2024-03-31-accounts - Voluntary Action Sheffield

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Charity Registration Number: 223007 Company Number: 00215695 (England and Wales)

TRUSTEES' ANNUAL REPORT & ACCOUNTS

YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT & ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

	Contents	Page
	Legal and administrative information 1 - 2 Chair's foreword 3 - 4 Trustees' annual report (including Directors’ report) 5 - 32 Trustees' responsibilities statement 33 Independent auditor’s report 34 - 38 Statement of financial activities 39 Balance sheet 40 Cashflow statement 41 Notes to the accounts 42 - 61 Appendix A - Organisational structure 62

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD LEGAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Registered office:

The Circle 33 Rockingham Lane Sheffield S1 4FW

Telephone: 0114 253 6600 Fax: 0114 253 6601 Web: www.vas.org.uk Email: info@vas.org.uk Charity No: 223007 Company No: 00215695 VAT Reg No: 706 1183 63

Honorary officers:

Andy Buck (Chair) Kay Dickinson (Treasurer)

Other trustees:

James Lock Uri Rennie Tim Furness Peter Wozencroft Sara Hill (resigned 14[th] December 2023) David Bussue Safiya Saeed Lucy Ettridge (resigned 14[th] December 2023) Joanne Arch John Hudson Ruth Brown

‘Observer’ (non-voting) attendees at the Board:

Joe Horobin (Sheffield City Council) Lucy Ettridge (NHS Sheffield)

Chief Executive:

Helen Sims

Company secretary:

Helen Sims

Senior Management Team:

Helen Sims, Helen Steers, Sarah Slowther, Marge Wiltshire (until November 2023), Liz Dingle, Rachael West, Paul Harvey, Lucy Davies, Lloyd Samuels.

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Committees and advisers:

Audit and Risk Committee

Kay Dickinson (Chair for Finance section), Tim Furness (Chair for Strategy and Governance section), Andy Buck, Peter Wozencroft, John Hudson and David Bussue.

Auditor:

BHP LLP Chartered Accountants 2 Rutland Park Sheffield S10 2PD

Bankers:

Unity Trust Bank plc Nine Brindleyplace Birmingham B1 2HB

Solicitors:

Bhayani Law Limited T/A Bhayani HR & Employment Law 59 Shoreham Street Sheffield S1 4SB

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Foreword from the Chair

It is with great pleasure that, on behalf of the board of trustees, I am introducing Voluntary Action Sheffield’s trustees annual report and accounts for 2023/24.

The voluntary and community sector (VCS) is an extraordinarily important part of Sheffield. It does so much with and for so many people and communities. It is constantly innovating and improving. It very often spots and engages with really serious issues before others in the city can do so. It reaches everyone in the city – one way or another we all benefit from the VCS.

VAS’s purpose is to support the development of the voluntary and community sector so that it is sustainable and brings about positive social change. We do this in four main ways and in this report describe the work we undertook in 2023/24, which we have summarised in this foreword.

Leadership and advocacy

Celebrating Sheffield’s voluntary and community sector at our Community Awards in November 2023.

Representing and advocating for the VCS within over 40 of the city’s key governance and partnership arrangements.

Celebrating ten years of Healthwatch Sheffield which provides advocacy and independent voice.

Targeting our resources to underserved communities through organisational support and workforce development.

Supporting organisations and groups

Supporting nearly 200 groups to develop and improve.

Supporting all the city’s lunch clubs.

Providing professional payroll services to over 130 clients.

Supporting groups providing holiday activities and food.

Providing managed workspace to 14 organisations and conference and meeting facilities which have been used by over 170 organisations.

Volunteering

Running Sheffield’s Volunteer Centre.

Providing face to face advice and support to prospective volunteers.

Developing volunteering pathway support as a route to employment and skills.

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Partnership

Hosting Sheffield Youth – Neighbourhoods and Communities, developing three core delivery hubs.

Leading the Sheffield Youth Leadership pilot programme Power of Shape.

