Sale Life Church to take our youth group to the Limitless Youth Conference and weekend away, which was an awesome time seeing some of our youth give their lives to God and develop a desire to become passionate and active members of our church, as well as allow our youth team to make new Christian friendships with the youth in Sale Life Church.

In September 2025 we partnered with ‘Faithful Funding’ to raise funds to redecorate our lounge space. As the use of this space was expanding and was now regularly being used for community

events, Baby Café and Creche on Sunday mornings the room was no longer fit for purpose. Through this organisation we were able to raise £9,500 in grant funding to replace the old carpet with a new hard floor and source new café style tables and chairs to allow a friendly, hygienic café vibe. This space is now much more welcoming and more suited to a variety of multi-use purposes in order to facilitate even more events in the future.

Until September 2025, we had a paid ‘Community Outreach Worker’ role funded by the Willat’s Charitable Trust. Our employee in this role was Grace Forster, who did an excellent job at getting stuck into the community and making connections with local councillors and enterprises to create opportunities for us to help the community and share God’s love on a wider basis in Harpurhey than just Church alone. Grace identified that there were very few social events that allowed carers with SEN

children to easily get involved, so we arranged a free SEN children’s event which involved hosting a mobile petting zoo experience alongside crafts, activities and snacks catering specifically for children with special educational needs. We had 30 attendees with their families to this and had really encouraging feedback from the parents that they were appreciative of the experience we could offer for their children, and we hope to host more events in the future. Grace was also pivotal in hosting our ‘Easter Explorers’ event which involved our church going out into the local community market stalls and hosting a free interactive event for kids sharing the story of Easter with the local community in an engaging and fun way to people that may not have come to church otherwise. Also as a result of Grace’s connections, local councillors have visited Community Space to ask us and attendees our opinion on what is needed in our community in order to target their initiatives and involve us in future events.

Our Community Grocery has been a hugely encouraging venture for us, having 1300 members registered by the end of 2025 and serving 150200 families per week. Our Community Grocery leaders have also worked closely with the council to create and host events for the community such as the Harpurhey Christmas Markets and the Harpurhey Parade. The Harpurhey Parade was a gathering of businesses and charities in Harpurhey coming together for a parade, ending in a Sunday Funday in Queen’s Park. We made a banner to carry in the parade to advertise our church and worship God on the streets, as well as talk to people and pray for people via a stall in Queen’s park. It was a great day filled with God’s love and we were honoured to meet and connect with so many families from our community. In addition to this, we were happy to host a ‘Community Grocery 1[st] birthday party’ in October 2025 which was a great event seeing over 250 people attending from the local community. It was a free event with food, a bouncy castle, facepainting, tombola and raffle and lots of opportunity to spread love to and share joy with an open invite to anyone in the community wanting to celebrate with us.

We are thanking God for all the amazing opportunities we have had the privilege to be part of in Harpurhey throughout 2025, as well as for the blessing of finances, provisions and volunteers to make our charity happen. We are looking forward intentionally to 2026 and we are excited to do more to share God’s joy for life and invest into our community to make it a better place for all living within it.

Registered charity number 1213826

Harpurhey Community Church

Accounts

31 December 2025

Harpurhey Community Church Contents

	Page
Statutory information	1
Approval statement	2
Accountants' report	3
Financial statements	4
Statement of assets and liabilities	5
Notes to the Statement of assets and liabilities	6
Notes to the Financial statements	7

Harpurhey Community Church Statutory Information

Address

Carisbrook Street Harpurhey Manchester M9 5UX

Trustees

Simon Brawn - Minister Stephanie Gilson - Secretary Val Stubbs - Treasurer Gordon Stubbs Steve Johnson Claire Atkinson

Bankers

Lloyds Bank plc Oldham Branch PO Box 1000 BX1 1LT

Property Trustees

The Baptist Union Corporation Limited Baptist House 129 Broadway Didcot Oxfordshire OX11 8RT

Accountant

Middleton Accountancy Services Ltd 211 Manchester New Road Alkrington Middleton Manchester M24 1JT

Harpurhey Community Church

Statement of Trustees' Responsibilities

Charity law requires the trustees (deacons) to prepare financial statements that give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charity at the end of the financial year. In doing so the trustees are required to:

i) Select suitable accounting policies and apply them consistently
ii) Make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent
iii) State whether applicable accounting standards and statements of recommended practice have been followed, subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements
iv) Prepare the financial statements on the ongoing concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the charity will continue in operation

The Deacons are responsible as trustees for maintaining proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charity and enables them to ensure that financial statements comply with charity law. The deacons are also responsible for safe guarding the assets of the Church and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

I declare, in my capacity of charity trustee, the trustees have approved the financial report and have authorised me to sign it on their behalf

Simon Brawn

Simon Brawn Minister

Date: 14 May 2026

Harpurhey Community Church

Accountants' report on the unaudited accounts to Harpurhey Community Church

You have approved the accounts for the year ended 31 December 2025 which comprise of the Financial statements, the Statement of assets and liabilities and the related notes. In accordance with your instructions, we have compiled these unaudited accounts from the accounting records and information and explanations supplied to us.

