Samaritans Annual Reports and Accounts
2023/24
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
## **Trustees’ Annual Report and Accounts**
Strategic report .......................................................................................................................... 4 Letter from Chair and CEO ..................................................................................................... 4 Our strategy ............................................................................................................................ 6 About this document.............................................................................................................. 7 Our performance .................................................................................................................... 7 Priorities ................................................................................................................................. 8 Access ................................................................................................................................. 8 Reach ................................................................................................................................ 11 Impact ............................................................................................................................... 14 Capacity ............................................................................................................................ 19 Sustainability .................................................................................................................... 22 Principles .............................................................................................................................. 26 Equity, diversity and Inclusion (EDI) ................................................................................. 26 Personal experience ......................................................................................................... 27 Safety and quality ............................................................................................................. 27 Evidence-based ................................................................................................................. 28 Vocal and visible ............................................................................................................... 30 Innovation and technology ............................................................................................... 30 Environmental responsibility ............................................................................................ 31 Financial review .................................................................................................................... 33 Risks and uncertainties......................................................................................................... 38 Governance report ................................................................................................................... 42 Our structure ........................................................................................................................ 42 Incidents and Reporting ....................................................................................................... 47 Fundraising Activities Statement ......................................................................................... 48 Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting ......................................................................... 51 Statement of Trustees’ responsibilities ............................................................................... 54 Independent Auditor’s Report to the Members and Trustees of Samaritans ..................... 55 Consolidated Statement of Financial Activities ................................................................... 60 Charity Statement of Financial Activities ............................................................................. 61
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
Consolidated and Charity Balance Sheet ............................................................................. 62 Cashflow statement ............................................................................................................. 63 Notes to the Accounts .......................................................................................................... 64 Reference and Administrative details .................................................................................. 87 Board of Trustees ............................................................................................................. 87 Samaritans senior staff ..................................................................................................... 88 Regional Directors (as of 31 March 2024) ........................................................................ 88 Samaritans branches ........................................................................................................ 90 Donors and supporters......................................................................................................... 94
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
## **Strategic report**
## Letter from Chair and CEO
**As you read this letter, no matter what time it is, Samaritans volunteers across the UK and Ireland are responding, via phone, email, letter, online chat and in person, to people who are struggling to cope. Almost one in four of their conversations will mention suicidal feelings or behaviours.**
This year, we marked 70 years of being there. In November 1953, the first-ever call was answered to what would become Samaritans’ helpline. This single act of humanity became a service involving tens of thousands of Samaritans who together over the years have answered more than 134 million calls for help. It’s an incredible achievement and we thank every volunteer and member of staff, past and present, for their contribution.
While the safe space and human connection offered by Samaritans hasn’t changed since we began, the world we live in is so very different. And right now, it’s tough.
This year more than 400 calls a day[1] were from people worried about their finances or unemployment. Our callers are feeling the brunt of the cost-of-living crisis and so are we. Our income is down for the third year running, while costs continue to rise. We’ve had to make some really difficult decisions – stopping or postponing projects that we simply don’t have the funds for currently.
In fact, this year it became clear that we’re not going to be able to deliver everything we set out to do in our strategy by 2027. Yet this work is so important for our vision: that fewer people die by suicide. For this reason, in early 2024, our Board made the decision to extend our strategic period to 2029, giving us two more years to raise funds and do the work. During 2025, we will review progress with the strategy and consider further changes in the light of the latest developments and Samaritans’ financial situation.
Despite the challenges, you’ll see in this report that we have continued to make progress against our strategic priorities and principles. To name just a few: volunteers and staff have worked hard to extend the opening hours for our online chat service and we’re proud to have played an instrumental role in shaping national suicide prevention strategies across our five jurisdictions and the Online Safety Act in Westminster. This report gives many more examples of our work.
Awareness of Samaritans and our campaigns continues to rise, which is essential both for the reach of our services and for raising funds – and for our credibility influencing governments across our five jurisdictions in the UK and Ireland. We were thrilled to be named as charity partner for 2024 London Marathon, which is a huge honour and a unique opportunity for even greater awareness of our life saving work. Overall, despite the
> 1 In January 2024, over 13,000 (7.3%) emotional support contacts mentioned finance/unemployment concerns, which is a daily average of over 440 calls per day. This was recorded by volunteers through our eLog, an anonymous system for tracking caller concerns.
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challenges, you can be assured that Samaritans remains a vibrant, viable and vital organisation worthy of your continuing support.
Enormous thanks go to all our supporters, and to everyone who has used their voice and experience to help and speak up for our work this year. In 2024, we must inspire many more people and organisations to do so, so Samaritans can continue to be there for people who need someone to listen without judgement.
Julie Bentley, CEO
Keith Leslie, Chair
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## Our strategy
In April 2022, we launched _Tackling suicide together: providing a safe space in uncertain times,_ our strategy to guide us in fulfilling our purpose of being there for people who are struggling to cope and in times of crisis.
Day and night, Samaritans is here for people throughout the UK and Ireland, whenever and however they need us. We’re committed to providing the best quality of service possible to help the people we support believe in tomorrow.
We’ve listened to those with lived experience, our volunteers and staff to understand how we can make an even greater difference. This has helped us to define the role that Samaritans will play as we look to the future of suicide prevention.
Our vision is that fewer people die by suicide, and we believe that aligning our work with the five priorities outlined in _Tackling suicide together_ will help us achieve this.
- ➢ **Access** : Make sure anyone who needs us can access our support.
- ➢ **Reach** : Reach more people to let them know we’re here.
- ➢ **Impact** : Make our voice heard at a national, regional and local level for maximum impact.
- ➢ **Capacity** : Increase our capacity to become one team of valued, diverse, skilled people.
- ➢ **Sustainability** : Build meaningful relationships with our supporters to ensure our sustainability.
Due to the financial challenges of the cost of living crisis over the past two years, our Board of Trustees have made the decision to extend our Samaritans strategy to 2029 as we have not been able to progress at the pace we had hoped. The Board will be reviewing our progress against our strategic aims at the new mid-point of our strategy in 2025.
In the 2023/24 strategic year, we have taken some important steps to move from strategy to activity. We’ve started work on future-proofing our 24-hour listening service, improved access to our support for people who may be at higher risk of suicide, provided more flexible ways of volunteering and campaigned on issues that will reduce suicide. Samaritans are always here, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and we will continue to stand by our strategic priorities and principles to help create a future full of hope for those who are struggling to cope.
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## About this document
The following pages highlight how we performed against our strategic priorities in 2023/24.
In developing our strategy and accompanying activity plans, and in producing this Annual Report and Accounts, the Trustees have given due consideration to the Charity Commission for England & Wales’ published guidance on the public benefit requirement under the Charities Act 2011 as well as equivalent guidance from The Scottish Charity Regulator, the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, Ireland’s Charities Regulator and relevant bodies within crown dependencies. In particular, Samaritans’ core listening and online services are free to the general public. This report also shows where support is provided in targeted settings and our wider influencing work to reduce incidents of suicide. The work carried out by Samaritans is consistent with charitable purposes as identified in the Charities Act 2011 (The advancement of health or saving of lives).
Unless otherwise stated, the service statistics in this report are for the 2023 calendar year. Please see our 2023/24 Impact Report for more information about our work and how it is making a difference.
## Our performance
Samaritans is committed to making change that saves lives and our performance this year reflects this. We’ve worked with people with lived experience, volunteers, staff and our supporters to make sure that Samaritans can be there for anyone who needs us.
From tackling harmful suicide and self-harm content with new laws to extending our online chat operating hours, we’ve used our strategic priorities and principles as a road map towards our vision that fewer people die by suicide.
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
## Priorities
## Access
We’re working to make sure that anyone who needs us can access our support.
_Our strategic objectives:_
- Further develop our support services.
- Strive to ensure the highest standards in our services.
## _Performance against strategic objectives:_
**We successfully extended opening hours for our online chat service.** Online chat is helping us reach more people who might not otherwise access our services. This year, our branches and hubs that deliver this service worked together to open an additional online chat shift on Friday evenings. Our online chat service is now available Monday-Friday from 6pm-10pm and Sunday from 6pm-8pm. Samaritans’ online chat service is still currently in its pilot phase, but this year we will be starting an evaluation of this project to inform future development which should be completed by February 2025.
**We continued to improve the way we deliver our email service so that we can support people in a way that works for them.** Samaritans’ email service offers a different way for people to seek support and provides a space for people to express themselves without the pressure of a real-time conversation. This year we developed the way we deliver our email service so that our dedicated virtual Email Hub works in partnership with some of our local branches to deliver this service. This is underpinned by a new email service specification and service level agreement to ensure that our email service operates to a unified, high-quality standard that achieves the best possible experience for anyone who reaches out to us by email.
**We opened a dedicated helpline for people who have served in the Armed Forces.** Launched in March 2024, our Veterans' Emotional Support Helpline provides a safe and nonjudgemental space for people who have served in the Armed Forces to talk about their experiences. Feedback suggests that veterans prefer to speak to someone who has lived experience or a good understanding of the Armed Forces and Samaritans’ anonymous helpline data shows that suicidal feelings were discussed in around 1 in 3 calls for help from veterans. We published a Veterans Emotional Support Helpline webpage to provide more information on this service for veterans, serving members of the Armed Forces and their family members. We also created awareness materials to promote this service.
**We continued to support people in prison through our Listener scheme** . People in prison are significantly more likely to die by suicide, and the Listener scheme aims to reduce suicide and self-harm in prisons. Listeners are people in prison who are trained by Samaritans to provide emotional support to their peers who are struggling to cope or feeling
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suicidal. Our prison Listeners responded to calls for help more than 48,000 times in 2023, spending over 27,000 hours supporting people in prison face to face. People in prison can also seek support from Samaritans’ helpline. In 2023, volunteers in branches answered almost half a million calls from people in prison.
## **We are reviewing and updating our policies and procedures relating to Samaritans’**
**Listener scheme in prisons.** This will in turn help us revise our Listener Core Training (LCT) in the near future, ensuring Listeners continue to feel competent and confident to deliver the role. We have also been working with HMPPS and their telecoms provider to improve our phone service to prisons by developing better ways of addressing the smaller proportion of calls we do not tolerate (service misuse), such as abusive or threatening behaviour. Reducing these calls will improve the experience for our volunteers and help us answer more of the many genuine calls we receive from people in prison, and others.
**We were recognised by the Welsh Language Commissioner for our strong commitment and dedication to the Welsh language.** This acknowledgment, known as Cynnig Cymraeg (Welsh Offer), emphasises our robust plan to incorporate the Welsh language into our service delivery throughout Wales and beyond. At Samaritans, we believe that offering services in a language of choice can make a significant impact. We have embraced the challenge of ensuring Welsh and English languages are treated equally in Wales, and in delivering bilingual content and services for the Welsh-speaking population.
**We continued to review the services we offer to under-18s to help us decide our future approach to working with children and young people.** We've built our internal evidence base by undertaking new research and looking at existing evidence around how our services are used by children. This year, we started the implementation phase of this review, underpinned by a report to our Board of Trustees that outlined findings from ten streams of work. The report recommended a plan of work over the next two years that will further increase the safety and effectiveness of our activities with this age group. This will include refreshing school materials and making some changes to our criminal record checks. We have secured funding from the Prudence Trust to update and refresh our school materials.
**We promoted quality and safeguarding across all our work.** This year we reviewed and further developed our safeguarding and confidentiality policy to include our stance on responding to threats of harm to others and worked on adding to the depth of our regular safeguarding reporting. Across the organisation, we have embedded robust safeguarding practices. This includes introducing a dedicated Safeguarding Officer in Ireland and implementing additional criminal records checks for relevant volunteers and staff in both Ireland and the UK. We have effective service quality assurance processes in place across Samaritans, including completion of our first full quality audit and subsequent regular quarterly reporting on quality assurance findings, as well as feedback to our branches where their volunteers have excelled or where they may need some further support. We have also
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developed an implementation plan for a shared operating model for telephony support in the UK and Ireland.
_Future plans:_
Below are some of our priorities for the coming year, which are helping us lay the foundations to deliver against the ambitious goals we’ve set out in our strategy. Alongside this, we’ll continue working on many of the projects mentioned above, making sure that we meet our long-term objectives. We will also continue our vital core work, which includes running our 24/7 helpline and providing a safe and effective service.
- In the next year, we will introduce a new platform, which we’re referring to as our ‘Listening Centre’, to answer calls, emails and online chats. All traditional landlines in the UK are being switched off and the current platform that UK volunteers use to take calls and deliver online chat is also being retired by our current supplier. This is an opportunity for us to secure a new and improved platform for our listening services across the whole of the UK and Ireland, which we'll be transitioning to by the end of 2024 in the UK and 2025 in Ireland.
- We will also be switching all of our branch phone lines from analogue to Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP). VoIP is a means of making phone calls using an internet connection instead of a traditional landline. To facilitate this change, we will be moving our UK branches over to VoIP with a strong internet connection that is fast and reliable enough to enable branches to take calls over the internet.
- We will continue to work to improve our email service, delivered in partnership by the virtual Email Hub and volunteers in branch, and increase the opening hours for our online chat pilot so that we can publicly launch the service and start to promote it more widely.
- We’re not always able to answer every call to our helpline as quickly as we would like, especially in the early hours of the morning when we have fewer volunteers answering calls. We are working with our network of branches to increase the number of volunteers answering calls at night, and aim initially to reduce the number of calls that don’t get answered from an average of 28% to 20%.
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## Reach
We’re reaching more people to let them know we’re here.
_Our strategic objectives:_
- Increase our visibility in places of need.
- Strive to be there for people at higher risk of suicide.
_Performance against strategic objectives:_
**We continued to expand our service to be there for more people.** This year saw the launch of new Samaritans locations in Ireland; in Castlebar, Carlow and Clonakilty.[2] Respectively these are satellites of our Galway, Kilkenny and Cork branches. Our teams in Bradford, London City Hub and Sevenoaks continued to focus on increasing their volunteer numbers[3] and work with local communities. We also built on our partnership with Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), including adding Samaritans’ phone service to our ARU Chelmsford hub in addition to the online chat service already being provided.
**We encouraged people to trust their instincts and start a conversation if they see**
**someone who might need help through our Small Talk Saves Lives campaign.** The campaign is delivered in partnership with Network Rail, British Transport Police and the wider rail industry. Since launching in 2017, Small Talk Saves Lives has successfully raised awareness within railway stations and other public settings that starting a conversation with someone who is struggling to cope could save their life. The campaign helps boost people’s confidence in identifying people who appear to be in distress and knowing what to say in these situations. The campaign has even had a significant influence on the likelihood of people approaching and speaking to someone who appeared distressed at a railway station; 36% of those who saw the campaign said they would, compared to 23% among those who didn’t see the campaign. The latest phase of the campaign launched on 22 February, with a Small Talk Salon at London King’s Cross railway station. We secured widespread media coverage across England, Scotland and Wales and our campaign film was viewed by over 1.7 million people thanks to our partnership with Sky and Samba TV. Over 40 radio interviews took place and more than 280 print and online news outlets covered the campaign launch. London Live and Greatest Hits Radio visited the salon to do a series of interviews on the day. Our station event was visited by Huw Merriman MP, Minister of State for Rail.
> 2 So far, we have recruited and trained 24 new volunteers in Clonakilty, 20 new volunteers in Castlebar, and 8 new volunteers in Carlow. In addition, more than 30 volunteers from other branches have moved across to these new locations.
> 3 Comparing the month of April 2023 and March 2024, we saw a 23% increase in volunteer numbers in Bradford, an 18% increase in London City Hub and a 7% increase in Sevenoaks. Volunteer numbers fluctuate on a monthly basis but the latest data we have (from May 2024) continue to show an increase across these three locations.
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**We reminded everyone to reach out for a cuppa and a catch-up with the people they care about on Brew Monday.** Held on the third Monday of January, Brew Monday encourages people to connect with others and talk about how they’re feeling, raising awareness of Samaritans and providing positive opportunities for engagement. Many Samaritans branches took part, with at least 180 rail and community events held across the UK and Ireland. Once again, #BrewMonday trended at number two on X (formerly Twitter). Our overall engagements on social media were up by over 100 per cent at 76k this year, compared to 34k in 2023. The campaign also generated 165 pieces of media coverage.
**We engaged with local communities, employers and organisations across the West Highlands and Skye** . The project aims to raise awareness of Samaritans’ services and encourage people to seek support when they need it. Issues of isolation, access to health services and stigma can make getting help challenging in these mostly rural areas. With a strong focus on lone and isolated workers, we offered a range of support to improve mental wellbeing and reduce suicide risk. Through this project, we have achieved greater visibility in the region, working closely with community organisations and workplaces to promote our services and support. We offered training to help to build people’s skills and confidence in supporting people who are struggling to cope. We have also improved our own knowledge and insight into what supports lone and isolated workers.
## **We joined forces with well-loved public figures to raise awareness of Samaritans in**
**Ireland.** Over 500 Samaritans volunteers and supporters joined former broadcaster Charlie Bird’s inaugural Hand of Friendship Walk in Wicklow in April 2023. Charlie, who had been battling Motor Neurone Disease (MND), vowed to raise awareness of our work throughout his illness. Charlie supported Samaritans up until he sadly lost his battle with MND in March 2024. Samaritans Ireland was also the chosen charity of Brent Pope’s ‘Elephant in the Room’ project, which engaged Irish stars and broadcasters to design baby elephant sculptures to raise awareness of mental health.
**We worked to raise awareness of Samaritans among young people in Northern Ireland.** This year, we produced a series of videos for young people. Through these videos, filmed at our eight branches, we aim to show younger people that not only can they talk to us at any time, without judgement, but that we can provide them with a safe space to explore their thoughts and feelings.
## **We were unable to move forward with planned developments for our branch outreach**
**activity.** Our outreach activity refresh is still on hold due to a lack of staff capacity but when it is ready, this resource will be rolled out to provide a more permanent outreach focus and support for the wider organisation on an ongoing basis. This year, in preparation, we have updated and expanded the ‘outreach policy and training’ section on our intranet for Samaritans volunteers and staff.
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## _Future plans:_
Below are some of our priorities for the coming year, which are helping us lay the foundations to deliver against the ambitious goals we’ve set out in our strategy. Alongside this, we’ll continue working on many of the projects mentioned above, making sure that we meet our long-term objectives. We will also continue our vital day-to-day work, such as raising awareness of our service and increasing our visibility in the areas of greatest need.
- We will continue to work to make sure that children are safely and effectively supported through our helpline, chat and email service options, and our educationbased activities, for example by reviewing and updating our schools outreach resources.
- We will be working across the branch network to co-create a new outreach strategy so we can reach more people in communities at higher risk of suicide.
- In Wales, we’re running the ‘Our Farming, Our Future’ project with young farmers. This is funded for an initial period of one year, with a possible extension for a second year, by NFU Mutual Charitable Trust and the Moondance Foundation. Working in partnership with farming support charity, Tir Dewi, we will work closely with Wales Young Farmers Clubs (YFC) and their members, initially focusing on the counties of Powys and Ceredigion.
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## Impact
Making our voice heard at a national, regional and local level for maximum impact.