Hosting a range of partnerships projects demonstrating new approaches to community-led support.

Developing the Community Champions programme.

Hosting SPRING, which is the key source of support to newly approved refugees.

Hosting New Beginnings, which supports refugees into volunteering and employment.

All these fantastic programmes are made possible by the first-class leadership and management provided by our chief executive and senior managers; the amazing work of our 58 paid staff and 74 volunteers; making very good use of our premises, The Circle; careful financial management and successful fundraising, which have maintained our sound financial position; and drawing upon all our knowledge and skills.

The year was also one tinged by tragedy and sadness. Marge Wiltshire, our much-loved head of human resources, who was one of our longest-serving members of staff, died in December after a short illness. Our former employee and highly regarded community activist Chris Marriot was killed in a terrible incident in December. They both made outstanding contributions to VAS, the VCS and the city, and are much missed.

The board of trustees has sought maintain a high standard of governance, including ensuring that we have sound systems of financial management, internal control and risk management.

We hope you will agree that 2023/24 was a successful and effective year for VAS. We are always seeking to improve and welcome feedback to help us do so.

Looking ahead, we have refreshed our vision, purpose, values and priorities, which are, we hope, fit for the future. We are hopeful that the next few years will see new opportunities to tackle some of the most important challenges in Sheffield – including poverty and inequality; social justice; the climate crisis; better health and wellbeing; and better health and care services. We very much look forward to working with you all to rise to these and all the other challenges the city faces.

Lastly, I wanted to say “thank you” – to all our staff and volunteers; to the people in all the organisations who work with and support us; to all our funders; and to my fellow trustees.

Thank you.

Andy Buck Chair of the Board of Trustees

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Strategy and Delivery

Our work in 2023-24 delivered our vision that people work together to make a vital and growing contribution to the quality of life in all of Sheffield’s communities.

We focussed on our 4 strategic priorities:

Provide leadership and advocacy for the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS), and support people and organisations to speak up and be influential;
Support organisations and groups to fulfil their purpose;
Encourage and support people to volunteer, and support organisations to offer great volunteering opportunities;
Work in partnership, bringing people and organisations together to optimise their impact.

We enabled our priorities by making the very best use of our people, money, facilities and knowledge.

Financial statements preparation

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the accounting policies set out in notes to the accounts and comply with the charity’s governing document, the Charities Act 2011 and Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland published in October 2019.

Public benefit

The Trustees have complied with the duty in section 17 of the Charities Act 2011 to have due regard to public benefit guidance published by the Charity Commission. Details of the activities we carried out to deliver a public benefit are described in this report.

Outcomes in 2023-24

We sustained our focus on our four strategic priorities, giving particular emphasis to tackling poverty and elevating the needs of the most vulnerable or marginalised groups, achieving greater equity by focussing our work and resources.

Alongside our programme of delivery work, we undertook a strategic review of the organisation with an independent facilitator, revisiting our purpose, values and enablers. The outcome of this work is covered later in this report.

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We led and advocated for the VCS and supported people and organisations to speak up and be influential.

We celebrated and recognised the efforts and value of VCS leaders, staff and volunteers in Sheffield through a fantastic Voluntary Sector Awards night.

Our incredibly successful Sheffield Community Awards event in November 2023 was attended by 350 people from all sectors in the city. This was our first awards event since 2018 and elevated the work and stories of brilliant community organisations and heroes. We would like to thank our sponsors, Sheffield City Council, Sheffield Health and Care Partnership, the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, Sheffield Children's and Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trusts, the Blunkett Family and Arches Housing Association for enabling our celebration.

We received over 400 individual award nominations, and BBC Radio Sheffield’s Paulette Edwards hosted a glittering night. Coverage of the awards made the local press and social media. It was a vibrant, diverse and quality event and we have had positive feedback about how important it was to re-launch the awards for the first time since the pandemic.

We targeted our support to improve race equality in Sheffield.