Middleton Accountanc Services Ltd y

Middleton Accountancy Services Ltd Chartered Accountants 211 Manchester New Road Alkrington Middleton Manchester M24 1JT

Date: 13 May 2026

Harpurhey Community Church Financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025

Income Other income Expenses Ministerial costs Manse expenses Church premises costs Repairs and renewals of property and equipment Church running costs Ministry expenses Interest on bank and other loans Finance charges Subscriptions Mission giving and donations Restricted funds Income over expenditure	2025 £ 78,691 52,750 34,291 3,273 14,748 1,832 2,903 1,752 4,645 2,000 1,675 2,650 54,707 124,476 6,965	2024 £ 65,706 48,824 33,068 7,915 8,167 3,013 3,098 1,351 6,605 - 1,024 2,400 37,657
		104,298

		10,232

Harpurhey Community Church Statement of Assets and Liabilities as at 31 December 2025

14,116 20,256 89 8,593	10,314 29,232 - 6,784	2024 £ 800,000 10,511 (82,215) (100,000)
43,054	46,330
3,800 7,321 20,256	3,800 2,787 29,232
31,377	35,819

		628,296
		618,064 10,232
		628,296

Harpurhey Community Church Notes to the Statement of Assets and Liabilities for the year ended 31 December 2025

1 Land and buildings

1 Land and buildings Cost At 1 January 2025 At 31 December 2025 2 Debtors and prepayments HMRC - Gift Aid	Land and buildings £ 800,000
	800,000

	8,593

3 Restricted funds

At 1 January 2025 2 Receipts Payments At 31 December 2025	Community Grocery 18,273 12,165 20,925 9,513	Outreach Ministries Faithful Funding Message Youth worker Limitless Outreach Minister 5,959 0 0 0 5,000 9,616 12,100 4,000 9,232 0 12,381 12,100 2,352 7,001 1,330 3,194 0 1,648 2,231 3,670	Total 29,232 47,113 56,089
			20,256

Harpurhey Community Church Notes to the Financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025

3 Accounting basis

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the Statement of Recommended Practice: Accounting and Reporting by Charities (SORP 2005) issued by the Charity Commission.The accruals basis of accounting has been adopted.

4 Income and expenditure account analysis

Income Planned giving Collections at services Gift Aid Other income Restricted funds Restricted funds - Gift Aid Use of church rooms Donations Donations specific Ministerial costs Stipend Pension Travel and subsistence Courses and conferences Manse expenses Repairs and maintenance Council tax Water charges Insurance Church premise costs Electricity Gas Water Property insurance Cleaning Repairs and renewals of property and equipment Repairs and maintenance Church running costs Telephone and internet Printing, postage and stationery Licences and music	2025 £ 55,724 6,458 16,509 78,691 43,154 2,631 - 6,965 - 52,750 26,589 6,628 449 625 34,291 80 2,172 569 452 3,273 8,652 2,229 614 3,113 140 14,748 1,832 489 61 664	2024 £ 41,782 7,256 16,668
		65,706
		36,757 1,417 200 2,450 8,000
		48,824
		25,656 6,518 353 541
		33,068
		5,146 2,346 - 423
		7,915
		2,298 1,854 590 3,210 215
		8,167
		3,013
		468 250 645

Harpurhey Community Church Notes to the Financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025

Upkeep of services Bank charges Computer expenses Sundry expenses Ministry expenses Church ministries Interest on bank and other loans Loan interest manse Finance charges Fund raising fees Subscriptions Baptist Union subscriptions NWBA Maximise Misson giving and donations BMS Donations Restricted funds Outreach workers Community grocery Outreach ministries Limitless Fund raising grants	1,025 83 546 35 2,903 1,752 4,645 2,000 315 760 600 1,675 2,400 250 2,650 11,392 20,500 4,314 7,001 11,500 54,707	1,127 - 543 65
		3,098
		1,351
		6,605
		-
		294 730 -
		1,024
		2,400 -
		2,400
		10,350 12,985 14,322 - -
		37,657

Harpurhey Community Church

Accountants' report on the unaudited accounts to Harpurhey Community Church

Middleton Accountanc Services Ltd y

Middleton Accountancy Services Ltd Chartered Accountants 211 Manchester New Road Alkrington Middleton Manchester M24 1JT

Date: 13 May 2026