_Our strategic objectives:_
- Influence governments and public service.
- Build and use an evidence base.
- Build partnerships for change.
- Influence key industries and sectors.
## _Performance against strategic objectives:_
**We changed the law to create a suicide-safer internet.** Samaritans had significant influence on the Online Safety Bill as it completed its passage through the Westminster Parliament and became law. We've been working to influence the Bill since it was first announced in 2019, using expertise from our Online Excellence Programme, publishing new research showing the extent of harm caused, meeting Ministers, Shadow Ministers and officials, targeting key MPs, briefing parliamentarians ahead of debates, getting amendments to the Bill tabled and inspiring individuals to take action with us. Now, thanks to Samaritans' campaigning, all internet platforms hosting user generated content, such as social media companies, will have to ensure children (under 18s) can't access any harmful suicide and self-harm content. All platforms will have to ensure adults and children can't access any illegal suicide and self-harm content; the biggest platforms or those with particularly high risk will have to undertake and publish risk assessments that set out how they are going to deal with different types of content and ensure they're implemented; and a new UK wide communications offence was created of assisting or encouraging self-harm.
**We helped secure a new national suicide prevention strategy for England** . We intensively influenced this strategy's development for over a year and throughout numerous government changes, before its publication in September 2023. We did this through our leadership on the government advisory group, working directly with officials, working alongside people with lived experience, working cross-party with key parliamentarians, and inspiring our campaigners to take action and keep the pressure up. The new strategy has a host of items that we helped to include, such as a ‘no wrong door’ approach, meaning it shouldn’t matter which service you access, you should still get timely support if you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts or feelings. It also recognises the important role that Samaritans plays, mentioning work like our prison Listener scheme, Veterans app, Online Excellence Programme, media advisory service, rail programme and training.
**We held an awareness session for Parliamentarians on what they can do to spot and support someone who might be at risk, in their role as frontline public servants** . The event was jointly hosted by Sajid Javid MP and Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP in November – both of whom have been bereaved by suicide. More than 40 MPs attended
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including the mental health minister Maria Caulfield MP and her Labour counterpart, Abena Oppong-Asare MP.
**We worked to secure a new dedicated suicide prevention strategy for Wales.** Working with the National Advisory Group for Suicide Prevention, we asked the Welsh Government to commit to a continuation of distinct suicide and mental health strategies. We were invited to join a drafting group for the new Suicide Prevention Strategy. We were the only third-sector organisation asked to do this and have participated fully in the drafting process. We also worked with Welsh Government officials to shape the consultation process around children and young people, to ensure it is meaningful but mitigates the risks of engaging young people in challenging subject matter.
**We continued to play a key role in delivering Scotland’s new national suicide prevention strategy.** We were appointed by Scottish Government to lead on Outcome 1 of Scotland's suicide prevention strategy, _Creating Hope Together_ . This involved working across the Government to ensure that policies are developed and implemented to address the inequalities that contribute to suicide risk. We have delivered workshops and events to bring people together to share best practice and knowledge on approaches that help to reduce risk at locations of concern. This will inform the development of a national approach to reduce access to means and support local action. We have also facilitated discussions with policy teams in government and commissioned research to better understand the social determinants of health and suicide. We successfully delivered media reporting training to elected members of parliament, local spokespeople, and journalists working in local media to ensure suicide is reported more responsibly.
**We established a Mental Health Policy Alliance in Northern Ireland to drive policy changes and reduce suicide rates through working together.** Given the complex issues in the region, addressing mental health and suicide prevention is vital. The alliance will focus on key objectives, pooling expertise and resources for greater impact, leveraging the strengths of each organisation to drive lasting policy changes. We have held several design thinking sessions to advance our vision and activities.
**We held a mental health seminar at Parliament Buildings, Stormont, in Northern Ireland** . During the seminar we shared findings from our impact report as well as our strategic priorities for 2022 to 2027. Sarah Travers, BBC journalist, hosted a panel-led discussion as we called for openness on the ‘Progress and Challenges of Mental Health in Northern Ireland’. The panel comprised of Professor Siobhan O’Neill, Mental Health Champion for Northern Ireland, Professor Sir Michael McBride, Chief Medical Officer for Northern Ireland, Claire Curran, Head of Services for Survivors of Suicide Support Group and Professor Gerry Lynch, Consultant Psychiatrist and ex chair of RCPsych Northern Ireland.
**We were unable to set up a Northern Ireland Advisory Board this year.** The plan was to set up the Advisory Board to strengthen our links to the Northern Irish community and support the implementation of our work, but it was not possible this year due to lack of capacity.
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**We engaged with the new office of the Online Safety Commissioner within Coimisiún na Meán (the Media Commission in Ireland** ) **.** We had multiple engagements with the Commission throughout 2023, including submissions to two consultations on the first drafts of the Online Safety Code. We stressed the important balance of ensuring that legal but harmful content is minimised, while opportunities for support are maximised and steps are taken to reduce the stigmatisation of people who turn to the internet to share their stories and seek support. We also highlighted the need to ensure platform moderators, commission staff and others who would come across difficult content are adequately equipped and supported to reduce the risk of desensitisation and burnout, helping to keep the internet a safer space.
**We hosted the National Suicide Prevention Alliance (NSPA) and Support after Suicide Partnership (SASP)** . We’re supporting them to share best practice across the country around suicide prevention and postvention services. With a membership of over 2,000 organisations and individuals, and a large network of people with lived experience, NPSA is uniquely placed to ensure insights are feeding directly into national policy. This has included supporting organisations such as city Bridge Trust, STORM and Leicester City Council. SASP has continued to deliver support for commissioned suicide bereavement support services across England and published important new research and guidance about how to provide support after a suicide to people from the LGBTQ+ community and those who are neurodivergent.
**We continued developing and delivering our Online Excellence Programme to make the internet safer for everyone.** The Online Excellence Programme took a multi-faceted approach to maximising support and minimising harm online through increasing the evidence base with research, working with industry to improve practice, influencing legislation, and working to improve awareness and understanding with young people and those around them including parents, carers and practitioners. The programme reached over 11,000 people who work to support people at risk of suicide or self-harm, equipping them to discuss issues around internet use. We reached over 2.5m people through our information on how to keep yourself and others safe online. Our industry guidance on how to deal with suicide and self-harm content online has been viewed 4,246 times. We also completed research with the University of Birmingham and the University of Bristol to improve understanding of what makes content harmful and to whom, and the impact of engaging with this content over time.
**We continued our strategic partnership with National Highways.** Through this partnership, we provided them with guidance and advice to support their suicide prevention strategy for the strategic road network. This included ensuring they have access to the latest research, developing an evaluation toolkit to improve their measurement and supporting their Regional Safety Programme Managers. We gave advice to our branches and external stakeholders around interventions in non-rail public places nearly 200 times and 90 per cent of these people felt very or extremely confident after our support. We've also helped
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coordinate the Safer Public Spaces Network, bringing together practitioners across the country to improve practice around high-risk locations.
**We continued our partnership with the rail industry to reduce the number of lives lost to suicide on the railways.** In 2023 we trained over 2,700 rail staff in Samaritans' suicide prevention and trauma awareness courses. Since the start of our rail partnership in 2010, Samaritans has trained over 34,000 rail staff to save lives.
We engaged with multiple partners both within and external to the rail industry focused on communities of need, underpinned by data of where the highest risk lies. This resulted in eight engagement events across the UK, bringing together our volunteers, other charities and local service providers to improve awareness of the services available and increase help-seeking. Events were held in Dunbar, Beeston, Dalmuir, Bridgend, Northallerton and Plymouth. We delivered post incident support on 74 occasions to rail industry staff and commuters who witnessed a suicide at a station. This service ensures that Samaritans volunteers can provide face-to-face emotional support for those who may be in distress and reduce the risk to people who may be vulnerable. This year, we delivered the latest phase of our award-winning Small Talk Saves Lives campaign, which encourages the public to trust their instincts if they see someone who might be in crisis and use everyday small talk to potentially interrupt their suicidal thoughts. For more information about our Small Talk Saves Lives campaign, see our Reach priority above.
**We delivered our media advisory service, encouraging responsible portrayal and reporting of suicide.** We provided advice over 630 times to editors, journalists and programme makers, advising on safe coverage. We also delivered 39 training sessions aimed at improving responsible reporting among journalists, journalism students, and content making among producers. Thanks in part to this work, less than one per cent of stories on average named novel methods and over three-quarters of stories included supportive signposting. We advised on some very high profile and challenging stories about suicide. The organisations we worked with included a production company for Disney+ and a male mental health story in Emmerdale.
**We determined a course of action for a new large-scale national survey about suicide and self-harm.** This national survey will help us understand what the key gaps in national data are around the prevalence of suicide and self-harm, and the risk and protective factors associated with them. This extensive scoping work can now be used to build a comprehensive and much-needed survey to understand suicide and self-harm better at a national level. We will use this work to drive forward this research in the coming year, with partners.
**We were unable to further develop our regional influencing work this year.** We wanted to develop our work to influence locally and regionally, working with our branches to make
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life-saving change by influencing governments and public services. Unfortunately, we were unable to undertake this work due to lack of capacity and limited budget.
_Future plans:_
Below are some of our priorities for the coming year, which are helping us lay the foundations to deliver against the ambitious goals we’ve set out in our strategy. Alongside this, we’ll continue working on many of the projects mentioned above, making sure that we meet our long-term objectives. We will also continue our vital day-to-day work, such as campaigning to make suicide prevention a priority and building partnerships that result in positive change.
- Following on from the 2024 UK general election, we'll be building relationships with the new government and campaigning to make sure action on suicide prevention is prioritised.
- In Scotland, as part of the Suicide Prevention strategy, we’ll be pushing for government action to reduce suicide risk factors.
- We’ll continue to influence other organisations to make changes that can save lives, for example though our media advisory services, partnerships with National Highways and the rail industry, and by hosting the National Suicide Prevention Alliance (NSPA) and Support After Suicide Partnership (SASP).
- We are developing a new framework to align our data, monitoring, reporting and evaluation activities to give us better insight into our impact and improve our performance.
- We’re continuing to implement a strong foundation plan for working with people with lived experience to make sure we’re embedding this insight into our work as much as possible.
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## Capacity
We’re increasing our capacity to become one team of valued, diverse, skilled people.
_Our strategic objectives:_
- Build one Samaritans through collaboration and hybrid working.
- Increase the capacity and diversity of our people.
- Develop our people and their skills.
_Performance against strategic objectives:_
**We recruited and trained more volunteers through Samaritans Training School, helping us**
**to be there for more people.** Samaritans Training School (STS) is a central recruitment and training team run by staff and volunteers. It's not here to replace branch recruitment or training teams, but to strengthen and add to the work that’s already going on in our branches. Launched in Autumn 2021 to help support the training requirements for our growing service expansion programme, STS has supported over 1,000 volunteers. In 2023/24, STS recruited 705 potential volunteers and supported the retention of an additional 698 branch volunteers through core and embedding programmes. In another area of their work, STS have now planned and delivered 24 placement weeks for over 400 Anglia Ruskin University students. Students attending have been from a range of helping professions including trainee paramedics, paediatric nurses, physiotherapists and social workers.
**We reviewed our Branch Director role and volunteer leadership at our branches.** This review is helping us better understand and address the challenges our volunteer leaders face and how we can best support them. The first stage of the review was to ‘define the role’, making changes to the scope and structure of the director role. We will continue to review our volunteer policies and with more defined leadership roles, we can begin to roll out a more defined role profile and a handbook with supporting guidance in the coming months. This project has been a true collaboration of volunteers and staff members working together to create a more flexible, inclusive and welcoming environment for potential volunteer leaders.
**We worked to build closer working relationships between our volunteers and staff team by embedding the new volunteer role of Director of Branch Operations.** Together, these four volunteer leaders provide leadership, direction and support for our Regional Directors and report directly into the Executive Director of Operations.
**We continued efforts to improve communication and engagement with volunteers and**
**staff.** This year we reviewed our communication channels for volunteer leaders and launched a number of initiatives aimed at better supporting and engaging this important group. We developed a new quarterly branch forward planner to map out the months
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ahead with key activities and events highlighted to help our leadership teams with planning. We also launched new quarterly leadership calls to connect our volunteer and staff leaders, helping support two-way communication and feedback. In addition, we delivered virtual conferences for Samaritans staff and volunteer leaders to help engage our people in our strategic aims and to provide important opportunities to celebrate our wide-ranging work and impact.
**We’re reviewing how Samaritans branches and our Central Charity work together.** This includes our operating agreement and the central charity services provided to branches. In this review, we are working to identify 'what it is to be a Samaritans branch or hub', providing clearer policy, process and ways of working to ensure a consistent, high-quality service across the Samaritans network. We expect to complete this review in 2024.
## **We launched an organisation-wide programme of learning and development opportunities and resources for all staff.** Launched in Autumn 2023, Samaritans
Development Programme will help us build skills and capability across Samaritans over time. We plan to roll out this programme for staff people leaders in 2024, focusing on skill building in four key areas: accountability, empowerment, inclusivity and connection. We are also providing apprenticeship opportunities for Samaritans staff through Corndel. Three apprenticeships were chosen to build people, project and business management skills at all levels. So far, 26 colleagues have signed up for an apprenticeship.
**We’ve amended the level of criminal record checks that our volunteers need.** In addition to the Enhanced level (or equivalent according to the jurisdiction) all of our listening volunteers now have checks against the children’s barred list. And for the first time, we have started conducting basic criminal record checks for our non-listening support volunteers. We launched this project in March 2024 in three regions and will continue introducing criminal records checks for all caller-facing staff and volunteers in shops over the following 12 months.
**We’ve improved training for our Investigation, Hearing and Appeal officer volunteers.** This new training will better help these volunteers conduct fair and consistent investigations in response to concerns and complaints. We created new guidance documents, improved insights for the local and regional leadership teams, and expanded our reach of mediation. Our Volunteering team has worked closely with the EDI team and other teams across the organisation to support this process as thoroughly as possible.
## _Future plans:_
Below are some of our priorities for the coming year, which are helping us lay the foundations to deliver against the ambitious goals we’ve set out in our strategy. Alongside this, we will continue working on many of the projects mentioned above, making sure that we meet our long-term objectives. We will also continue our vital day-to-day work, such as
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recruiting new volunteers and making sure that our volunteers and staff have the training and support they need to carry out their roles.
- We’re continuing our branch leadership review to make senior voluntary roles more achievable and appealing by rolling out a more defined role profile and a handbook with supporting guidance.
- We’re rolling out our enhanced criminal records process for staff and volunteers, including support volunteers, any caller-facing staff and volunteers in shops.
- We’re designing a people plan for Samaritans that will identify the work we need to do to develop and invest in our volunteers and staff, improve our culture and embed our strategic principles across everything we do.
- We’re carrying out an organisation-wide survey to understand the views of volunteers and share best practice across Samaritans to help engage and retain volunteers.
- We will continue to deliver our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion plan across Samaritans, taking targeted action to improve our representation and make sure we have an environment where our people feel safe, that they belong and that their experiences are valued.
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## Sustainability
We’re ensuring our sustainability by building meaningful relationships with our supporters.
_Our strategic objectives:_
- Inspire people to support us.
- Develop meaningful partnerships.
_Performance against strategic objectives:_
## **Our Break the Silence appeal achieved remarkable success in raising awareness and funds**
**for suicide prevention.** This campaign raised £480,000, ensuring that Samaritans can continue to provide crucial support to those in need. This success was complemented by significant TV, digital and media coverage, resulting in 102 million impacts and 12,000 web visits. The campaign’s new angle, 'Because you were there', highlighted powerful, real-life stories from individuals who had experienced the life-saving support of Samaritans. These stories emphasised that because Samaritans were there to listen, many people who were struggling have been able to break their silence and talk about feeling suicidal. The campaign materials, featuring these heartfelt stories, were distributed widely and our main pack was sent to over 37,500 supporters. Our partner Standard Life funded an additional TV advert, which significantly boosted our impact on DRTV. This comprehensive effort resonated deeply with our audience, resulting in almost 950 new donors joining our cause, and a second cash gift from 341 existing donors. The stories and our clear, urgent messaging underscored the critical importance of our services, all year round.
**This year, we’ve worked to deliver accessible and exciting virtual events.** In November 2023, our Walk 50 miles in November with your dog challenge had over 7,600 sign-ups and raised over £260,000. We tested a fun approach in the marketing and communications, leading to a very busy Facebook group of over 6,000 members at its peak, all sharing their wonderful reasons for taking part and, of course, a healthy number of pup pictures. We then trialled a Walk 70 miles in March challenge to celebrate Samaritans’ 70[th] year, raising just over £170,000.
**Stream for Samaritans continued to grow our work with digital-first communities** , engaging content creators and streamers in both fundraising and awareness raising activities. Content creators from across the globe helped share key messages as part of our Break the Silence campaign and for Mental Health Awareness Week, raising over £58,000 throughout the year. An exciting new area for us is becoming the named beneficiary of a successful rail-related YouTube channel where an individual creator has pledged all of the channel revenue to support Samaritans, helping us raise funds and awareness.
**We had our first-ever garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, which was a unique opportunity to raise awareness in our 70th year and inspire people to support us** . Created
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by Darren Hawkes, Samaritans’ Listening Garden had a simple and inspiring message: that listening can save lives. During the week of the show, 85 volunteers and staff from across the UK and Ireland came together to represent Samaritans, spending hundreds of hours talking to visitors and helping raise awareness about our services and our work. The garden achieved incredible media coverage. With 245 individual pieces of media coverage and a combined 111 million opportunities for people to see this coverage, it was our ‘most watched’ moment of the year. We were also lucky enough to have both the Princess of Wales and HM The King visit our garden, which resulted in additional press coverage and engagement on social media. During show week, our volunteers spoke to tens of thousands of visitors about Samaritans and provided emotional support at least 185 times.
One of our corporate partners, The Ardonagh Community Trust, sponsored the post-event reception for our award-winning Listening Garden. This brought Samaritans’ supporters together to give greater insight into the significance of the garden and inspire them to continue to support our work. In the last year, we have raised close to £1 million in generous donations from donors, trust funders and corporate partners who were invited to this special event.
The ‘travelling’ version of Samaritans Listening Garden visited Latitude Festival in Suffolk from 20-23 July. This helped us raise awareness with a younger audience and provide a calming space where our Festival branch volunteers could support festival-goers. The travelling garden also visited the Welsh Eisteddfod in Llandovery from 5-12 August, raising awareness of our Welsh language service. Elements from our Listening Garden have now been donated to some of our branches for volunteers to enjoy for many years to come.
**Our corporate partnerships helped us raise vital funds and awareness this year.** Our partnership activity included brand associations, communications and campaigns, staff and customer fundraising and sponsorship. We also launched the Talk More Than Football campaign, in collaboration with Three UK and Chelsea FC, encouraging football fans of all ages to talk more about their mental health. This campaign reached millions of people. The campaign's first phase launched in April 2023, winning the Grand Prix prize at the Corporate Engagement Awards 2023.