Building Thriving Communities: Tackling inequality

The Sheffield Race Equality Commission heard clear evidence in 2021 that many VCS organisations from marginalised communities have been underserved by infrastructure support. In response to these findings, we committed resources to focus on greater outreach and developing more inclusive support. Our focussed outreach to community of interest organisations has successfully widened our network, whilst connecting organisations to our existing partnership work as well as forging new opportunities.

In 2023 we identified an opportunity to provide greater support to the most marginalised organisations in the city. Identifying a range of sustainability and resilience needs throughout the cost-of-living crisis, we have directed funding from the UK Shared Prosperity fund, coordinated by Sheffield City Council, in a programme called Building Thriving Communities.

From September 2023 to March 2024, we targeted 20 marginalised organisations to participate in diagnostic meetings with our Chief Executive and our Engagement Lead to understand their support needs.

At the end of March 2024, ten organisations have been matched with consultants and intensive support identified and delivery is underway. The type of support being offered to organisations includes:

Funding searches and expressions of interest to specific funders for capital works and building repairs.

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An expression of interest to Children in Need for longer term core funding support (to be supported by bid writing skills).
Legal support with changes to articles of association.
Training to a community interest company board of directors in roles and responsibilities and appointment of staff.
Business planning support.
Application for Heritage Lottery funding for a building survey and assistance with capital grant funding for roof repairs.

We are receiving positive feedback from VCS organisations about the support they received,

especially having a named contact and being given time to go through the challenges they face. We are also exploring the role of mentoring in supporting leadership.

We created new spaces and connections so that people from different communities can have their say and influence decision making directly.

Collaborative Conversations

We know that there are better outcomes for our city when local voices are heard, particularly when we hear from people who are underserved and overlooked.

In 2022 Sheffield City Council commissioned us to coordinate work to develop targeted community insight to form one part of a wider community and stakeholder engagement plan for the Sheffield City Goals.

We launched Collaborative Conversations in autumn 2022. The purpose was to work with trusted community leaders, to define the conditions and approach we would like to see, and to bring together local people, charities and decision-makers.

Much of the delivery of the project was through spring and summer 2023 when we:

Learned from Sheffield’s VCS about their insight and learned about what local people want.
Worked with organisations to co-create an approach to building collaboration. The output was a set of guiding principles.
Funded 17 diverse community organisations to test their approach in real time to hold the conversations that mattered to them and identify issues that they wanted to raise about our city and feed them into the City Goals development process.
Developed audio material to convey the key messages from collaborative conversations, which was listened to by the City Goals steering group at an early design workshop.
Identified many Collaborative Conversations leads to become stewards in the overall City Goals work.

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__________________ At the end of the summer, we brought together Collaborative Conversations partners to value the events and learn from their delivery. We curated the contents of conversations including visual and audio material into a display in the gallery at The Circle.

Somali Health Professional Network

We worked in partnership with Councillor Safiya Saeed (who is also one of our trustees) and members of the Health and Care Partnership to support a ‘collaborative conversation’ event to launch this new network.

Staff and volunteers from the Somali community working in the South Yorkshire Health and Care system were invited to the event, together with representatives from the Sheffield Health and Social Care, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trusts and Sheffield City Council. The network aims are to foster professional growth and development, provide career opportunities, offer mentorship and support, and facilitate and promote advocacy and visibility. From the event we have already seen some excellent connections formed and follow up action with connections made between senior health and care staff and members of the network.

We passed power to people through challenging and adapting leadership structures and supporting people with their own leadership profile.

Power of Shape

Female youth leadership was designed by young women, for future leaders and funded by Sheffield City Council as part of the capacity building programme for the Department for Education’s Holiday Activities and Food Programme. We commissioned two youth leadership training programmes from grass roots youth organisations in Burngreave and Fir Vale.

Saalik Youth Project in Fir Vale and ReachUp Youth in Burngreave were commissioned to lead the design and delivery of the girls and young women’s youth leadership programme.