Throughout the year, we approached and engaged with corporates, trusts and other funders to continue to grow the support we currently have and secure new opportunities for Samaritans as well. Long-term collaboration is important to delivering our mission, projects and activities as they are often complex and require ongoing investment.
**We continued to develop and deliver Samaritans Training and Engagement Programmes (STEP) to new companies.** As well as teaching people skills that can save lives, STEP also raises vital funds for Samaritans. In 2023, we delivered 472 courses to almost 5,000 participants from almost 100 different organisations, helping them train their people and teams to spot and support anyone struggling to cope. The team also delivered 25 open
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courses reaching individuals from various organisations for whom dedicated training sessions are not achievable. We were able to extend and develop a number of important training partnerships in key target segments that are on the frontline with vulnerable people to ensure more of their people are given access to the courses. For many of our philanthropic corporate partnerships, our training programme has added a strategic layer of activity that directly benefits their staff, customers and service users and embeds Samaritans’ values into their work.
**We piloted a workplace training initiative in Ireland.** This was possible thanks to funding secured from Dormant Accounts through The National Lottery to pilot workplace training initiatives. Numerous businesses have participated in this training, which aims to equip staff with the skills and knowledge necessary to support mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. This initiative demonstrates our commitment to fostering supportive environments and enhancing mental health awareness across various sectors in the region.
**We’ve had meaningful support from several trusts and statutory funders this year.** The trusts and statutory funders that have contributed to Samaritans’ work in 2023/24 have played a vital role in helping us deliver our services, especially in the current tough funding environment. Many trust funders have been supporting our work to transition our phone services from analogue to digital ahead of the BT switch over and the development of our new Listening Centre platform to future proof our helpline. We are very grateful for this support as we move into roll-out in 2024/25. We have also found success this year with the Department of Health and Social Care Suicide Prevention Fund. Three applications have been approved to support the work of the National Suicide Prevention Alliance, our partnership with Missing People supporting people who are missing and at risk of suicide, and contributions towards Samaritans’ helpline, our Media Advisory Service and our work to reduce suicide in high frequency locations.
**We’ve been able to support our work at Samaritans Central Charity and help branches that were struggling thanks to the Pears Foundation and a selection of Samaritans branches.** We received the second year of our current grant from the Pears Foundation, which is an invaluable unrestricted grant to help us put funding where it is needed most. Funding enabled us to distribute £120,000 to 25 branches that were struggling with income generation and cost increases. This funding helped to keep the lights on and contributed to branch running costs and volunteer expenses. We were also delighted to secure a further contribution from a branch to support this programme to help make the funding go even further and help the scheme continue in 2024/25. We are very grateful to the following branches who have also been able to support Samaritans’ work centrally: Chiltern Samaritans; Guildford Samaritans; Southend-on-Sea Samaritans; Wolverhampton Samaritans; Bristol Samaritans; Brighton, Hove and District Samaritans; and Blackburn with Darwen, Hynburn and Ribble Valley Samaritans.
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**Our celebrity ambassadors and supporters continued to boost our fundraising** across a number of activities, such as running marathons and bucket collections on tours. Josh Patterson’s incredible 76 marathon challenge saw him raise around £400k and our other celebrities helped us raise around £163k. Our celebrity ambassadors and supporters also continue to help us raise awareness of Samaritans’ services. They supported a number of our key initiatives, such as attending our Chelsea Flower Show press call and donor event; filming thank you messages for Volunteers’ Week, our 70[th ] anniversary and all staff meetings; and posting on their social channels for key moments including World Suicide Prevention Day and Brew Monday.
**We’ve optimised income using our existing supporter database (CRM) system and built a roadmap for supporter data migration.** Our data management, processing and insight are the foundation to ensuring that we deepen our relationships with our supporters through a better understanding of how frequently and recently they’ve supported us, and the value of that support. The income data and CRM roadmap has strengthened the approach from reactively servicing the data needs of the team to becoming a strategic data partner. The roadmap has enabled proactive data selection, processing, platform integration and improved ways of working. This guarantees that over 800,000 supporter data records are managed in a robust and compliant way, ensuring data risks are minimised and optimising data integrity.
## _Future plans:_
Below are some of our priorities for the coming year, which are helping us lay the foundations to deliver against the ambitious goals we’ve set out in our strategy. Alongside this, we’ll continue working on many of the projects mentioned above, making sure that we meet our long-term objectives. We will also continue our vital day-to-day work, which includes running fundraising events and appeals so we can continue providing our lifesaving services.
- We’re developing a strategy to help us understand which supporter audiences we are and should be reaching. This will be used to further improve our supporters’ experience and inform our communications, fundraising and campaigning work.
- We’ll be working to improve the experience that our supporters have with us, including how we communicate with them and inspire them to support us in different ways, to help generate deeper engagement, longer-term relationships and higher income.
- We value our partners and will be working to enhance and grow our partnerships, for example with the rail industry and companies that take part in our STEP training.
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## Principles
Our strategic principles guide everything we do at Samaritans. They are at the heart of the way we work and behave.
## Equity, diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
We will break down barriers to make Samaritans more diverse and inclusive, both through our people, but also in who we connect with and support, making sure that we are responding to people’s needs in a way that is relevant and meaningful to them and their circumstances. **Our EDI commitment is available on our website.**
Creating and maintaining an inclusive and accessible culture, where our people feel valued for being themselves, is critical to achieving our vision that fewer people die by suicide. Our EDI commitment, strategy and action plan; together with our wide ranging and including policies, practices, and initiatives illustrates our dedication to this commitment and ensures equitable opportunities and access for everyone. We are proud to be a Level 2 Disability Confident Employer, and as such proactively support a transparent, robust, and practical approach to reasonable adjustments and accommodations to support all our people to flourish.
## _Our performance:_
**We completed our 2022-2024 EDI foundation plan to embed the basic elements of equity, diversity and inclusion into Samaritans.** As part of our EDI foundation plan, we developed and started the delivery of new EDI learning to all of our staff and volunteers and included EDI in our learning portfolio. We developed new policies and processes to support EDI and established networks for minoritised staff and volunteers. We also did targeted work with specific communities on their risk of suicide and self-harm (eg, minoritised ethnic, LGBTQ+ and traveller communities, and people who are homeless). We celebrated the diversity of our staff and volunteers through Pride, race equality week, neurodiversity celebration week and other occasions.
**We led the Suicide Prevention Consortium’s work to improve understanding of the experiences of communities experiencing health inequalities** . The Suicide Prevention Consortium comprises Samaritans, NSPA, SASP and With You. This year we've focused on people with no fixed address, those with experience of suicidal ideation and alcohol issues, and the Roma, Showmen, Gypsy and New Traveller communities. We've worked with people in these communities to explore their experiences and published reports, blogs and audiograms to use with policymakers to enable them to hear directly from those communities about the improvements needed.
**We developed and published our policy position and blog on LGBTQ+ communities and suicide.** This was co-produced with 11 advisers from the LGBTQ+ community with lived experience of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and self-harm. The position presents
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recommendations for governments, health services and other public bodies across the UK and Ireland on what they should do to prevent suicides within these communities.
## Personal experience
We will ensure the voice of people with experience of suicidal feelings, suicide attempts, self-harm, or bereavement by suicide is central to and shapes all our services, products, campaigns and activities.
## _Our performance:_
**We have been co-designing a strategic approach to Lived Experience at Samaritans.** Working with people with lived experience, staff and volunteers, we've been exploring what our ambition is, what's needed and wanted from the organisation and what we need to do to achieve it. Over 100 members of staff, 300 people with lived experience and volunteer leaders have worked with us to help build our understanding and set our direction. The strategic plan is due to launch in late 2024.
**We continued hosting our Lived Experience Advisory Group, which has been influencing programs of work across the charity** . This a group of individuals with lived experience of suicide, self-harm or bereavement by suicide who provide advice, ideas and insight from a lived experience perspective. The group is now playing a vital role internally and people with lived experience have influenced a wide variety of projects across Samaritans, including our London Marathon campaign, the Online Safety Bill, media guidance, EDI work and much more.
**We've expanded our insights and evidence through our Lived Experience Panel.** This panel
now has over 600 members who have lived experience of suicide, self-harm, or use of Samaritans services. Thanks to the expansion of the panel, the voices of people with lived experience are now used widely across the organisation to inform all areas of our work, and the panel is a regular and valuable source of lived experience insights across all areas of our work.
## Safety and quality
We will ensure a safe, effective and positive experience for all those who come into contact with our services. We will continue to focus on safety and quality, including safeguarding children and adults at risk of harm who seek support from us. We will always look to exceed the expectations of people we support.
## _Our performance:_
**We continued to monitor and improve the quality of our services including our telephone helpline, email, online chat and letters.** Trained volunteers in our quality hub conduct service-wide monitoring and assessment to help identify both best practice and areas for
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development. This year we recruited new volunteers to the hub, set new quality review timings and raised awareness of our work. The new volunteers we’ve recruited bring our total to 80 (22 written word, 57 listening and seven in the leadership team who do both). We also completed 55 quality reviews at branch level this year. This has ensured that we are maintaining quality-focused service delivery at a branch level and provides assurance of the quality of contacts at a regional level. We also provided in-person continuous development training on our quality review process to our 80 quality mentors and regional quality development officers.
## **We offered support and guidance to listening volunteers via our 24/7 safeguarding**
**support line.** Our safeguarding support line is run by volunteer Safeguarding Officers and is an essential support service for branch volunteers with concerns and questions about safeguarding. This year, the support line has taken 1,457 contacts from branch volunteers seeking support in relation to callers. From April 2023 to March 2024, the safeguarding hub handled 3,790 concern forms submitted in safeguarding and caller support situations. The safeguarding team have made 1,198 external referrals and supported with 73 emergency calls from branches out of hours on this line. We also created and handled 149 caller support plans, enabling additional support for our highest-risk callers and providing them with help to manage their call usage.
## **We continued working to protect our volunteers from abusive or threatening behaviour.**
Misuse of service contacts often have a detrimental impact on volunteer morale and can also prevent genuine callers from being able to access our support. To protect our volunteers, we launched a pilot project, looking at the impact on call volumes, complaints and central charity resources if we reduce our threshold for calls we do not tolerate. We’ve also piloted call barring for misuse of service contacts in Ireland with great success. We’ve implemented new technology which helps to safeguard our callers and minimise misuse of our online chat service. For prisons, we are working on an approach to enable the barring of misuse of service calls from the prison estate.
**We improved our processes and revised key policies to help keep our services safe and effective.** This year, we updated our confidentiality policy and our self-determination policy to reflect Samaritans’ position on threats of harm to others. We produced new data dashboards and reporting at a regional and national level to report on all quality assurance activity from the quality hub, including online chat analysis. Acting on feedback from branches, we developed a new branch hub liaison role for branches to promote better information sharing between branches and the quality, safeguarding and caller awareness hubs.
## Evidence-based
We will use research, evidence, insight and data to inform all our services, activities and digital offerings. Where evidence is not available or clear, we will look to work with partners to fill those gaps.
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## _Our performance:_
**We've built the skills and capacity across Samaritans to undertake ethical and high-quality research** . We’ve achieved this by supporting all research to be completed in line with our Research Ethics Policy, training all staff who undertake any research activities and facilitating approval of over 50 research activities completed across the organisation during the year. We also completed a review of the ethics policy and processes to understand how these could be improved and support research better. We've continued to support the organisation through the provision and translation of our core evidence base around suicide and self-harm through evidence resources, reviews of evidence and facilitating evidencebased thinking at project and strategic levels. This has allowed Samaritans’ evidence base to grow significantly in a way that we know is ethical and high quality – and allows us to build capacity across the organisation to use the evidence more widely.
**We're building our evidence base around suicide and self-harm in prisons** . We undertook two key research projects seeking to understand the perspectives of people with lived experience of suicide and self-harm. These projects are still in progress but have been delayed due to operational delays in prisons. When this work is complete it will lead to better support for people in prison who experience suicide and self-harm, both by influencing how Samaritans supports them and through our partners' suicide prevention strategies in NHS England and HMPPS.
**We evaluated our veterans’ support hub pilot.** This evaluation allowed us to better understand the needs and use of the veteran support service, understand the quality of the service being delivered, and understand what changes would need to be made before a fuller roll-out of the service, to ensure that veterans are well supported.
**We built the evidence base around Samaritans crisis signage.** The results of this research will be used to develop a second phase of research that will help us understand how to better support people in crisis at high-risk locations where there is Samaritans signage.
**We launched a major piece of research in Ireland which found stigma has the power to silence, shame and push those who self-harm into secrecy.** The report _‘An Open Secret: Self-Harm and Stigma in Ireland and Northern Ireland’_ , revealed a disconnect between people’s willingness to help someone who self-harms and their actual behaviour.
**We were unable to complete certain projects that would help us build our evidence base this year.** Our review of the monitoring and evaluation framework and an ethics review were delayed as we had to prioritise other projects. The development of an evaluation hub, to support Samaritans in creating and delivering better evaluations and building capacity, has also been put on hold this year. Finally, our scoping of research to understand the needs of people who call frequently has also been put on hold due to capacity. In Ireland, we were unable to carry out a planned review of our work in second and third level education.
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## Vocal and visible
We will never shy away from raising our voice and campaigning on issues that matter to us, particularly those that directly or indirectly impact people’s risk of suicide, such as inequality, deprivation, prejudice and unfair treatment.
## _Our performance:_
**We put a new external communications strategy in place that is driving us to be more vocal and visible.** We’ve completed desk research and market analysis for this strategy and are currently holding discovery workshops to further understand how we can be there for people at higher risk of suicide. We’re prioritising our audiences and improving our comms planning to be better integrated internally and more responsive externally. We’ve also used key moments throughout the year to show our progress. For example, Samaritans Awareness Day showed what happens when you call us, to help demystify the process and encourage more people who are struggling to call Samaritans.
**We spoke out about the changes that we wanted to see, pushing for the Government in England to renew local suicide prevention funding.** We used our social media channels to inspire and engage the public; our unflinching support for local funding on social media went viral and had over one million views. We achieved significant media coverage to support our work to influence the Online Safety Bill, making it clear that content doesn't stop being harmful when you turn 18, and used this to push for change.
**We used our social media platforms to stand for what we believe in.** This year we joined a conversation about the support we gave to someone at Glastonbury, which had one million views. We also increased our support for Trans Day of Remembrance and we talked about our policy position on the LGBTQ+ community and suicide.
## **We increased our social media presence to make our voice heard, gaining 73.7k followers**
**on our social media channels.** Every day this year we received over 270 messages on social media, on average, and we did our best to react and respond where possible. For World Mental Health Day 2023, Norwich City FC released a video encouraging football fans to check in on those around them which signposted to Samaritans. The Norwich City FC video went viral and was viewed 60 million times.
## Innovation and technology
We will encourage innovation and keep pace with developments, so that we can offer upto-date and responsive services to the people who contact us, and the most effective platforms for our people.
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_Our performance:_
**We carried out a procurement process to commission a new platform for our listening service.** The proposal process was reviewed by an external consultancy to provide their expert input, before we signed a contract for the new platform in March 2024. The selection will provide us with a product amongst the highest ranked on the market. The implementation of this new platform will future-proof our listening service, as it will replace our current system for managing calls, enable us to receive all calls over the internet, and allow us to deliver all our email, voice and online chat listening services through one platform. We have contracted with a supplier to deliver branch broadband for all branches. Pilot branches are already running the new broadband and telephony.
**We conducted a thorough self-assessment review of Samaritans’ digital services.** This review evaluated the current state of our digital offerings and identified areas where improvements could be made. A comprehensive gap analysis was carried out, comparing our existing digital landscape with our envisioned future state in the multi-channel landscape. This involved assessing digital platforms across the organisation to understand their effectiveness in meeting the needs of our users and identifying opportunities for enhancements or integrations with new technologies. This work was undertaken in light of some core services being withdrawn from the market along with updates to UK telecoms legislation with regards to digital telephony. The outcomes of our review and gap analysis were instrumental in shaping a future digital strategy for Samaritans that will deliver better solutions, particularly for our core services.
**We closed down the Samaritans Self-Help app to focus more on our other listening services** . Our Self-Help app was launched during the pandemic to help people who were unable or did not want to access emotional support through our other services, but usage of the app has since declined. We gradually phased out the Self-Help app and notified everyone with the app of its closure, redirecting them to other ways of finding support.
## Environmental responsibility
We will build a sustainable approach as we embrace hybrid working and volunteering and develop a better understanding of our energy footprint.
_Our performance:_
**We procured a new Green Energy contract as part of our commitment to sustainability.** This new contract incorporates 100 per cent renewable energy from wind and hydro assets for our supply of electricity across the Central Charity, branch and property estate, covering around 60 individual premises. We will continue to source green energy.
**We appointed an Assessor and completed our first Streamlined Energy and Carbon Report (SECR).** This captures all our energy consuming assets and activities in the UK for 2022/23.
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## **We qualified for Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) phase 3 and submitted our**
**first ESOS report.** We submitted our report to the Environment Agency in May 2024. This calculated the energy consumed by Samaritans in the 12-month reporting period.
**We conducted Energy Performance Surveys.** After completing the surveys on our energy consumption from combustible fuels, heat, renewable energy, electricity and transport fuel, Samaritans issued Energy Performance Certificates for 36 of our freehold branches.
We continue to promote hybrid working and online meetings across our network to ensure our travel footprint is not excessive. Next year, we will be developing an Environmental policy with accompanying performance metrics.
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## Financial review
## **Overview**
This was the second year of our strategy: _Tackling suicide together_ . Given the ongoing economic challenges and uncertainty, we have continued to prioritise and focus on the critical activities to support our strategy. As with last year, we have needed to curtail and focus our activities on the very highest priorities. We continue to monitor our fundraising income closely with the intention to resume investment in new strategic projects as soon as external factors and resources allow.
The financial statements of the consolidated charity group for the year ended 31 March 2024 show a net decrease in funds of **£1.1 million** .
The financial statements do not include the value of time donated by volunteers in delivering Samaritans’ service. In 2023, our volunteers spent **more than 900,000 hours** answering calls for help, which is estimated at a value of **£15.9 million*** . The total value of time given by our volunteers is considerably higher if recruitment, training, branch management, fundraising and outreach work is included.
Volunteers are the foundation on which the strength of Samaritans’ service is built.
_*Applying the median gross hourly rate for full time workers in the UK Source for earnings data: Office for National Statistics_
## **Income**
Total income for the year was **£24.6 million** (compared with £23.9 million in 2022/23).
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The impact of cost of living was still felt by households in 2023, UK real disposable income continued to fall, decreasing further by 2.0% in 23/24 (Office for Budget Responsibility). As households prioritised energy and food costs, this continued to impact charitable donations. The UK Giving report 2023 (Charities Aid Foundation) report that 58% of those surveyed are likely to make a donation in 2023 compared to 65% in 2019. However, UK public giving is recovering from the 2022 lows with 2024 showing some potential stabilisation.
Across public giving income streams, Individual Donations and Legacies performed ahead of expectations and budget. Donations from individuals, which remain the largest source of income, this year has benefitted from greater understanding and engagement of supporters who are responsive to the cause and further testing and learning from different activities that have performed well such as the Winter 2023 campaign and the testing of digital channels.
The legacies programme in the UK raised its highest income total since it was established, at £3.9 million. The growth is in line with sector expectations as the post-pandemic delays in probate administration has now eased, enabling more records to be received. We began investing in the legacies programme just over four years ago and note that its growth has exceeded our initial expectations.
Community and Events raised £2.7 million, an increase of around 25% in income from 2023, however this was below expectations. Community and Events fundraising programmes across the sector were hardest hit during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Samaritans’ programmes are showing signs of recovery and this is being built on through 2024/2025. Samaritans was the TCS London Marathon 2024 Charity of the Year: this fantastic opportunity enabled the raising of Samaritans’ awareness, reach of new supporters and raised significant income.
High value income has come under significant pressure for the second year in a row. Institutional funders have fed back that they have been inundated and overwhelmed by applications from charities and causes directly affected by cost of living and the changing geopolitical landscape as it relates to overseas conflict. Corporate income has been particularly vulnerable with revenue down £0.75 million against forecast through a combination of some relationships underperforming as staff fundraising has been affected by the economy, but also partner acquisition not keeping pace with attrition, meaning we have not been able to secure multi-year funders to replace Barclays and The Lord Mayor’s Appeal. Samaritans has been successful in securing significant grants from the Government’s suicide prevention fund and also several new trust funders to support our digital transformation and work with young people.
We remain committed to putting supporters at the heart of our fundraising and we’re incredibly grateful to each and every donor for their support. A list of our major supporters can be found on page 94.
We recognise the importance and value of our long-term funder relationships. This year we continued to receive support from loyal supporters including Pears Foundation, Phoenix Group, Cala Homes and Three. In addition to the fundraising activities mentioned above, our
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other major funding streams included our partnership with Network Rail for the delivery of a suicide prevention programme, grant funding from HMPPS to support the prison Listener scheme, and commercial income raised through Samaritans Training and Engagement Programmes (STEP).
**Expenditure**
Total consolidated expenditure, including the value of donated advertising, decreased from £27.9 million in 2022/23 to **£25.9 million** .
This position reflects the decision taken by the organisation at the start of the year to reprioritise expenditure within core activity in response to the expected shortfall in income, ensuring that service to beneficiaries was maintained, along with key strands of the strategy. At the same time the commencement of the digital transformation project resulted in a short-term reduction in spend, due to development of the existing systems being limited to essential maintenance only.
During 2023/24, fundraising costs were **£5.8 million** , a decrease of £0.3 million compared to 2022/23.
Total charitable expenditure amounted to **£20.1 million** in 2023/24 compared to £21.8 million in 2022/23. This is analysed in detail in Note 7 to the Accounts.
We’re committed to maximising the proportion of expenditure in developing and delivering our service, responding to the demand for our services and reaching more people through the communication channels they wish to use. During the year we started the next phase in development of critical investment: a two-year digital transformation programme affecting voice, online chat and email.
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Charitable expenditure during 2023/24 represented 77% of total expenditure (78% in 2022/23).
## **Reserves policy**
In setting the reserves policy, the Board of Trustees considers the need to provide against any future income shortfall, fulfil working capital requirements and allow funds to be available to support service developments. This is balanced against the need to spend reserves now to deliver activities to meet beneficiary needs.
The target range for free reserves has been set at **between four and twelve months** of general expenditure, which as at 31 March 2024 equates to £6.7 million and £20.2 million respectively.
As at 31 March 2024, the total consolidated funds held by the group amounted to **£23.9 million** . Of these funds, £21.8 million are unrestricted and £2.1 million are restricted. Within unrestricted funds there are five designated funds amounting to £9.8 million:
- £7.0 million representing fixed assets including all the SCC branch properties;
- a £0.03 million property maintenance fund to maintain SCC branch properties;
- • a £0.9 million Service Expansion fund to widen the reach for beneficiaries;
- a £1.8 million Strategy Development fund to deliver the new strategy across the whole organisation including affiliate and central branches; and
- a £0.1 million fund to progress several key workstreams in Ireland.
The remaining unrestricted funds are classed as free reserves. As at 31 March 2024 free reserves stood at £12.1 million (£11.0 million in 2023), equating to **7.2 months** of general expenditure (6.3 months in 2023), which falls within the target range.
In light of the challenging fundraising environment, cost pressures and planned major investment in the digital transformation programme, the Trustees have agreed to continue with the widened target range for free reserves of between four and twelve months of general expenditure.
The reserves policy will continue to be reviewed on at least an annual basis.
## **Investment policy**
The overall investment objective is to achieve a positive real return (adjusted for inflation) over time. For short-term investments, the return is likely to be in income with an emphasis on capital preservation and limited credit risk. For longer term investments there is no explicit income objective, but a desire to increase the value of the group’s assets above inflation.
J Hambro & Partners are the appointed investment managers, and as at 31 March 2024 the value of the portfolio managed was £2.1 million (£1.9 million in 2023), reflecting a net gain on investments of £0.2 million (net loss of £0.1 million in 2022/23).
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Additionally, £0.1 million is held within the Charities Official Investment Fund (£0.1 million in 2023).
Samaritans endeavours to invest in a way that reflects our values and does not run counter to our charitable aims. The portfolio managed by J Hambro & Partners applies screening to avoid direct investment in companies where more than 5% of the most recent year's reported or estimated revenue is derived from activity that we consider to be inconsistent with our values or charitable aims. During the year, in line with our strategic principle of environmental responsibility, additional screening was implemented to avoid direct investment in companies involved in the extraction, production or refining of thermal coal, oil or gas.
The Charities Official Investment Fund is a long-term, sustainable investment solution which incorporates environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into the investment strategy. We review our approach to ethical investment on a regular basis.
The Trustees regularly review the proportion of funds invested for the longer term in the context of revised financial projections, our reserves policy and service investment requirements in coming years.
## **Subsidiaries**
As the trading subsidiary of Samaritans, the substantial majority of the turnover of The Samaritan Enterprises Limited remains the contract with Network Rail.
Samaritans Ireland supports the Central Charity in the delivery of our strategy in Ireland.
## **Going concern**
Our planning processes, including financial projections, take into consideration the current economic climate and its potential impact on the various sources of income and planned expenditure. We continue to review all income streams and have carried out sensitivity analysis to enable early planning should income expectations not be met or core expenditure requirements exceed central projections. Income and expenditure are reviewed and ‘stress tested’ as part of our regular forecasting and budget process.
There are a number of options open to us if we need to cover any funding shortfall, including utilising unrestricted reserves and re-prioritising activity planned for the coming period. When making decisions we will be guided first and foremost by the strategy.
Based on the current reserves position, the forward projections of income and expenditure, and the ongoing scenario planning activity, the Trustees consider that Samaritans is able to continue as a going concern.
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## Risks and uncertainties
The Board of Trustees is accountable for overall risk management. The Audit and Risk Committee, as a committee of the Board, reviews key risks, and the adequacy of mitigating actions, on a regular basis. The Committee reports to the Board on risk quarterly. A comprehensive annual planning and budgeting process is approved by the Board, during which a thorough assessment of key external and internal risks is undertaken. The Audit and Risk Committee receives risk evaluations on any major new areas of activity.
Our risk identification and risk management process are established; however, we are in the process of developing this to more closely align risks with strategic priorities and provide better clarity concerning assurance activities. We expect this work to complete during 2024/25.
We have an established Risk Management Policy which outlines the approach towards risk management across Samaritans and defines the roles and responsibilities of the Board, Audit & Risk Committee, Executive Leadership Team, Senior Leadership Group and wider teams.
During 2023/24 a risk appetite workshop was held with the Audit and Risk Committee and chairs of other board committees, to develop thinking on risk appetite over a range of key areas. This has helped develop our approach to risk appetite, risk statements and is used in developing our risk register. Further embedding work is taking place over 2024/25.
Our top five risks, as identified in the Risk Register at the end of the financial year, with key managing actions, are as follows:
|Category|Risk description|Managingactions|
|---|---|---|
|Financial/Strategic|Failure to secure sustained
income for specific, key
programmes.|1. Monitoring progress and
spend, identify/prioritise
opportunities, clarify
expectations.
2. Partner relationship
management.|
|Operational/Reputation|Inability to effectively prevent
and manage misuse of service.|1. Clarity concerning
behaviours we do not
tolerate logging and barring
process.
2. Misuse of Service training
refreshed.
3. In branch/hub support and
guidance for volunteers.|
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|Operational/Reputation|Safety and quality monitoring in
Republic of Ireland differs in
approach to UK.|1. Safeguarding referral
process in place.
2. Email checking in places,
aligning UK and ROI
process.
3. Dedicated Safeguarding
Officer in post in ROI.
4. Dedicated safeguarding line
number and updated clarity
of process for ROI
safeguardingline.|
|---|---|---|
|Strategic|Inability to resource core
listening services, particularly at
the highest hours of need.|1. Service Expansion pilots
activity focussing on test
and learn of solutions,
allowing for evidence-based
focus on expansion.
2. Capacity Improvement
working closely with
branches/volunteers, to
better target rotas at hours
of need.|
|Financial|Inability to grow income amid
uncertain economic climate,
unable to fund core activities.|1. Continuous review of all
campaign activities and
monitoring progress.
2. Mitigative actions for all
areas.
3. Continue to review product
portfolio to focus on
maximisingreturn.|
1. Failure to secure sustained income for specific, key programmes (eg, prisons, veterans).
This includes specific programmes supporting groups at high risk of suicide and looks to avoid any associated negative impact on current and prospective service users whose needs could no longer be met.
Horizon scanning for potential new or evolving partnerships is ongoing to ensure innovation in these areas remains. We also carry out activity to identify key stakeholders and opportunities for multi-year income relationships, as well as work to identify our organisational position and approach to programme prioritisation.
Forward planning for re-tender, including soft influencing around key points of contact and exploring alternative funding streams for existing work exists as a reversionary option.
2. Inability to effectively prevent and manage misuse of service.
Misuse of service (calls we do not tolerate) potentially creates harm for volunteers, leads to service disruption and/or harm for service users who are unable to access the service in a timely way as consequence of misuse calls reducing capacity to respond.
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New approaches to UK call barring, including manual barring, are being trialled with the aim of reducing misuse of service to Samaritans’ phone lines. We are currently unable to align call barring processes in the UK and Republic of Ireland, but in addition to exploring our technical options in Ireland, there is collaboration with the UK to support consistency of process.
We expect the implementation of our new Listening Centre platform to provide enhanced technical benefits to greatly support our management of misuse of service across the UK and Ireland.
Where misuse of service is linked to key partners who work with high-risk callers, we are working with these partners to introduce bespoke phone lines with targeted solutions to manage misuse.
3. Safety and quality monitoring in Ireland differs in approach to UK.
Ensuring safety and quality processes align across UK and Ireland will provide more consistency in service and support high quality across the jurisdictions. Some technical solutions are currently unavailable in our Ireland systems, and we are looking to address, in part, though our digital transformation activities.
There is a well-embedded volunteer ‘listening in' control established in the UK, and this is being developed for Ireland to add to its established quality controls. This includes technical and process improvements to allow for implementation.
Complaints and feedback handling is also planned to be coordinated centrally to ensure consistency of process and better oversight of the data, themes and learnings.
4. Inability to resource core listening services, particularly at the highest hours of need.
Managing imbalance between caller demand and service capacity will better ensure the listening service is available and accessible as and when help seekers need it.
We are drawing on early evaluation of Service Expansion pilot activity to determine most effective return on investment for expansion, volunteer capacity, and service delivery metrics.
As part of development work on our branch Operating Agreement, we are embedding enhanced processes around rota management to better focus on our hours of need supported by improved regular data reporting.
Caller choice of access routes (telephone, email, online chat) and clarity of options is an added means of supporting service accessibility and work on our Email Service Specification
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will help ensure the necessary deployment of resource, whilst ensuring safety, quality and a positive experience for callers.
5. Inability to grow income amid uncertain economic climate, unable to fund core activities.
Income risks are a common challenge in the charity sector, linked to wider economic uncertainty. In addition to the activities identified above, we are reviewing income streams to understand the current greatest return and areas performing well, and prioritising resources as appropriate.
Our fundraising communications and engagement approaches are being developed and tested with a current major funder with a view to rolling out to other funders, whilst ensuring fundraising opportunities start sooner, and implementing remedial actions for underperforming areas.
This activity is part of our wider fundraising strategy considerations and informed by our five-year income figures to allow for future proofing.
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## **Governance report**
## Our structure
Samaritans is a charitable company limited by guarantee. We were founded in 1953 and incorporated in 1963.
Samaritans has more than 200 branches and service locations across the UK and Ireland, as well as the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. During 2023, around 23,000 people volunteered their time for Samaritans and helped ensure our services were available across our multiple platforms. The Samaritans Central Charity team also carries out research and evaluation to support our influencing work and service development, which supports our volunteer recruitment and development activity. The Central Charity team also raises income to underpin the whole organisation.
The group comprises three entities, all of which are consolidated into the group statutory accounts:
- Samaritans, a private limited company, which is incorporated and domiciled in the UK and is a public benefit entity.
- The Samaritan Enterprises Ltd, a trading company in which Samaritans has a 100 per cent shareholding. The object of the company is to procure profits and gains as a trading subsidiary for the purpose of paying them to Samaritans.
- Samaritans Ireland, which is an Irish charitable company incorporated in 2007 that is limited by guarantee, with Samaritans being the sole voting member. Samaritans Ireland executes specific decision-making powers with respect to a number of key Ireland-related matters, including public policy, influencing and partnership working.
## **Branches and service delivery ‘hubs’**
Branches are run by Branch Directors (a volunteer leadership role) and operate either as part of Samaritans Central Charity or as an incorporated charity operating through an affiliation agreement. 57 of these branches are part of Central Charity and 144 branches are affiliated. The finances of affiliated branches are not consolidated into Samaritans’ group accounts. In addition to our branch structure, service delivery is also carried out by bespoke ‘hubs’, which are part of the Central Charity and have a more flexible oversight structure in order to meet the requirements of our strategy. These hubs are led by their own Service Directors.
## **Regions**
The branches are organised and work together in 14 geographical regions and an additional ‘region’ to oversee Service Expansion. Each region is led by a Regional Director; volunteer leadership roles who provide a key link and communication channel between Central
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Samaritans and the wider organisation and play a vital role in supporting our branches, contributing to the development of and implementing agreed policy. Responsibility for guiding and supporting our Regional Director group is shared between four Directors of Branch Operations, which are new senior volunteer leadership roles, reporting to our Executive Director of Operations.
## **Our governance**
We are governed by Samaritans’ Articles of Association. The governing body is our Board of Trustees, which meets at least four times a year and, as of 31 March 2024, consists of 15 members. Trustees are also the directors of the company, and a majority must be Samaritans volunteers at branches or in another capacity. In carrying out their responsibilities for governance and setting the strategic direction of the organisation, the Board is supported by a number of committees. The governance structure is completed by the Regional Councils and the Council of Samaritans as described below.
## **Councils**
The Board is advised on key strategic and policy issues by the Regional Councils. The role of Regional Councils is to challenge, advise and guide the Board of Trustees on key policy issues affecting the wider Samaritans organisation and to act as a channel of communication between the Board of Trustees and the branches. Regions have separate meetings for operational service matters, regional plans and policy implementation in the region.
The Council of Samaritans meets annually. It comprises of over 200 Branch and Service Directors, 15 Regional Directors, up to 10 Functional Leads and the co Vice-Chairs. The legal members of Samaritans are similar, namely the Branch and Service Directors, Regional Directors, Functional Leads and the Chair. The Board reports to the Council of Samaritans annually on its activities and provides an update and review of progress against the strategic plan. The Council of Samaritans is the forum for Samaritans’ volunteer leadership to consider and discuss the work and direction of Samaritans and foster a sense of unity and collaboration across the organisation.
## **Nations**
Reflecting the differing legislative and funding environments of devolved governments, we have nation committees in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. These are constituted as committees of the Board of Trustees. In Ireland they also act as the board of a separate charitable company registered in Ireland, Samaritans Ireland, with a remit extending to both Ireland and Northern Ireland. These boards have a leadership role to support staff and volunteers to deliver our strategy as well as representing Samaritans in their nation.
Key focus of the Ireland Board and Scotland and Wales Committees includes oversight of public policy, research, influencing and partnership working.
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## **Staff team**
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), supported by an Executive Leadership and staff team, is responsible for the delivery of the Samaritans strategy, operational plans and budgets that have been approved by the Board.
## **Appointing our Trustees**
With the exception of our Chair, who is an appointment of the Board of Trustees, the Nominations and Governance Committee appoints members of the Board. Trustees serve an initial term of three years with the option for re-appointment for a second three-year term. In exceptional circumstances a Trustee may also be asked to serve for an additional period of up to 24 months. A person can serve as Chair for a maximum of two terms of three years. Where that person has already served as a Trustee before becoming Chair, they can be a Trustee for up to nine years in total.
## **Board diversity**
Our most recent board diversity audit indicated a good reflection of the diversity of the societies we serve which, in part, is a result of focus on diversity in trustee recruitment in recent years. We have identified that we are currently under-representative of disabled people on our Trustee Board and encourage applications from people in this community in our recruitment materials.
## **Inducting and training our Trustees**
After they are appointed, each Trustee undertakes a formal induction programme, including a guide to our vision, mission and values, our governing document and the way the organisation works in practice. All Trustees are provided guidance on their formal legal responsibilities, and guidance on how to be effective in their role. All Trustees are provided external online Trustee training module(s) as well as the option to attend a range of external courses designed for Trustees or other professional development. In addition, Trustees are obliged to carry out Samaritans’ bespoke safeguarding modules, and other relevant modules, including Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.
## **Our committees**
Six additional committees form part of the governance arrangements to support the Board of Trustees. All committees, with the exception of the People and Culture Committee, must comprise of at least two Trustees, plus one ‘internal’ and one ‘external’ member. The People and Culture Committee must comprise of a minimum of two Trustees and two external members.
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- The Service and Quality Committee supports the Board in both ensuring Samaritans delivers high-quality, effective and consistent services, and in developing those services.
- The External Engagement & Research Committee supports the Board through maintaining oversight of Samaritans’ public policy positions, research activities, as well as external communications and marketing.
- The Audit and Risk Committee supports the Board to provide assurance that management is operating sound internal control systems, and that there is an effective risk management framework and strategy for the organisation, which is being operated effectively.
- The Finance Committee reviews the financial performance and sustainability of the charity, including oversight of fundraising and property, and advises the Board accordingly.
- The People and Culture Committee supports the Board through reviewing and making recommendations in relation to the remuneration and benefits of Samaritans’ staff, as well as oversight, guidance and scrutiny of significant staff and volunteer-related initiatives. The Committee reviews progress against people strategies and plans, drawing on ‘people metrics’ and provides oversight, guidance and scrutiny of organisation-wide culture, as well as providing assurance that principles of equity, diversity and inclusion are central to staff and volunteer decision-making.
- The Nominations and Governance Committee ensures that Trustee and other key governance roles are performed with appropriate skills and experience, and that there are high standards in place for the effectiveness and development of the Board. The remit of the Committee extends to provisions of assurance that the governance structures and roles at Samaritans are fit for purpose.