This programme supported girls and young women on their leadership journey to identify, develop and support their skills and confidence through a bespoke and tailored programme that included formal training, experience days and visits, and mentoring and support. Being trusted organisations, they were able to centre the impact and legacy of this work with the girls and young women themselves, where the girls and young women were the role models, influencers and facilitators of change.

At the start of the project, the girls and young women said they wanted a programme that was fun, would help to build relationships, provide new experiences, build confidence and self-esteem, challenge them and provide new skills, and be held in a safe space for discussions to test each other.

The youth leadership sessions began in June 2023, with young people engaged throughout summer and autumn. All participants were aged between 13 and 27, including volunteers.

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__________________ Empowerment was at the heart of this work on all aspects of delivery, for example, Saalik Youth Project ensured that alongside the learning, the participants managed the budget, which included allocating the amount for trips, residential, snacks and meals. The participants went to a residential with new and challenging experiences, such as staying away from home for the first time, doing activities such as high ropes, abseiling, leap of faith and not using phones after a certain time. The programme also included participants reading a self-learning book together in a book club.

The programme resulted in some great outcomes from over 1,600 hours of attendance across the two projects, including 25 young leaders trained in key skills, including first aid through the formal workshops and training sessions held.

In Saalik Youth Project the girls and young women also participated in Healthwatch workshops, resulting an article for Healthwatch Speak Up programme with valuable feedback around health and the young Pakistani community.

ReachUp Youth have delivered an amazing variety of workshops from wellbeing and yoga through to setting and managing your personal boundaries.

Many of the girls and young women graduating from Power of Shape have gone on to volunteer and lead community activities.

We provided the Healthwatch Sheffield service

Over the past 10 years we have developed Healthwatch Sheffield (HWS) as an anchor organisation, a centre of excellence and enabler of citizen voices and influence, growing and empowering impact across the city.

Healthwatch Sheffield continued to build relationships with people through the provision of a highquality information and advice service, providing people with a trusted route to find the support they need.

The service has developed its reach significantly over the last five years. Our full time Information and Advice officer role means we take our information out into community settings, and work with groups to co-design and develop our resources in response to their needs.

Strategic relationships are critical to HWS and enable us to inform and influence decision makers with research and user insights about new and emerging needs, all vital for improving services.

We have established relationships to influence across Sheffield and South Yorkshire through:

Active membership of the Sheffield Health and Wellbeing Board, and the Sheffield Health and Care Partnership (HCP) board.
Our valued role in the Sheffield Adult Health Scrutiny committee.
Representation of the South Yorkshire Healthwatches on the NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) and the Experience and Involvement sub-committee.

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Chairing the Health and Care Public Forum (Sheffield) which supports the Sheffield HCP to achieve its vision, providing insights and guidance from patients’, service users’, carers’, and relatives’ perspectives. It influences and improves patient and public involvement plans, shaping how services are designed, delivered, funded and coordinated.

Highlights from the last year include:

Providing advice and information about access to local care services. 606 people were supported by our individual advice service (one to one support in person, by phone or by email). 4,358 people came to us for information and advice (including people who accessed information articles on our website or on social media).

Understanding experiences and needs: palliative and end of life care. We worked with the South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board to inform their South Yorkshire plan for palliative and end of life care. Through a survey, one to one interviews and groups we heard from around 250 people. We worked with the Hadfield Institute and SACMHA to help extend reach into underserved communities, work which was also supported by our Engagement Lead officer.

Involving people in shaping services: In spring 2024 Healthwatch Sheffield spoke to over 300 individuals about their experiences of health and care, with a focus on hearing from underrepresented and minoritised communities. This work was to inform the development of the NHS South Yorkshire Joint Forward Plan, and their Start with People Strategy. Healthwatch in Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster also did this work and, as a result, the NHS has views from across the area to help them understand what is important to people and patients in South Yorkshire.