## **Board Review and Governance code**
A Board review was carried out during 2022, showing substantial progress in board effectiveness compared with our previous board review. It is recognised that board improvement is a constantly evolving process, and a new board development plan was created based on this activity, focusing on the following priorities:
1. Enhancing stakeholder voice
2. Committee functioning and communications
3. Trustee induction and development
4. Balance between scrutiny and strategic discussions
Progress against these priorities has been positive, and is both a standing item on the Nominations and Governance Committee agenda, as well as having direct board focus at least annually.
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In addition to the board review, our Nominations and Governance Committee carries out a rolling review process against Charity Governance Code principles. During the 2023/24 year, the committee has focussed on Principle 2 (Leadership), Principle 3 (Integrity) and Principle 4 (Decision-making, Risk and Control). The process has highlighted no substantial gaps when compared with the code requirements, and allows for continued improvement, including specific action points.
The reference and administrative details on pages 87 to 93 form part of this report.
## **Payment of key management personnel**
All Trustees carry out their roles at Samaritans on a voluntary basis. They are unpaid but may claim legitimate expenses incurred as part of Samaritans’ ordinary activities. Chief Executive Officer payment and benefits, as well as the payment and benefits of the remaining Executive Leadership Team and all other staff members are approved by the Trustee Board, based on review and recommendations by the People and Culture Committee. In considering pay and benefits, the People and Culture Committee is provided with information on the sector and similar-sized charities, to inform decisions.
Additional information on payments to staff can be found at Note 8 to the Accounts.
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## Incidents and Reporting
Samaritans and its Board of Trustees are committed to dealing with incidents and difficult situations efficiently and transparently and take any such matters seriously. In line with that commitment, details are set out below on serious incident reporting and policies on whistleblowing, bullying and harassment.
## **Serious incident reporting**
Samaritans’ Serious Incident Reporting Policy provides for serious incident reports for both Central Charity and affiliate branches to be lodged with the relevant regulator(s) by the Central Charity. This allows for additional support for branches in developing reports, better oversight of risk to the charity and its beneficiaries, and for further informed consideration of preventative action.
During 2023/24, the Central Charity reported 16 new serious incidents to the relevant nation’s charity regulator(s) which is a slight reduction on 2022/23. Of these, 10 involved affiliated branches, and 6 involved Central Charity branches or the Central Charity itself. At the time of writing, the charity regulators have not required any action following the reports.
Three of the 16 reports were incidents that had also been reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). No action has been taken by the ICO at the time of writing.
## **Whistleblowing, bullying and harassment**
There are policies and processes in place relating to whistleblowing, bullying and harassment. These are applicable to both staff and volunteers at Samaritans Central Charity and both affiliate and Central Charity branches. The policies provide opportunities for reporting serious concerns in an environment where the rights and dignity of every individual is respected. Alternative reporting routes are provided in case of instances where it would not be appropriate to make a report to a direct line manager, including a concerns line which provides a secondary avenue to staff and volunteers to confidentially raise concerns.
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## Fundraising Activities Statement
**We appreciate the unwavering dedication of our incredible supporters throughout the UK and Ireland who have stood by our side, raising £24.6 million.** We see through the year, every day and night, how the power of human connection saves lives. We know that by giving people a safe space to turn to, we can reduce feelings of distress and despair. We believe that simply being there to listen, can restore hope.
Our amazing supporters make it possible to share our hope for a better, and safer, world for everyone.
We’re delighted that this year Samaritans could bloom at the 2023 RHS Chelsea Flower Show with our designated Samaritans’ Listening Garden, thanks to generous funding and support from Project Giving Back. Over 170,000 visitors to RHS Chelsea had opportunity to experience the silver gilt awarded garden designed by Darren Hawkes, garden designer and Samaritans volunteer.
Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of our supporters, major donors, companies, trusts and public bodies, we have been able to continue to be there 24/7, 365 days a year, for anyone struggling to cope. Our incredible supporters have done things their way; from livestreaming challenges to creatively fundraising with online communities. They’ve invested in Samaritans’ future, pledging special gifts to Samaritans in their Wills. Our donors have scaled mountains, crossed oceans and taken on multiple marathons. We celebrated supporter Josh Patterson at the finish line as he completed his extraordinary ‘Run for 1 Million’ challenge which saw him run 76 marathons in 76 cities on consecutive days.
Our corporate partners have taken to the streets at major events and donned fancy dress. Our Trust and Statutory supporters have diligently supported us with grants and funds to keep our service running and to support our digital transformation.
Through daring to dream, our fundraisers, supporters, major donors and partners have inspired us with their trailblazing fundraising, and helped to ensure that we can continue to be there for anyone struggling to cope, any time of the day or night.
## **Championing supporters**
Understanding our supporters’ needs has been at the heart of our fundraising. Over the last year, we’ve listened to thousands of supporters on our supporter panel and in regular feedback surveys. We regularly engage with supporters to test our products, events, appeals, campaigns and communications to ensure that our fundraising programme is shaped to meet and exceed supporters’ expectations. Our supporters’ feedback has enabled new, innovative fundraising approaches and products that have allowed us to reach new supporters. We have continued to raise funds in unique and impactful ways, from rebranding our commercial training offer providing wellbeing and suicide prevention training for thousands of people at hundreds of organisations up and down the country to
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reaching 23,000 new passionate supporters through new events such as Facebook virtual yoga, walks and sit-up challenges and Dawn Walk.
## **Following best practice**
Samaritans is registered with the Fundraising Regulator and we are members of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, the Direct Marketing Association, the Gambling Commission and the Lotteries Council. We continue to review our policies to ensure they are in line and adhere to the latest regulations.
Our Fundraising Promise sets out our aim to be open, fair and honest in the way we engage supporters. During 2023/24, we received 44 fundraising complaints. All complaints were resolved by our in-house Supporter Care team none were escalated to the Fundraising Regulator. Our average resolution time of 2.9 days demonstrate the importance we place on ensuring complaints are resolved with the best experience for our supporters. Complaint feedback is regularly shared across the fundraising team. We value the feedback and continue to review and learn from every complaint.
## **Working with agencies**
Most of our fundraising activity is delivered directly by our Income team. We work with a small number of carefully selected external fundraising agencies to help with specialist fundraising activity, from recruiting supporters who give through their payroll to telemarketing with mass audiences to inspire potential new donors, and creative and marketing support on larger appeals, products and campaigns.
All relationships are governed by contracts, which are reviewed and approved by the appropriate authority before any activity takes place. Telemarketing is monitored and reviewed regularly for quality purposes by listening in to calls and holding weekly review meetings.
All suppliers engaged in fundraising activity on behalf of Samaritans are either members of, licensed by, or registered with a range of bodies including the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, Fundraising Regulator, Association of Payroll Giving Organisations, Information Commissioner’s Office, the Data & Marketing Association and the Gambling Commission.
## **Protecting vulnerable donors**
We take our responsibility to our vulnerable donors very seriously. In 2023, we carried out a review of our policy for working with vulnerable donors, and members of the public who could reasonably be defined as ‘vulnerable’. The policy is available for all our fundraisers via our intranet. We ensure that our fundraisers receive relevant training and have access to coaching. We treat all donors with dignity and compassion, and our policy helps reinforce the importance of this in all our fundraising.
We are dedicated to protecting potentially vulnerable donors. For example, we
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exclude people who visit the support pages on our website from online targeting, and exclude where possible potentially vulnerable donors from targeted online fundraising.
## **Managing communications**
We believe that our supporters should trust us, know us and look forward to hearing from us. We regularly check in to make sure that our supporters want to hear from us, and to find out about more about what they’d like to hear about our work. We respect our supporters’ privacy; we’re transparent about the ways in which people can change their communications preferences. If someone no longer wants to hear from us, we respect their wishes. We take our data handling responsibilities very seriously, and have a strong, GDPR compliant approach to data management.
## **A heartfelt thank you to our incredible supporters**
The cost-of-living crisis has had a significant impact on the financial and emotional health of communities across the UK and Ireland. We know that these challenging times affect our supporters, donors and partners too. We cannot thank our supporters enough for standing by us, for taking up the challenge of innovative fundraising, and for pushing us and themselves to fundraise in bigger, better and ever more inspiring ways, at a time at which Samaritans is needed more than ever.
Thank you, to our amazing supporters for continuing to believe in a better tomorrow, so that we can continue to be there for anyone who needs someone to listen.
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## Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting
In line with the UK Government’s Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) regulations, this section shows the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and energy use data for the Samaritans group operations in the UK. This report therefore covers our five staff offices in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Ewell and London, along with our 60 central charity branches throughout the UK.
## **Methodology**
This report is calculated in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol and Environmental reporting guidelines: including Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting requirements.
Invoice data was used for sites where energy is directly purchased. In cases where the full measurement period was not covered, pro-rata extrapolation was applied. During the measurement period there were some known billing issues. In these cases, data from the previous measurement period was used as a proxy. Where invoices were not available, for example where energy is incorporated into a service charge, energy use was estimated using known kWh / m2 for the other sites. The accuracy of this approach was tested by comparing the kWh / m2 with benchmarks from CIBSE Guide F 20.1-3.
BEIS 2023 emission factors have been used for all emission sources. Conversion of fuel to kWh where required have been carried out using BEIS 2023 fuel conversion factors.
## **Intensity ratio**
As our main source of energy use is the heating and lighting of our branch network and UK offices, Net internal floor Area (NIA, m[2] ) was chosen as our intensity ratio. Our total floor area was 8,319.50m[2] (2023: 8,329m[2] ).
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
51
|**Scope **|**Energy use(kWh)**|**2023/2024**|**2022/2023**|**Variance**|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|1|Naturalgas(sites)|781,404|767,256|1.8%|
|1|Fuel(companyvans)|3,319|3,769|-11.9%|
|2|Electricity (sites)|394,701|410,806|-3.9%|
|3|Fuel(employee/volunteer miles)|259,360|286,636|-9.5%|
|**1,2,3 **|**Total kWh**|**1,438,784**|**1,468,467**|**-2.0%**|
||||||
|**Scope**|**Carbon dioxide equivalent emissions(tCO2e)**||||
|1|Naturalgas(sites)|142.9|140.2|1.9%|
|1|Fuel(companyvans)|0.8|0.9|-6.6%|
|2|Electricity (sites)|81.7|81.4|0.4%|
|3|Fuel(employee/volunteer miles)|62.9|70.4|-10.7%|
|**1, 2, 3**|**Total tC02e**|**288.3**|**292.9**|**-1.6%**|
||||||
||**Intensity Ratio**||||
||tCO2e/net internal floor area m2(SECR only)|**0.0347**|**0.0350**|**-0.9%**|
||tCO2e/net internal floor area m2(scope 1-3)|**0.0427**|**0.0436**|**-2.1%**|
||||||
|**Scope**|**Other carbon dioxide equivalent emissions**
**(tCO2e)**||||
|3|Well to Tank Fuels (natural gas, diesel and
petrol)|40.3|42.4|-5.0%|
|3|Well to Tank UK electricity generation(sites)|18.1|18.9|-4.2%|
|3|Transmission and Distribution (UK electric
grid: sites)|7.1|7.3|-2.7%|
|3|Well to Tank Transmission and Distribution (UK
electricgrid: sites)|1.6|1.7|-5.9%|
|**3**|**Total other emissions tC02e**|**130.0**|**140.7**|**-7.6%**|
Key: Scope 1 (Direct) GHG emissions. Scope 2 (Energy indirect) emissions. Scope 3 (Other indirect) emissions.
WtT; Well to Tank. T&D; Transmission & Distribution
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
52
## **Energy Efficiency Actions**
Samaritans is currently at the start of our Environmental and Sustainability journey. We are committed to developing and implementing an Environmental and Sustainability strategy which will aim to integrate findings from SECR and recommendations from ESOS. We pledge to look for opportunities to reduce our total energy consumption and carbon emissions across the Central Charity. The launch of our sustainability programme will align with our obligation to deliver the mandatory ESOS Action Plan in December.
We are taking actions to reduce our carbon emissions and during 2023-24 our property strategy supported energy savings at our sites in the following ways:
- Smart Thermostats were installed at Newcastle and Leyton
- New energy-efficient boiler was installed at Selkirk
- A gas pipe bore upgrade took place at Bridlington allowing the boiler to work more efficiently
- New flue and tundish at Walsall allowing boiler to work more efficiently and at capacity
- New boilers were installed at Northallerton, Southport and Ilford
A number of other energy efficiency measures are under consideration for implementation during our next reporting year.
## **Renewable Energy**
In 2022/23 we procured a Green Energy contract which incorporates 100% renewable energy from wind and hydro assets for our supply of electricity across the central charity branch and property estate, covering around 60 individual premises.
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## Statement of Trustees’ responsibilities
The Trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for preparing the Trustees’ Annual Report including the Strategic Report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and UK accounting standards (FRS 102).
Company and charity law require the Trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year. Under company law the Trustees must not approve the financial statements unless they are satisfied that they give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the group and parent charity and of the incoming resources and application of resources, including its income and expenditure, of the group for the year.
In preparing those financial statements the Trustees are required to:
- select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently;
- observe the methods and principles in the Charities SORP;
- make judgements and accounting estimates that are reasonable and prudent;
- state whether applicable accounting standards have been followed, subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements;
- prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the charity will continue in business.
The Trustees are responsible for keeping adequate and proper accounting records that are sufficient to show and explain the charity’s transactions and disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the group and parent charity and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, regulations six and eight of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (as amended) and with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006.
They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the group and parent charity and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities. The Trustees are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the corporate and financial information included on the charity’s website. Legislation in the UK governing the preparation and dissemination of the financial statements and other information included in annual reports may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.
The Trustees confirm that, so far as each Trustee is aware, there is no relevant audit information of which the charity’s auditor is unaware, and each Trustee has taken all the steps that they ought to have taken as a Trustee in order to make themselves aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the charity’s auditor is aware of that information.
Approved by the board of Trustees on 25 July, 2024 and signed on its behalf by Annie Kent, Treasurer:
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
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## Independent Auditor’s Report to the Members and Trustees of Samaritans
## **Opinion**
We have audited the financial statements of Samaritans (‘the charitable company’) and its subsidiaries (‘the group’) for the year ended 31 March 2024 which comprise the Consolidated and Charity Statement of Financial Activities, the Group and Charity Balance Sheets, the Consolidated Cash Flow Statement and notes to the financial statements, including significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).
In our opinion the financial statements:
- give a true and fair view of the state of the group’s and the charitable company’s affairs as at 31 March 2024 and of the group’s incoming resources and application of resources, including its income and expenditure for the year then ended;
- have been properly prepared in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice; and
- have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006.
## **Basis for opinion**
We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the group in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC’s Ethical Standard, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.
## **Conclusions relating to going concern**
In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the trustees’ use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.
Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the charitable company's or the group’s ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.
Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the directors with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.
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## **Other information**
The trustees are responsible for the other information. The other information comprises the information included in the annual report, other than the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.
Our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements, or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether this gives rise to a material misstatement in the financial statements themselves. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact.
We have nothing to report in this regard.
## **Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006**
In our opinion based on the work undertaken in the course of our audit:
- the information given in the trustees’ report which includes the directors’ report and the strategic report prepared for the purpose of company law, for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and
- the strategic report and the directors’ report included within the trustees’ report have been prepared in accordance with applicable legal requirements.
_**Matters on which we are required to report by exception**_
In light of the knowledge and understanding of the company and their environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the strategic report or the directors’ report included within the trustees’ report.
We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Companies Act 2006 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:
- the parent company has not kept adequate accounting records, or returns adequate for our audit have not been received from branches not visited by us; or
- the parent company financial statements are not in agreement with the accounting records and returns; or
- certain disclosures of trustees’ remuneration specified by law are not made; or
- we have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit.
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
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## **Responsibilities of trustees**
As explained more fully in the directors’ responsibilities statement set out on page 54, the trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.
In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the directors either intend to liquidate the charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.
## **Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements**
We have been appointed as auditor under section 44(1)(c) of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 and under the Companies Act 2006 and report in accordance with the Acts and relevant regulations made or having effect thereunder.
Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.
Details of the extent to which the audit was considered capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations are set out below.
A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor’s report.
**Extent to which the audit was considered capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud**
Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We identified and assessed the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements from irregularities, whether due to fraud or error, and discussed these between our audit team members. We then designed and performed audit procedures responsive to those risks, including obtaining audit evidence sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.
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We obtained an understanding of the legal and regulatory frameworks within which the charitable company and group operates, focusing on those laws and regulations that have a direct effect on the determination of material amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. The laws and regulations we considered in this context were the Companies Act 2006, the Charities Act 2011 and The Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, together with the Charities SORP (FRS 102). We assessed the required compliance with these laws and regulations as part of our audit procedures on the related financial statement items.
In addition, we considered provisions of other laws and regulations that do not have a direct effect on the financial statements but compliance with which might be fundamental to the charitable company’s ability to operate or to avoid a material penalty. We also considered the opportunities and incentives that may exist within the company for fraud. The laws and regulations we considered in this context were General Data Protection Regulations, employment legislation and health and safety legislation.
Auditing standards limit the required audit procedures to identify non-compliance with these laws and regulations to enquiry of the Trustees and other management and inspection of regulatory and legal correspondence, if any.
We identified the greatest risk of material impact on the financial statements from irregularities, including fraud, to be within the timing of recognition of income and the override of controls by management. Our audit procedures to respond to these risks included enquiries of management and the Audit & Risk Committee about their own identification and assessment of the risks of irregularities, data analytics and sample testing on the posting of journals, sample testing of income, reviewing accounting estimates for biases, reviewing regulatory correspondence with the Charity Commission, and reading minutes of meetings of those charged with governance.
Owing to the inherent limitations of an audit, there is an unavoidable risk that we may not have detected some material misstatements in the financial statements, even though we have properly planned and performed our audit in accordance with auditing standards. For example, the further removed non-compliance with laws and regulations (irregularities) is from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, the less likely the inherently limited procedures required by auditing standards would identify it. In addition, as with any audit, there remained a higher risk of non-detection of irregularities, as these may involve collusion, forgery, intentional omissions, misrepresentations, or the override of internal controls. We are not responsible for preventing non-compliance and cannot be expected to detect non-compliance with all laws and regulations.
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## **Use of our report**
This report is made solely to the charitable company’s members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006, and to the charitable company’s trustees. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company’s members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company’s members as a body and the charitable company’s trustees as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.