We continued to fund #SpeakUp Grants with local VCS organisations. Micro grants enable groups to plan and host conversations and events with their communities to explore health and care topics that matter to them.

In March we published Saalik Youth Project's #SpeakUp report exploring the experiences of young Pakistani Muslims living in Sheffield. For this project, Saalik Youth Project spoke to 26 young people: 11 boys and young men aged 16-20, and 15 girls and young women aged 13-26. They talked about their experiences of healthcare services in Sheffield, and the ways they access information about health - through friends and family, online services, and social media.

Celebrating ten years of Healthwatch Sheffield

VAS has delivered Healthwatch Sheffield since it was first established in 2013. It is an integral part of the services we deliver for the people of Sheffield. In September 2023 we celebrated 10 years as the independent champion for people using health and care services in the city.

The celebration at The Circle was well attended and supported by a huge number of volunteers, staff and partners, past and present. The recent independently facilitated review of Healthwatch, which

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was held to inform the future commissioning of the service, also gave an extremely positive account of “ the value of Sheffield Healthwatch and crucially how Sheffield Healthwatch are meeting the Quality Standards as well as collaborating to influence change for individuals”.

Our favourite part of the celebration event was presenting certificates to thank long-serving volunteers, many of whom have been with Healthwatch Sheffield for the whole ten years.

We worked to influence the adequacy, consistency, and breadth of investment available to the VCS in the city across a range of stakeholders and ensure that VCS representatives can participate in the planning associated with future investment in partnership work.

Influencing policy nationally, regionally and locally

In June 2023 we shaped and helped run a policy school that was held in Sheffield for national policymakers from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. A week of activities focussed on addressing a policy question and helped participants understand a range of dynamics and issues that contribute to them developing policy skills that support delivery of the right policy outcomes for communities.

We are building more direct conversations between community leaders and decision makers, convening discussions to shape policy and investment to enable more robust and responsive decision making. This has included bespoke work to better connect the needs of people who face multiple and complex barriers to their wellbeing, for example people who have learning disabilities and the needs of people who are Autistic.

NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board VCSE Alliance

In July 2023, the Chief Executive of VAS took the position of Chair of the NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise sector Alliance (SY ICB VCSE Alliance).

In this role we have contributed to key initiatives including:

State of the sector survey - we launched a 2023-24 state of the sector survey in September 2023. Working in partnership with colleagues at Sheffield Hallam University and the partners of the SY ICB VCSE Alliance (Voluntary Action Rotherham, Voluntary Action Barnsley, Doncaster CVS and South Yorkshire Community Foundation) an online survey was launched to ascertain how VCS organisations are coping with the current environment across a number of indicators. The report and recommendations of this survey will be published in September 2024.
Shaping a successful proposal with the ICB and academics that secured investment from NHS England that is supporting the development of a community research framework to support effective and values-driven community research practice in South Yorkshire.

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We are supporting work in the ICB across a number of focussed areas like children and young people, mental health, acute and primary care and specific action to address health inequity. Our Director of Strategic Partnerships also sits on the Integrated Care Partnership, chaired by the South Yorkshire Mayor.

DHSC Permanent Secretary visit to Sheffield

In February 2024, we met with Chris Wormald, the Permanent Secretary for the Department of Health and Social Care. He visited one of our member organisations along with community leaders, and senior leaders from the statutory health and care system. We contributed thinking to a partnership discussion. He reflected that he took away from the meeting a heightened understanding of the value of community infrastructure, trust-based relationships and equitable investment approaches that value the work of community organisations.

Professor Chris Whitty visit to Sheffield to learn about the health and care challenges of core cities

In March we attended a roundtable meeting with the Chief Medical Officer hosted as part of a day of visits, by one of our community anchor organisations, Zest. Through his visit Professor Whitty had the opportunity to listen to a range of community and city partner perspectives to develop his understanding around some key themes, including: how to realise value from equitable partnerships, the importance of accessible support that wraps around individuals and reachable moments, the value of local community assets and the shift that is required in the future investment model to start reversing entrenched health inequalities.