Naziar Hashemi Senior Statutory Auditor For and on behalf of Crowe U.K. LLP Statutory Auditor London, UK Date: 5 August 2024
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59
## Consolidated Statement of Financial Activities
Incorporating an Income & Expenditure Account For the year to 31 March 2024
|**Note**
**Income from:**
Donations and legacies
2
_Charitable activities_
Grants from public bodies and others
2
_Other trading activities_
Partnership and other income
3
Investment income
4
Gains on disposal of fixed assets
**Total income**
**Expenditure on:**
Raising funds
7
Charitable activities
7
**Total expenditure**
Net gains/(losses) on investments
11
Net (expenditure)
Transfers between funds
**Net movement in funds**
**Reconciliation of funds**
Total funds brought forward
**Total funds carried forward**
17|**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**Restricted**
**Funds**
**Total**
**Funds**
Unrestricted
funds
Restricted
Funds
Total
Funds
**2024**
**2024**
**2024**
2023
2023
2023
**£’000**
**£’000**
**£’000**
£’000
£’000
£’000
14,622
679
15,301
12,893
342
**13,235**
1,567
2,971
4,538
2,099
3,763
**5,862**
4,192
157
4,349
4,657
-
**4,657**
360
-
360
153
-
**153**
70
-
70
15
-
**15**|
|---|---|
||**20,811**
**3,807**
**24,618**
19,817
4,105
**23,922**|
||5,712
133
5,845
6,101
-
**6,101**
15,519
4,533
20,052
17,503
4,340
**21,843**|
||**21,231**
**4,666**
**25,897**
23,604
4,340
**27,944**|
||147
-
147
(62)
-
**(62)**|
||**(273)**
**(859)**
**(1,132)**
(3,849)
(235)
**(4,084)**
333
(333)
**-**
-
-
**-**|
||**60**
**(1,192)**
**(1,132)**
(3,849)
(235)
**(4,084)**|
||21,770
3,278
25,048
25,619
3,513
**29,132**|
||**21,830**
**2,086**
**23,916**
21,770
3,278
**25,048**|
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## Charity Statement of Financial Activities
Incorporating an Income & Expenditure Account For the year to 31 March 2024
|**Note**
**Income from:**
Donations and legacies
2
_Charitable activities_
Grants from public bodies and others
2
_Other trading activities_
Partnership and other income
3
Investment income
4
Gains on disposal of fixed assets
**Total income before net assets received**
Net assets received from Samaritans
branch charities
**Total income**
**Expenditure on:**
Raising funds
7
Charitable activities
7
**Total expenditure**
Net gains/(losses) on investments
11
Net (expenditure) / income
Transfers between funds
**Net movement in funds**
**Reconciliation of funds**
Total funds brought forward
**Total funds carried forward**
17|**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**Restricted**
**Funds**
**Total**
**Funds**
Unrestricted
funds
Restricted
Funds
Total
Funds
**2024**
**2024**
**2024**
2023
2023
2023
**£’000**
**£’000**
**£’000**
**£’000**
**£’000**
**£’000**
14,629
612
15,241
13,054
342
**13,396**
1,604
2,266
3,870
2,058
2,698
**4,756**
3,597
-
3,597
3,834
-
**3,834**
360
-
360
153
-
**153**
70
-
70
15
-
**15**|
|---|---|
||**20,260**
**2,878**
**23,138**
19,114
3,040
**22,154**
-
-
**-**
-
-
**-**|
||**20,260**
**2,878**
**23,138**
19,114
3,040
**22,154**|
||5,576
134
5,710
6,001
-
**6,001**
14,914
3,611
18,525
16,614
3,589
**20,203**|
||**20,490**
**3,745**
**24,235**
22,615
3,589
**26,204**|
||147
-
147
(62)
-
**(62)**|
||**(83)**
**(867)**
**(950)**
(3,563)
(549)
**(4,112)**
333
(333)
-
-
-
**-**|
||**250**
**(1,200)**
**(950)**
(3,563)
(549)
**(4,112)**|
||21,212
2,454
23,666
24,775
3,003
**27,778**|
||**21,462**
**1,254**
**22,716**
21,212
2,454
**23,666**|
The group has no recognised gains and losses other than those shown above and therefore no separate statement of total recognised gains and losses has been presented. All income and expenditure derive from continuing activities. The Notes on pages 64 to 86 form part of these accounts.
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
61
## Consolidated and Charity Balance Sheet
## As at 31 March 2024
Company Registration No. 757372
|**Note**
**Fixed assets**
Tangible assets
9
Intangible assets
10
Investments
11
**Total fixed assets**
**Current assets**
Stock
Debtors
12
Cash at bank and in hand
**Total current assets**
**Current liabilities**
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
13
Deferred income
14
**Net current assets**
Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year
**Total net assets**
**Funds**
17
Restricted income funds
Unrestricted income funds
General unrestricted funds
Designated funds
**Total funds**|**Group**
**2024**
**£’000**
Group
2023
£’000
6,763
7,068
240
379
2,221
2,058|**Charity**
**2024**
**£’000**
Charity
2023
£’000
6,761
7,067
240
379
2,221
2,058|
|---|---|---|
||**9,224**
**9,505**|**9,222**
**9,504**|
||3
54
3,905
3,189
13,140
15,761|2
23
4,609
3,907
11,116
13,309|
||**17,048**
**19,004**|**15,727**
**17,239**|
||1,871
2,610
289
668|1,837
2,544
199
350|
||2,160
**3,278**|2,036
**2,894**|
||14,888
15,726
(196)
(183)|13,691
14,345
(197)
(183)|
||**23,916**
**25,048**|**22,716**
**23,666**|
||2,086
3,278
12,053
10,966
9,777
10,804|1,254
2,454
10,906
10,656
10,556
10,556|
||**21,830**
**21,770**|**21,462**
**21,212**|
||||
||**23,916**
**25,048**|**22,716**
**23,666**|
Approved and authorised for issue by the Board of Trustees on 25 July, 2024 and signed on its behalf by Annie Kent, Honorary Treasurer:
The Notes on pages 64 to 86 form part of these accounts.
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62
## Cashflow statement
For the year ended 31 March 2024
|**Reconciliation of net income to net cash flow from operating**
**activities**
Net expenditure for the reporting period (as per the statement of
financial activities)
Adjustments for:
Depreciation and amortisation charges
(Profit) on sale of fixed assets
(Gains)/Losses on investments
Dividends and interest from investments
Decrease/(increase) in stock
(Increase)/decrease in debtors
(Decrease)/increase in creditors
**Net cash outflow from operating activities**
**Statement of cash flows**
**Cash flows from operating activities:**
Net cash provided by operating activities
**Cash flows from investing activities:**
Dividends, interest and rents from investments
Purchase of property, plant, and equipment
Proceeds from sale of property, plant, and equipment
Proceeds from investment disposals
Purchase of investments
**Net cash provided by / (used in) investing activities**
**Change in cash and cash equivalents in the reporting period**
Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the reporting period
**Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the reporting period**
**Analysis of cash and cash equivalents**
Cash at bank and in hand
Total cash and cash equivalents|**Group**
**2024**
**£’000**
Group
2023
£’000
(1,132)
(4,084)
358
450
(70)
(15)
(147)
62
(32)
(57)
52
90
(717)
529
(1,106)
(936)|**Charity**
**2024**
**£’000**
Charity
2023
£’000
(950)
(4,112)
358
449
(70)
(15)
(147)
62
(32)
(57)
21
88
(702)
820
(848)
(934)|
|---|---|---|
||**(2,794)**
**(3,961)**|**(2,370)**
**(3,699)**|
||**(2,794)**
**(3,961)**
32
57
(20)
-
174
499
508
3,540
(521)
(688)|**(2,370)**
**(3,699)**
32
57
(16)
-
174
499
508
3,540
(521)
(688)|
||**173**
**3,408**|**177**
**3,408**|
||**(2,621)**
**(553)**|**(2,193)**
**(291)**|
||15,761
16,314|13,309
13,600|
||**13,140**
**15,761**|**11,116**
**13,309**|
||**13,140**
15,761|**11,116**
13,309|
||**13,140**
**15,761**|**11,116**
**13,309**|
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63
## Notes to the Accounts
## **1. Accounting policies**
## **a) Basis of preparation**
The accounts have been prepared on a going concern basis under the historical cost convention with the exception of investments, which are included at market value.
The Trustees consider that based on the current reserves position, the forward projections of income and expenditure and the ongoing scenario planning activity there are no material uncertainties that call into doubt the ability of Samaritans to continue as a going concern.
The financial statements are prepared in accordance with the Charities SORP (FRS 102) issued October 2019, the Companies Act 2006, the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (as amended) and applicable Accounting Standards.
Samaritans meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102.
## **b) Basis of consolidation**
The accounts of the group companies are included in the financial statements and the Notes shown on pages 64 to 86. Further details of the subsidiaries’ activities are shown in Note 18. The consolidation of the group entities’ activities has been carried out on a line-by-line basis. All items of income and expenditure have been shown gross, after the removal of intra-group transactions.
Samaritans has taken advantage of the exemptions in FRS 102 from the requirements to present certain disclosures about the charity’s financial instruments.
## **c) Critical accounting judgements and key sources of estimation uncertainty**
In the application of the charity’s accounting policies, which are described in this Note, Trustees are required to make judgements, estimates and assumptions about the carrying values of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. The estimates and underlying assumptions are based on historical experience and other factors that are considered to be relevant. Actual results may differ from these estimates.
The estimates and underlying assumptions are reviewed on an on-going basis. Revisions to accounting estimates are recognised in the period in which the estimate is revised if the revision affects only that period or in the period of the revision and future periods if the revision affects the current and future periods.
A key source of estimation uncertainty that has a significant effect on the amounts recognised in the financial statements is in respect of residual legacies and this is described in the accounting policy below (see Note 1gi: Legacies).
## **d) Fund accounting**
General funds are unrestricted funds which are available for use at the discretion of the trustees in furtherance of the objectives of the charity and have not been designated for other purposes.
Designated funds comprise unrestricted funds which have been set aside by the Trustees for particular purposes.
Restricted funds are funds which are to be used in accordance with specific restrictions imposed by donors or which have been raised by the charity for specific purposes. Costs relating to such funds are charged against the specific fund. The aim and use of each fund is set out in Note 17.
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64
## **e) Impairment of freehold property assets**
Freehold property assets are subject to an impairment review in accordance with FRS 102 Section 27 "Impairment of Assets". They are stated in the balance sheet at cost less provision for any impairment in value. Any expense relating to a provision for impairment is recognised in the Statement of Financial Activities (‘SOFA’) in the year in which it occurs.
## **f) Stock**
Stock is valued at the lower of cost or net realisable value.
## **g) Income**
Income is included in the SOFA when the charity is legally entitled to the income, there is sufficient probability of receipt and the amount can be quantified with reasonable accuracy. The following specific policies apply to categories of income:
## **i) Legacies**
Recognition is the earlier of the charity receiving final estate accounts or the legacy actually being received. No value is included where the legacy is subject to a life interest held by another party.
## **ii) Donated goods/services**
These are included in both income and expenditure at the value to the charity where this can be reasonably quantified.
## **iii) Grants and contracts**
Where contracts are related to specific deliverables (as in the case of the contract with Network Rail) income is recognised to the extent that those deliverables have been achieved. Where income through contract is received in advance, its recognition is deferred and included in creditors. Where entitlement to contract or grant income occurs before income is received, the income is accrued. Capital grants are accounted for as income as soon as they are receivable.
## **iv) New Branch Contribution (NBC)**
These are recognised as receivable income upon the receipt of signed accounts from Samaritans' branches.
## **h) Expenditure**
Expenditure is accounted for on an accruals basis and has been classified under headings that aggregate all costs related to that category. Where costs cannot be directly attributed to particular headings they have been allocated to activities on a basis consistent with use of resources. Support and Governance costs have been allocated on the basis of spend to each of the four strategic areas relating to charitable activities (Access, Reach, Impact and Capacity) and to Fundraising activities (which includes the fifth strategic area of Sustainability). The following specific policies apply to categories of expenditure:
## **i) Grants**
Grants are charged to the statement of financial activities when there is a liability to pay.
## **ii) Fundraising costs**
Fundraising costs are those incurred in seeking voluntary contributions and do not include the costs of disseminating information in support of the charitable activities.
## **iii) Governance costs**
Governance costs are the costs associated with the governance arrangements of the charity which relate to the general running of the charity to distinguish from those costs associated with fundraising or charitable activity. Included within this category are costs associated with the strategic management of the charity’s activities.
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## **iv) Support costs**
Support costs comprise staff delivering the corporate service and infrastructure functions. These are allocated across the categories of charitable expenditure and the costs of generating funds. The basis of allocation of support costs is explained above.
## **v) Depreciation**
Depreciation is calculated on a straight-line basis to write off the cost of tangible and intangible fixed assets (except assets under construction) over their estimated useful lives as follows:
## Tangible fixed assets
Freehold property 50 years Leasehold property 50 years Computer equipment 3 years Telephony platform 5 years Office equipment 4 years Motor vehicles 5 years Intangible fixed assets Website and Software Development 3-5 years
## **i) Capital assets**
Tangible and intangible fixed assets are capitalised if they have an individual value exceeding £5,000.
## **j) Samaritans’ regions**
Centrally funded costs of supporting Samaritans’ regions have been incorporated within these financial statements. For operational delivery, the UK and Ireland are grouped into fourteen geographic regions. Each of these is supported by a group of senior volunteers and received financial support from the charity.
## **k) Operating leases**
Expenditure on operating leases is accounted for on a straight-line basis over the lease duration.
## **l) Foreign currency**
Transactions in foreign currency are converted to Sterling at the rate prevailing on the date of the transaction. Currency balances at the end of the year are converted at the closing exchange rate. Foreign exchange gains and losses are included in the SOFA for the period in which they are incurred. The results of Samaritans Ireland have been translated at the average rate.
## **m) Pensions**
The company operates a defined contribution group personal pension plan and an auto-enrolment pension scheme. Pension costs for eligible employees are charged to expenditure as they are incurred.
## **n) Branches**
The term ‘branches’ used throughout these Accounts refers to the branches of Samaritans, whose objectives are consistent with those of Samaritans.
## **o) Taxation**
Samaritans is a registered charity and is therefore potentially exempt from taxation of its income and gains to the extent that they fall within Part ii of the Corporation Tax Act 2010 and section 256 of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Acts 1992. No tax charge has arisen in the year. The Samaritan Enterprises Limited does not normally incur a tax charge given its policy of gifting all taxable profits to Samaritans.
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## **p) Financial instruments**
Samaritans has financial assets and financial liabilities of a kind that qualify as basic financial instruments. Basic financial instruments are initially recognised at transaction value and subsequently measured at the present value of future cash flows (amortised cost). Financial assets held at amortised cost comprise cash at bank and in hand, short term cash deposits and the group’s debtors excluding prepayments. Financial liabilities held at amortised cost comprise the group’s short and long term creditors excluding deferred income and taxation payable. No discounting has been applied to these financial instruments on the basis that the periods over which amounts will be settled are such that any discounting would be immaterial.
Investments, including bonds and cash held as part of the investment portfolio, are held at fair value at the Balance Sheet date, with gains and losses being recognised within income and expenditure.
Investments in subsidiary undertakings are held at cost less impairment.
## **2. Voluntary income**
|**a) Donations and legacies**|**All Funds**
**2024**
**£’000**
**All Funds**
**2023**
**£’000**|
|---|---|
|Donations - Individual Giving|8,100
6,818|
|Donations – branches|272
124|
|Donations – Corporate|2,451
2,970|
|Gifts in kind|390
385|
|Legacies|4,088
2,938|
|**Total**|**15,301**
**13,235**|
## **b) Donated Services**
A valuation has been undertaken of advertising and legal services donated to the charity during the year. This valuation of £390,000 (2023: £385,000) has been included within income under ‘gifts in kind’ as above and within expenditure.
## **c) Legacies**
As stated in the accounting policies note above (Note 1), legacy income is recognised at the earlier of the charity receiving final estate accounts or the legacy being received. At 31 March 2024, the charity had been notified of a further 105 legacies (2023: 97) that have not been included in these accounts as they did not meet these criteria. These legacies have an estimated value of £3,426,000 (2023: £3,819,000).
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|**d) Grants**
Ministry of Justice: HMPPS
Health Service Executive: Freecall Ireland
Pears Foundation
Armed Forces Covenant Fund
Department of Health and Social Care: Suicide Prevention Fund (Samaritans, NSPA,
Missing People Partnership)
Welsh Government/LLywodraeth Cymru
Department of Health and Social Care: VCSE Health & Wellbeing Alliance
NHS England: Support after suicide
Department of Health and Social Care: (NSPA- Core grant)
Scottish Government – Creating Hope Together Programme
Irish Prison Service
Scottish Prison Service
Scottish Government (Helpline services)
Northern Ireland Prison Service
Department of Health (Northern Ireland)
Department of Health and Social Care: Samaritans Helpline call costs
SSAFA Partnership: Military
Scottish Government: Highland Programme
Covid and council grants
Other grants*
**Total grants**|**All funds**
**2024**
**£’000**
**All funds**
**2023**
**£’000**|
|---|---|
||618
712|
||508
514|
||400
400|
||295
300|
||154
-|
||140
120|
||111
97|
||98
98|
||90
90|
||90
-|
||62
54|
||49
49|
||30
57|
||18
18|
||6
12|
||-
3|
||-
37|
||-
416|
||-
84|
||**2,669**
**3,058**|
||1,869
2,804|
|||
||**4,538**
**5,862**|
*Other grants includes individually immaterial grants, grants for which individual disclosure is not required by the underlying agreement and grants received where the donor wishes to remain anonymous.
## **3. Partnership income**
New Branch Contribution is a payment by branches as a contribution to the services received from the central charity, including the core technology platform. The New Branch Contribution amounted to £901,000 (2023: £1,208,000) and is included within ‘partnerships and other income’.
## **4. Investment income**
|**. Investment income**||
|---|---|
|Cash or cash equivalents
Listed investments
Total investment income|**All funds**
**2024**
**£’000**
**All funds**
**2023**
**£’000**|
||328
96|
||32
57|
||**360**
**153**|
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
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## **5. Charitable expenditure**
Further information on charitable expenditure has been provided below where required by the funder.
The funding received has been shown in Note 2d above.
## Ministry of Justice (HMPPS)
The HMPPS Grant was given to Samaritans in England and Wales by the Ministry of Justice. The grant was for the delivery of emotional support to prisoners in distress or crisis in England and Wales. Expenditure during 2023/24 was £622,000 (2022/23: £804,000).
## Scottish Government Helpline Funding
The Scottish Government grant was a contribution to Samaritans Helpline Service and the development of the online chat service. Expenditure during the year totalled £30,000 (2022/23: £57,000).
## Welsh Government
The Welsh Government funding is a contribution towards our work in Wales, including outreach to at-risk communities and resource development. Expenditure in the year totalled £185,000 (2022/23 £120,000).
## Armed Forces Covenant Fund – Veterans Funding
This grant funds a helpline service pathway for military veterans. Expenditure during the year totalled £280,000 (2022/23 £300,000)
## **Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) funded projects**
## Suicide Prevention Fund (Samaritans, NSPA and Missing People Partnership)
Samaritans secured funding from three grants to the Suicide Prevention Fund across 2 years. These include: **Samaritans - Suicide Prevention Fund Grant** to contribute towards the Helpline across all channels, delivery of Media Advisory Services, and our work on high-risk locations. **National Suicide Prevention Alliance (NSPA) – Suicide Prevention Fund Grant** to support NSPA to work focus on; Building understanding of experiences of marginalised groups, Creating a step change in learning in suicide prevention and development of a suicide prevention online community hub. **Samaritans Text Safe Suicide partnership with Missing People Grant** to deliver our suicide text safe programme by delivering emotional support for missing people at risk of suicide. This was a new grant in 2024. Expenditure in the year totalled £154,000.
## VCSE Health & Wellbeing Alliance
To provide core funding to the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector membership of the refreshed Health and Wellbeing (HW) Alliance. Core work: strategic planned and responsive work, which will be identified with policy leads from across the three system partner organisations. Expenditure during 2023/24 was £92,000 (2022/23: £92,000).
## National Suicide Prevention Alliance - NSPA
NSPA is an alliance of member organisations which aims to reduce the number of suicides in England and improve support for those affected by suicide. The DHSC grant contributed to the core delivery of the alliance with a grant of £90,000 (2022/23: £90,000) during the year. Expenditure during the year towards the project totalled £244,000 (2022/23: £90,000).
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## **6. Net expenditure for the year**
This is stated after charging:
|**. Net expenditure for the year**
his is stated after charging:||
|---|---|
|Audit fees payable to parent charity’s auditors
Audit fees payable to the component auditor of the Irish subsidiary
Fees payable to the parent charity’s auditor for tax and other services
Depreciation of tangible fixed assets
Amortisation of intangible fixed assets
Operating lease rentals|**All funds**
**2024**
**£’000**
**All funds**
**2023**
**£’000**|
||37
35|
||4
5|
||2
9|
||43
49|
||218
225|
||139
225|
||410
461|
The Directors of the charitable company are the trustees under charity law and receive no remuneration (2023: none). It is the policy of the charity to reimburse all volunteer expenses in full. During the year six Trustees (2023: seven) received reimbursement for attending meetings and other incidentals amounting to £2,691 (2023: £5,148)
The company has taken out insurance to protect the Trustees. This cover is part of our commercial combined insurance policy, and the cost of this element is not itemised.
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## **7. Breakdown of costs by activity**
## **Current year**
|**Expenditure on:**
**Raising funds**
General fundraising
**Charitable activities**
Access
Reach
Impact
Capacity
**Total expenditure**|**Direct costs**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Support costs**
**2024**
**£’000**
**All costs**
**2024**
**£’000**|
|---|---|
||4,490
1,355
5,845|
|||
||8,184
2,116
10,300|
||1,229
25
1,254|
||4,567
996
5,563|
||2,343
592
2,935|
||**20,813**
**5,084**
**25,897**|
We have five strategic areas in our current strategy. Expenditure on the four strategic areas relating to charitable activities have been split out above. The fifth strategic area of sustainability has been grouped within general fundraising, in line with our treatment in 2023.
|**Expenditure on:**
Raising funds
Charitable activities
**Total expenditure**|**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**2024**
**£’000**
**All funds**
**2024**
**£’000**|
|---|---|
||5,712
133
5,845|
||15,519
4,533
20,052|
||**21,231**
**4,666**
**25,897**|
## **Analysis of support costs by activity:**
|Finance and other corporate services
IS
HR
Facilities
Governance
**Support costs**|**Fundraising**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Access**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Reach**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Impact**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Capacity**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Total**
**2024**
**£’000**|
|---|---|
||331
516
6
243
144
**1,240**|
||478
745
9
351
209
**1,792**|
||208
324
4
153
91
**780**|
||206
322
4
151
90
**773**|
||133
208
2
98
58
**499**|
||**1,356**
**2,115**
**25**
**996**
**592**
**5,084**|
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71
## **Prior year**
|**Expenditure on:**
**Raising funds**
General fundraising
**Charitable activities**
Access
Reach
Impact
Capacity
**Total expenditure**
**Expenditure on:**
Raising funds
Charitable activities
**Total expenditure**|**Direct costs**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Support costs**
**2023**
**£’000**
**All costs**
**2023**
**£’000**
4,960
1,141
6,101
9,034
1,688
10,722
1,097
3
1,100
5,625
964
6,589
2,833
599
3,432
**23,549**
**4,395**
**27,944**
**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**2023**
**£’000**
**All funds**
**2023**
**£’000**
6,101
-
6,101
17,503
4,340
21,843
**23,604**
**4,340**
**27,944**|
|---|---|
## **Analysis of support costs by activity:**
|Finance and other corporate services
IS
HR
Facilities
Governance
**Support costs**|**Fundraising**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Access**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Reach**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Impact**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Capacity**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Total**
**2023**
**£’000**|
|---|---|
||82
121
-
69
43
**315**|
||478
708
1
404
252
**1,843**|
||193
286
1
163
102
**745**|
||236
349
1
199
124
**909**|
||151
224
1
128
79
**583**|
||**1,140**
**1,688**
**4**
**963**
**600**
**4,395**|
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72
## **8. Staff costs**
|**8. Staff costs**|||
|---|---|---|
|||_Restated_|
||**All funds**|**All funds**|
||**2024**|**2023**|
|**Staff costs**|**£’000**|**£’000**|
|Wages and salaries|13,270|13,036|
|Social security costs|1,336|1,375|
|Other pension costs|623|593|
|Agencystaff|90|167|
|**Total staff costs**|**15,319**|**15,171**|
|**Staff paid over £60,000***|**2024**|**2023**|
|---|---|---|
|£170,001-£180,000|-|1|
|£140,001- £150,000|-|1|
|£120,001-£130,000|1|-|
|£110,001-£120,000|1|1|
|£100,001-£110,000|2|-|
|£90,001-£100,000|1|1|
|£80,001-£90,000|2|2|
|£70,001-£80,000|10|5|
|£60,001-£70,000|15|14|
|**Total**|**32**|**25**|
_* Comprising consideration paid in exchange for the service rendered by employees including remuneration, salary, benefits and any termination payments made._
The 2023 wages and salaries figure has been restated to allow comparability following an amendment to the classifications in 2024.
The Chief Executive Officer was paid a total of £125,000 (2023: £146,000).
The total amount of employee benefits received by key management personnel for their services during the year was £928,000 (2023: £1,076,000).
Termination payments totalling £194,000 (2023: £114,000) were paid during the year, relating to employees leaving the charity.
## **Pension costs**
The pension contributions for the 32 employees (2023: 25) earning more than £60,000 in the year amounted to £140,000 (2023: £96,000).
## **Employee numbers**
The average full-time equivalent number of employees during the year was 305 (2023: 302). As at 31 March 2024 the number of FTE staff was 301 (308 at 31 March 2023).
The average number of employees in post during the year was 331 (2023: 329). At 31 March 2024 the number of employees in post was 326 (335 at 31 March 2023).
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73
## **9. Tangible fixed assets**
|**Group**
**Cost**
At 1 April 2023
Additions
Disposals
Exchange rate movements
**At 31 March 2024**
**Depreciation**
At 1 April 2023
Charged in the year
Disposals
Exchange rate movements
**At 31 March 2024**
**Net book value**
**At 31 March 2024**
At 31 March 2023
**Charity**
**Cost**
At 1 April 2023
Additions
Disposals
**At 31 March 2024**
**Depreciation**
At 1 April 2023
Charge for the year
Disposals
**At 31 March 2024**
**Net book value**
**At 31 March 2024**
At 31 March 2023|**Freehold**
**property**
**£’000**
**Leasehold**
**property**
**£’000**
**Computer**
**equipment**
**£’000**
**Office**
**equipment**
**£’000**
**Motor**
**vehicles**
**£’000**
**Total**
**£’000**|
|---|---|
||8,768
685
489
623
42
10,607|
||16
-
-
2
-
18|
||(120)
-
(98)
(122)
-
(340)|
||-
-
-
(6)
-
(6)|
||**8,664**
**685**
**391**
**497**
**42**
**10,279**|
||2,402
84
488
540
25
3,539|
||152
14
1
44
7
218|
||(16)
-
(98)
(122)
-
(236)|
||-
-
-
(5)
-
(5)|
||**2,538**
**98**
**391**
**457**
**32**
**3,516**|
||**6,126**
**587**
**-**
**40**
**10**
**6,763**|
||6,366
601
1
83
17
7,068
**Freehold**
**property**
**£’000**
**Leasehold**
**property**
**£’000**
**Computer**
**equipment**
**£’000**
**Office**
**equipment**
**£’000**
**Motor**
**vehicles**
**£’000**
**Total**
**£’000**|
||8,768
686
489
459
41
10,443|
||16
-
-
-
-
16|
||(120)
-
(98)
(122)
-
(340)|
||**8,664**
**686**
**391**
**337**
**41**
**10,119**|
||2,403
84
488
375
26
3,376|
||152
14
1
43
7
218|
||(16)
-
(98)
(122)
-
(236)|
||**2,539**
**98**
**391**
**296**
**33**
**3,359**|
||**6,125**
**588**
**-**
**40**
**8**
**6,761**|
||6,365
602
1
85
17
7,067|
Depreciation at 31 March 2024 for freehold property, includes an impairment of £725,000 in the carrying value of the Ewell Central Office arising from an impairment review in 2012/13.
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
74
## **10. Intangible fixed assets**
|**Group and charity**
**Cost**
At 1 April 2023
Additions
**At 31 March 2024**
**Amortisation**
At 1 April 2023
Charge for the year
**At 31 March 2024**
**Net book value**
**At 31 March 2024**
At 31 March 2023|**Website and**
**software**
**development**
**£’000**|
|---|---|
||1,329|
||-|
||**1,329**|
||950|
||139|
||**1,089**|
||**240**|
||379|
Amortisation of intangible fixed assets is included within Charitable Activities expenditure on the Statement of Financial Activities.
## **11. Fixed asset investments**
|Market value at 1 April
Acquisition at cost
Disposal proceeds
Reinvested interest
Investment gains/(losses)
**Market value at 31 March 2024**
**Cash and cash equivalents**
CCLA COIF charities deposit fund
Portfolio managed by Hambros Investments
**Listed investments**
Portfolio managed by Hambros Investments
Other listed investments
**Other investments – managed by Hambros Investments**
Alternative
Commodities
Fixed interest
**Total investments**|**Group**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Group**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2023**
**£’000**
2,058
4,972
2,058
4,972
521
688
521
688
(508)
(3,540)
(508)
(3,540)
3
-
3
-
147
(62)
147
(62)|
|---|---|
||**2,221**
**2,058**
**2,221**
**2,058**|
||**2024**
**£’000**
**2024**
**%**
**2023**
**£’000**
**2023**
**%**
109
5%
107
5%
16
1%
120
6%|
||**125**
**6%**
**227**
**11%**
1,161
52%
962
47%
9
0%
9
0%|
||**1,170**
**52%**
**971**
**47%**
271
12%
317
15%
132
6%
121
6%
521
24%
422
21%|
||**925**
**42%**
**860**
**42%**|
||**2,221**
**100%**
**2,058**
**100%**|
Investments held by the charity include a £100 investment (2023: £100) in the subsidiary company at cost: see Note 18.
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
75
## **12. Debtors**
|**12. Debtors**||
|---|---|
|Trade debtors
Gift Aid
Legacies
Accrued income
VAT, payroll tax, social security and pensions
Other debtors
Intercompany
Prepayments
**Total debtors**|**Group**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Group**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2023**
**£’000**
774
599
628
404
1,346
821
1,346
821
156
260
156
260
791
511
734
508
-
151
-
151
74
59
74
59
-
-
926
922
764
788
745
782|
||**3,905**
**3,189**
**4,609**
**3,907**|
## **13. Creditors**
|**13. Creditors**||
|---|---|
|Social security and taxes
Trade creditors
Accrued expenditure
Other creditors
**Total creditors**|**Group**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Group**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2023**
**£’000**
453
545
453
545
418
945
404
934
950
1,113
893
1,058
50
7
87
7|
||**1,871**
**2,610**
**1,837**
**2,544**|
## **14. Deferred income**
|At 1 April
Income recognised in the year
Income deferred in the year
**At 31 March 2024**|**Group**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Group**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2023**
**£’000**
668
1,683
350
1,297
(335)
(1,283)
(348)
(1,490)
(44)
268
197
543|
|---|---|
||**289**
**668**
**199**
**350**|
Total deferred income includes £76,987 (2023: £236,450) of Network Rail deferred income within The Samaritan Enterprises Limited.
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
76
## **15. Financial and other commitments**
## **a) Operating leases**
At 31 March the Group and Charity had total commitments under non-cancellable operating leases as set out below:
|**Operating**
**lease**
**commitments**
Within one
year
Between two
and five years
Over five years
Total|**Group**
**2024**
**Land and**
**buildings**
**£’000**
**Group**
**2024**
**Other**
**£’000**
**Group**
**2023**
**Land and**
**buildings**
**£’000**
**Group**
**2023**
**Other**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2024**
**Land and**
**buildings**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2024**
**Other**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2023**
**Land and**
**buildings**
**£’000**
**Charity**
**2023**
**Other**
**£’000**|
|---|---|
||299
2
296
4
247
2
249
4|
||523
1
414
4
399
1
244
4|
||65
-
45
-
65
-
45
-|
||**887**
**3**
**755**
**8**
**711**
**3**
**538**
**8**|
## **16. Financial instruments**
At the balance sheet date, the group held financial assets at amortised cost of £16,281,000 (2023: £18,155,000), financial assets at fair value through income or expenditure of £2,221,000 (2023: £2,058,000) and financial liabilities at amortised cost of £1,871,000 (2023: £2,610,000).
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
77
## **17. Reconciliation of reserves**
## **Current year**
|**Unrestricted**
General fund
Designated fund – tangible and intangible fixed assets
Designated fund – property maintenance fund
Designated fund – There for Everyone
Designated fund – Service Expansion
Designated fund – Strategy Development & Delivery
Designated fund – Ireland
**Total unrestricted funds**
**Restricted**
Branch support
City Hub
Education Resources
Email service development
Helpline call costs
Helpline Freecall
Highland Programme
Listening Centre
Mental Health in the Rail Industry
National Suicide Prevention
National Training School
Northern Ireland
Online Chat
Online Excellence Programme
Prisoner Support & Improving Safer Custody
Reduce Gambling Harm
Regional grants
Suicide & Self-harm in Wales
Support After Suicide
VSCE Health & Wellbeing Alliance
Veterans Listening Service
Other*
**Total restricted funds**
**Total funds**|**At 1**
**April**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Income**
**£’000**
**Expenditure**
**£’000**
**Transfer**
**between**
**funds**
**£’000**
**At 31**
**March**
**2024**
**£’000**|
|---|---|
||10,966
20,958
(20,213)
342
12,053|
||7,448
-
(462)
16
7,002|
||28
-
-
-
28|
||43
-
(19)
(25)
-|
||1,286
-
(385)
-
901|
||1,752
-
(4)
-
1,748|
||247
-
(148)
-
99|
||**21,770**
**20,958**
**(21,231)**
**333**
**21,830**|
||500
290
(311)
(192)
287|
||168
3
(67)
-
104|
||-
95
-
-
95|
||111
-
-
-
111|
||8
47
(55)
-
-|
||472
508
(686)
-
294|
||318
-
(273)
-
45|
||-
305
(116)
-
189|
||25
1
(26)
-
-|
||155
342
(356)
-
141|
||246
2
(248)
-
-|
||13
34
(38)
-
9|
||-
129
(20)
-
109|
||489
54
(192)
-
351|
||112
786
(820)
-
78|
||84
-
(84)
-
-|
||238
140
(194)
(184)
-|
||25
207
(193)
21
60|
||136
108
(158)
-
86|
||5
111
(116)
-
-|
||-
295
(280)
-
15|
||173
351
(434)
22
112|
||**3,278**
**3,807**
**(4,666)**
**(333)**
**2,086**|
||**25,048**
**24,765**
**(25,897)**
**-**
**23,916**|
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
78
|**Represented by:**
Tangible and intangible fixed assets
Investments
Net current assets
Liabilities due over 1 year
**Total**|**General**
**Funds**
**£’000**
**Designated**
**funds**
**£’000**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**£’000**
**Total**
**2024**
**£’000**
**Total**
**2023**
**£‘000**|
|---|---|
||-
7,003
-
7,003
7,447|
||2,221
-
-
2,221
2,058|
||10,028
2,774
2,086
14,888
15,726|
||(196)
-
**-**
(196)
(183)|
||**12,053**
**9,777**
**2,086**
**23,916**
**25,048**|
*Other funds represent smaller individual restricted funds.
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
79
## **Prior year**
|**Unrestricted**
General fund
Designated fund – tangible and intangible fixed assets
Designated fund – property maintenance fund
Designated fund – There for Everyone
Designated fund – Service Expansion
Designated fund – Strategy Development & Delivery
Designated fund – Ireland
**Total unrestricted funds**
**Restricted**
Branch support
City Hub
Email service development
Helpline call costs
Helpline Freecall
Highland Programme
Mental Health in the Rail Industry
Military – SSAFA partnership
National Suicide Prevention
National Training School
Northern Ireland
Online Excellence Programme
Prisoner Support & Improving Safer Custody
Reduce Gambling Harm
Regional grants
Suicide & Self-harm in Wales
Support After Suicide
There for Everyone
VSCE Health & Wellbeing Alliance
Veterans Listening Service
Wellbeing & Resilience Hub: Construction
Other*
**Total restricted funds**
**Total funds**|**At 1**
**April**
**2022**
**£’000**
**Income**
**£’000**
**Expenditure**
**£’000**
**Transfer**
**between**
**funds**
**£’000**
**At 31**
**March**
**2023**
**£’000**|
|---|---|
||11,713
19,817
(20,939)
375
10,966|
||8,381
-
(449)
(484)
7,448|
||282
-
(254)
-
28|
||214
-
(171)
-
43|
||1,250
-
-
36
1,286|
||3,243
-
(1,491)
-
1,752|
||536
-
(362)
73
247|
||**25,619**
**19,817**
**(23,666)**
**-**
**21,770**|
||404
189
(93)
-
500|
||167
1
-
-
168|
||277
-
(166)
-
111|
||-
65
(57)
-
8|
||432
535
(495)
-
472|
||49
416
(147)
-
318|
||50
34
(59)
-
25|
||92
37
(129)
-
-|
||175
216
(236)
-
155|
||108
370
(232)
-
246|
||-
36
(23)
-
13|
||752
229
(492)
-
489|
||190
868
(946)
-
112|
||327
-
(243)
-
84|
||55
183
-
-
238|
||46
99
(120)
-
25|
||120
156
(140)
-
136|
||74
-
(74)
-
-|
||-
97
(92)
-
5|
||-
300
(300)
-
-|
||100
33
(137)
-
(4)|
||95
241
(159)
-
177|
||**3,513**
**4,105**
**(4,340)**
**-**
**3,278**|
||**29,132**
**23,922**
**(28,006)**
**-**
**25,048**|
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
80
|**Represented by:**
Tangible and intangible fixed assets
Investments
Net current assets
Liabilities due over 1 year
**Total**|**General**
**Funds**
**£’000**
**Designated**
**funds**
**£’000**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**£’000**
**Total**
**2023**
**£’000**
**Total**
**2022**
**£‘000**|
|---|---|
||-
7,447
-
7,447
8,381|
||2,058
-
-
2,058
4,972|
||9,091
3,357
3,278
15,726
15,779|
||(183)
-
**-**
(183)|
||**10,966**
**10,804**
**3,278**
**25,048**
**29,132**|
*Other funds represent smaller individual restricted funds.
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
81
**17a) Unrestricted funds**
|**17a) Unrestricted funds**||
|---|---|
|General fund|These funds are held available for the ordinary purposes of the charity.|
|Designated fund –
tangible fixed assets|This fund comprises the Group’s tangible fixed assets. These are therefore not
readily available for other purposes.|
|Designated fund –
property maintenance
fund|This fund has been established utilising cash assets transferred from branches
joining the central charity. The fund is used to ensure the ongoing maintenance,
safety, and suitability of branch properties for delivering Samaritans’ services into
the future. These funds will continue to be used when works are needed at the
branch sites.|
|Designated fund –
service expansion|This fund supports new ways of operating our service, with the aim of widening
the reach for beneficiaries, and attracting and training new volunteers. This has
been a long-standing risk area for Samaritans: trying to widen and increase the
supply of volunteers/service options to match the demand from current and new
potential beneficiaries.|
|Designated fund –
Strategy Development
& Delivery|During 2023 the new strategy was developed and informed by people with lived
experience, our volunteers, staff, and supporters. The strategy is for a period of
five years, ensuring we continue to be there for those who need us most, reach
out to more people to let them know we’re here, and make our voice heard to
make suicide prevention a priority.|
|Designated fund –
There for Everyone|This fund supports the There for Everyone programme, to help us make a step
change in our ability to offer our callers greater choice in how they access our
services, raising awareness and reaching more people through the education and
information we provide, as well as creating flexible ways to volunteer with us that
fit better with our modern lives. This fund is now fully spent.|
|Designated fund –
Ireland|This fund was established in 2023 from legacy proceeds to progress several key
workstreams in Ireland over for a two year period. This includes the development
of income generation, public policy, brand awareness and partnerships following
the decision to increase autonomy of the Samaritans Ireland Board in these areas.
Other workstreams include development of the Samaritans Ireland website,
improved oversight of operational work in Ireland, research into self-harm and
support to branches in Ireland.|
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
82
**17b) Restricted funds**
|**17b) Restricted funds**||
|---|---|
|Branch support|This fund ensures Samaritans’ critical 24/7 services remain available to vulnerable
people in the short and longer term nationally and locally, and to meet
emergency financial needs of the branches.|
|City Hub|This fund is to develop and roll out a new innovating volunteering model to offer
people who work in the City opportunities to support suicide prevention locally
and nationally, including the online chat service.|
|Education Resources|This fund will be used to develop our education programme.|
|Email service
development|This fund supports the development of Samaritans’ email service. Expenditure is
planned for the 2024/25 year.|
|Helpline call costs|This fund contributes to the costs of calls to the Samaritans helpline in the UK.|
|Helpline Freecall|This fund contributes to the costs of calls to the Samaritans Freecall helpline
phone number in Ireland.|
|Highland Programme|This fund relates to initiation work for Samaritans’ targeted promotion of service
and new resources to improve mental health and resilience in the West Highlands
of Scotland and Skye.|
|Mental Health in the
rail industry|This fund relates to a study into mental health awareness and the railways.|
|Military – SSAFA
partnership|This fund related to a partnership with SSAFA to work together to gather the
insight, research, and evidence to inform and create an ambitious strategy
focusing on reducing suicide in veterans. This project is now completed.|
|National Suicide
Prevention|The NSPA is a cross-sector, England-wide, coalition committed to reducing the
number of suicides in England and improving support for those bereaved or
affected by suicide.|
|National Training
School|This fund supports the future growth of our listening services and the various
service expansion pilots already underway. We have established a new central
recruitment and training team (known as Samaritans Training School) to help
support the training requirements for our service expansion programme.|
|Online Chat|This fund was set up in 2024 and is for the development of our Online Chat
service.|
|Online Excellence
Programme|This fund is for the development of a hub of excellence in suicide prevention and
the online environment.|
|Prisoner Support &
Improving Safer
Custody|This fund provides Emotional Support to Prisoners in distress or crisis in the UK
and Ireland.|
|Reducing Gambling
Harm|Samaritans is working in partnership with GamCare, to develop suicide
prevention guidance aimed at gambling companies and training to support their
staff working with customers expressing suicidal thoughts.|
|Regional Grants|This fund contributes to core helpline costs, volunteer training and other costs
incurred regionally.|
|Suicide & Self-harm in
Wales|This fund allows Samaritans and NSPA to carry out our work in Wales.|
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
83
|Support After Suicide|SASP is a UK wide network of over 70 members and supporters. It was founded in
2013 to bring together national and local organisations that are involved in
delivering suicide bereavement support across the UK and to address the need
for formal, multi-agency, proactive suicide bereavement support.|
|---|---|
|There for Everyone|The There for Everyone programme helped us make a step change in our ability
to offer our callers greater choice in how they access our services, raise
awareness and reach more people through the education and information we
provide, as well as creating flexible ways to volunteer with us that fit better with
their modern lives. This programme has now come to an end.|
|VCSE Health &
Wellbeing Alliance|This fund provides core funding to the Voluntary, Community and Social
Enterprise (VCSE) sector membership of the refreshed Health and Wellbeing (HW)
Alliance. Core work: strategic planned and responsive work, which will be
identified with policy leads from across the three system partner organisations.|
|Veterans Listening
Service|This funding is for a veteran helpline service which provides trained support to
improve the wellbeing and resilience of military veterans, including peer-to-peer
support.|
|Other restricted funds|These funds represent smaller individual restricted funds.|
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
84
## **18. Samaritans group companies**
## **a) Samaritans**
The charity is a private limited company (registered number 757372), which is incorporated and domiciled in the UK and is a public benefit entity. The address of the registered office is The Upper Mill, Kingston Road, Ewell, Surrey, KT17 2AF.
Samaritans uses the exemption in Section 408 of the Companies Act 2006 in not preparing a separate Income and Expenditure account for Samaritans as a separate entity.
Samaritans recharged expenditure of £1,086,000 to its subsidiaries during the year (2023: £965,000) and made payments to its subsidiaries of £nil (2023: £nil). The Samaritans Enterprises Limited donates any surpluses to Samaritans under Gift Aid; for 2024 this amounted to £527,000 (2023: £629,000). At the year-end, £925,000 was due from Samaritans Enterprises (2023: £920,000), and £33,000 was due to Samaritans Ireland (2023: £2,000 due from Samaritans Ireland).
## **b) The Samaritan Enterprises Limited**
Company number: 01451175
The Samaritan Enterprises Limited is incorporated in the United Kingdom and has an issued share capital of £100, 100% of which is owned by Samaritans. The address of the registered office is The Upper Mill, Kingston Road, Ewell, Surrey, KT17 2AF.
The principal activity of the company is the delivery of a contract with Network Rail – ‘Tackling Suicide on the Railway’; income also includes that derived from certain sponsorship and training activities. Any net profit made by the company is transferred to the charity.
The Samaritan Enterprises Limited’s income amounted to £1,839,000 (2023: £2,108,000), expenditure amounted to £1,312,000 (2023: £1,479,000) and a surplus of £527,000 was generated (2023: surplus of £629,000), before transfers and other recognised gains/losses. At 31 March 2024 assets were £1,034,000 (2023: £1,257,000) and liabilities were £1,034,000 (2023: £1,257,000).
A Memorandum of Understanding exists with Samaritans Central Charity to deliver certain requirements of the Network Rail contract. In accordance with this agreement, services of the central charity have been procured. As such, this year’s accounts include inter-company charges of £1,086,000 (2023: £965,000).
## **c) Samaritans Ireland**
Company number: 450409
Charity Number: CHY11880
Samaritans Ireland was established in the Republic of Ireland in December 2007 and became operational in April 2008. Samaritans Ireland is incorporated in the Republic as a company limited by guarantee. The address of the registered office is 4-5 Usher’s Court, Usher’s Quay, Dublin 8, Ireland.
By virtue of its constitution, Samaritans is able to exert control over Samaritans Ireland.
Samaritans Ireland’s income amounted to £1,451,000 (2023: £1,448,000), expenditure amounted to £1,634,000 (2023: £1,069,000) resulting in a deficit of £183,000 (2023: £28,000). This figure includes foreign exchange gains on translation into sterling. At 31 March 2024 assets were £1,250,000 (2023: £1,423,000), liabilities were £52,000 (2023: £42,000) and total funds were £1,174,000 (2023: £1,381,000).
The results of the company have been translated at the prevailing currency exchange rate at the average rate.
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
85
## **19. Affiliated and Central Charity branches**
Since April 2016 all branches have either been through an incorporation process and then affiliated to Samaritans Central Charity or joined Samaritans Central Charity, at which point they are no longer separate legal entities.
No branches completed the process this year, and no branches closed. Ongoing financial activity relating to these branches has been incorporated into the results of the central charity.
For SCC branches, the unincorporated entities have been retained and, in England and Wales, have been linked to the central charity on the Charity Commission register. Registered addresses for these entities are listed under Samaritans’ entry on the register. Each SCC branch holds net assets of £100, which are included within these group accounts as unrestricted funds. The unincorporated entities have charitable objectives which are consistent with those of the central charity.
A listing of Samaritans branches is included on pages 90 to 93, and SCC branches are indicated on this list.
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
86
## Reference and Administrative details
**Honorary President:** Felicity Varah Harding OBE
**Royal Patron:** HM The King
**Company name:** Samaritans
**Registered address and principal office:** The Upper Mill, Kingston Road Ewell, Surrey KT17 2AF
**Registered charity number:** 219432
**Company number:** 757372
**Scottish charity number:** SC040604
**Website:** samaritans.org
## Board of Trustees
Keith Leslie (Chair, Board of Trustees)
Dr Hester Wain (Co Vice-Chair)
Rory Girvan (Co Vice-Chair)
Annie Kent (Honorary Treasurer and Chair of Finance Committee)
Debbie Giwa (Chair of Audit & Risk Committee)
Philip Cliff (Chair, People and Culture Committee)
Dr Anushta Sivananthan (Chair, Service & Quality Committee)
Amanda Millar (Chair, Scotland Committee)
Eleanor Farrell (Chair, Ireland Board, Nominations & Governance Committee)
Dr Ann John (Chair, Policy and Research Committee) (stepped down 27 July 2023)
John Drew (Chair of External Engagement and Research Committee) appointed 18 December 2023)
Ana Laing (Chair, Wales Committee) (final term ended 09 June 2023)
Dr Catherine Goodwin (Chair, Wales Committee) (appointed 08 June 2023)
Gaia Marcus
Andrew Donnell
Richard Bartlett (appointed 01 October 2023)
John Jolly (appointed 02 December 2023)
Laura Bunt (final term ended 27 July 2023)
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
87
Samaritans senior staff
## **CEO:** Julie Bentley
**Executive Director of Corporate Services:** Graeme Danton **Executive Director of External Engagement:** Sonya Trivedy
**Executive Director of Operations:** Lis Skeet **Executive Director of People and Culture:** Tiger De Souza
**Company Secretary:** Andrew Robarts
Regional Directors (as of 31 March 2024)
## **Director of Branch Operations**
Director of Branch Operations: Cindy O'Shea Director of Branch Operations: Gilli Seymour Director of Branch Operations: Jayne Finch Director of Branch Operations: Shilpa Shah
**East:** Susannah Fenton (from 31/03/2023) and Jenny Meads (from 23/08/2023) (Interims) (Gaynor Bell stepped down 31/03/2023) **East Midlands:** Joy Baker (Interim) (from 31/03/23) (Mathew Shepherd stepped down 31/03/2023 )
**London:** Sue Christopher **North:** Libby Dicken
**Northern Ireland:** Marcella Taylor
**North West:** Christina Morgan
**Ireland:** Jonathan Neville **Scotland:** John Knight
**South:** Liz Hebden
**South East:** Kay Turner (from 25/03/2024) (Peter Rowland stepped down 25/03/2024)
**South West:** John Huxtable **Wales:** Christine Gwyther (from 01/04/2023) (Meryl James stepped down 01/04/2023)
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
88
## **West Midlands:** Pam Rutter
**Yorkshire and Humberside:** Belinda Merrison (from 01/10/2023)
(Michael George stepped down 01/10/2023) **Service Expansion:** Vacant (Tracey Fuller stepped down 2023) **Bankers:** Lloyds Bank Plc, 25 Gresham Street, London EC2V 7HN HSBC Bank Plc, One London Square, Cross Lanes, Guildford, Surrey GU1 1UN **Investment managers:** James Hambro & Partners LLP, 45 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5JG **External auditors:** Crowe U.K. LLP, 55 Ludgate Hill, London, EC4M 7JW
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
89
## Samaritans branches
Samaritans has more than 200 branches, satellites and hubs across the UK and Ireland, with volunteers providing round-the-clock support whenever and however people need it. Our dedicated volunteers are our greatest asset, and we couldn’t achieve all that we do without their steadfast support.
Thank you to each and every one of our wonderful volunteers for the difference you make in people’s lives every day.
Aberdeen Blackpool, Fylde & Wyre Aberystwyth* Bognor Regis, Chichester & District* Anglia Ruskin Uni Cambridge (Hub) Bolton Anglia Ruskin Uni Chelmsford (Hub) Borders (Selkirk)* Arklow (East Coast) Boston, Lincolnshire* Ashford & Tenterden Bournemouth & District* Athlone & Midland Bracknell, Wokingham, Ascot & Districts Ayrshire Bradford (Hub) Ballymena Brent* Banbury & District* Bridgend Bangor & North Down Bridlington & District* Barnsley Brierley Hill Barrow, Furness & South Lakes* Brighton, Hove & District Basildon & Thurrock* Bristol Basingstoke* Bromley & Orpington Bath & District Bury* Bedford* Bury St Edmunds & West Suffolk
Bury* Bury St Edmunds & West Suffolk
Buxton & High Peak*
Belfast Berwick (Satellite) Bexley & Dartford* Birmingham Blackburn with Darwen, Hyndburn & Ribble Valley
Caithness Cambridge Canterbury & District
Cardiff & District*
Carlisle
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
90
Castlebar (Satellite) Central London Chelmsford & Mid-Essex* Cheltenham & District Chester & District Chesterfield Chiltern Colchester Coleraine & District Cork Cornwall at Truro Correspondence* Coventry & District Craigavon Croydon & Sutton* Darlington & District* Derby & District Derry Doncaster* Dorset at Weymouth Drogheda Dublin Dumfries* Dundee Dunfermline Durham (Central) Ealing Eastbourne & District East Surrey Edinburgh and the Lothians Elgin*
Email Hub (Hub) Ennis & Clare Exeter, Mid & East Devon Falkirk & Central Scotland Farnborough & District* Festival* Folkestone, Dover & Hythe Galway Glasgow Gloucester & District* Grantham Great Yarmouth* Grimsby, Cleethorpes & District* Guernsey Guildford Halifax & Calderdale Harrogate & District Harrow Hastings & Rother Havering (Romford)* Herefordshire Herts & Essex (Ware) Hillingdon Horsham & Crawley Huddersfield Inner South West London Inverclyde* Inverness Ipswich and East Suffolk Isle of Man Isle of Wight*
Samaritans Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
91
Jersey Kerry Kettering & District Kilkenny and Carlow King’s Lynn Kingston upon Hull Kingston upon Thames Kirkcaldy & District* Lanarkshire in Hamilton* Lancaster & District Leatherhead & Mid-Surrey Leeds*
Leek & District Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland Lewisham, Greenwich & Southwark Limerick & Tipperary Lincoln* Liverpool & Merseyside London City Hub (Hub) Lowestoft & Waveney District* Luton, South Beds & Harpenden Macclesfield & District Maidstone & Weald Manchester & Salford Mansfield* Medway, Gravesham & Swale* Mid-Cheshire Milton Keynes Newbridge & Kildare Newbury Newport & Gwent
Newry
North Devon & North Cornwall North East Wales* North Herts & Stevenage North London (Enfield, Haringey & Barnet) North West Surrey* North West Wales Northallerton & The Dales*
Northampton
Northumbria*
Norwich Nottingham Omagh Orkney* Oxford
Pembrokeshire Pendle, Burnley, Craven & Rossendale
Perth Peterborough & District Plymouth, East Cornwall & South West Devon
Portsmouth & East Hampshire Powys in Llandrindod Wells Preston & District
Reading Redbridge* Rochdale, Oldham & District*
Rotherham
Salisbury & District Scarborough Scunthorpe* Sevenoaks (Hub)
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Sheffield Shetland Shrewsbury Sligo Slough, Windsor & Maidenhead Solihull* South Cheshire South Devon South Wales Valleys (Hub) South West Herts Southampton & District Southend-on-Sea Southport & District* Stafford Stockport* Stoke-on-Trent & Newcastle Stratford-upon-Avon & District Sunderland* Swansea Swindon & District* Tamworth
Taunton & Somerset Teeside (Middlesbrough)* Telford Tunbridge Wells & District Tyneside* Wakefield & District* Walsall & District* Waltham Forest (Leyton)* Warrington, Halton & St Helens* Waterford & the South-East West Cork (Satellite) West Cumbria Western Isles Weston Super Mare & North Somerset
Wigan Winchester & District Wolverhampton Worcester Worthing York Yeovil, Sherborne & District
*These branches are part of Samaritans Central Charity as of 31 March 2024
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## Donors and supporters
29th May 1961 Charitable Trust Alan Boswell Group Charitable Trust Anthony and Elizabeth Mellows Charitable Settlement
Ardonagh Community Trust ASAP Atlas Fund Baillie Gifford Dr Vik Bansal Bloomberg Peter and Charlotte Bolland Gemma Booker Burberry Cadogan Charity Cala Homes Computacenter Constance Travis Charitable Trust Costain CRH Charitable Trust Department of Health and Social Care Department of Health Northern Ireland Derek Raphael Charitable Trust Dr Vivian Child Charitable Trust Flying Tiger GRAHAM Construction Chris and Gilda Haskins Henry Oldfield Charitable Trust Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service Hosking Charitable Trust
Ice Futures Europe Inman Charity In The Style Irish Prison Service James and Patricia Hamilton Charitable Trust James Tysoe Trust J J Fenwick Charitable Trust J & M Britton Charitable Trust John Armitage Foundation John Browne Charitable Trust The Joyce Kathleen Stirrup Charity Trust The Julia and Hans Rausing Trust Leslie Mary Carter Charitable Trust Llywodraeth Cymru / Welsh Government Mayer Brown The Millenium Stadium Charitable Trust Moondance Foundation Next plc The NFU Mutual Charitable Trust Northern Ireland Prison Service The Oakdale Trust Office for Veterans' Affairs / The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust
Options Fund The Pears Foundation Peacock Charitable Trust
P F Charitable Trust
Phoenix
Price Bailey
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Procurement Hub The Prudence Trust Scottish Government Scottish Prison Service ShareGift Schroders Special Editions Spirax Sarco Standard Life UK Stone Family Foundation Teneo
T. G. Piggot Trust Three UK The Rank Foundation Unbiased Version 1 VWV Solicitors The Waterloo Foundation The Which? Fund, funded by the Consumers' Association World Gold Council
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