We supported organisations and groups to fulfil their purpose

We supported groups and organisations to develop skills, knowledge and connections in their workforce to support their impact.

Core development support

We supported 195 diverse VCS organisations to establish, maintain and develop their services and to recruit and properly manage their volunteers. We provided 1:1 support and guidance, signposting to other resources, advice surgeries and other outreach events, and opportunities for organisations to come together in forums and networks.

78% of groups receiving support were small, with incomes below £10k. 22% were new and emerging groups wanting to get organised in order to deliver services for their communities. For those groups we focussed on enabling them to establish solid foundations and be ready to seek funding to support their activities. We provided tools, guidance and support to help them establish clear aims, produce a constitution, open a bank account and develop basic policies and procedures. We then connected them with South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau to receive practical funding advice.

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Advice surgeries with South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau (SYFAB)

We collaborated with SYFAB to deliver a series of funding and advice surgeries in community venues across Sheffield. These outreach sessions provided an opportunity to support groups locally and in a joined-up way.

Within the year we delivered six surgeries, through which 36 diverse groups benefited from a oneto-one consultation with a SYFAB Funding Advice Officer and a VAS Support Officer.

Feedback showed that groups valued being able to access advice locally and from VAS and SYFAB together. Attending the advice surgery had increased their knowledge and understanding of the support available to them from both organisations and made them more confident to seek support in the future.

Support for Lunch Clubs

35 Lunch Clubs have been supported this year through one-to-one advice and support, information and resources, access to training, and online network meetings for lunch club organisers.

Monthly online network meetings provided the opportunity for lunch club leaders to connect with each other and to benefit from peer support. We have supported these meetings by offering guidance and information and by facilitating discussion on key issues affecting lunch clubs, including the difficulties of accessing affordable transport and of retaining sufficient volunteers to keep services running smoothly.

Our Volunteer Centre Co-ordinator has provided advice and support to lunch clubs about recruiting volunteers, speaking at the network meetings and providing one-to-one support for some individual lunch clubs to access the VAS volunteering platform to advertise their volunteer roles.

Lunch club volunteers have accessed in person first aid training and online food hygiene and allergens training arranged by VAS.

We connected workforce investment opportunities to respond to workforce development needs of the sector.

We brought together investment from Health Education England and the Holiday Activities and Food programme to employ two training development staff to lead work to develop access to training through the VAS led Frontline Workers Network and the Sheffield Healthy Holidays provider network.

This has resulted in at least 320 frontline workers across more than 100 organisations, receiving accredited training as Mental Health First Aiders, responding to what the VCS has been telling us about the increased complexity and levels of demand that the VCS workforce is supporting.

We have secured investment in the wellbeing of frontline workers in the face of high levels of burnout in the sector and have worked to design a programme of reflective practice support for rollout in 2024/25 that responds to the diversity and make-up of the sector workforce.

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We supported smaller groups with less resource, to address historical inequity, especially for groups working with people with protected characteristics.

We have expanded our outreach efforts in line with the extra support required around the cost of living, particularly in underserved communities. This has provided one-to-one support to numerous community leaders and organisers, often serving as the initial point of contact to engage activists and volunteers in the broader social action sector. By actively listening to new and emerging groups, building their confidence, and assisting with networking, we have empowered these groups to feel more informed and confident.

We share information and encourage organisations to apply for funding, participate in consultations, attend meetings, and ensure their voices are heard. By connecting people with other organisations, we have facilitated peer support, which has proven beneficial. This connectivity has fostered cooperation and learning between groups, ultimately reducing isolation and helping organisations engage wider in the city.

We continue to bridge the gap between funders and small groups, working together to address the funding challenges faced by organisations from marginalised communities in the city. Our Equality Lead has participated in numerous panels this year, influencing positive change in the city, including the Covid memorial panel, recruitment panels, and several funding panels. These funding panels have also helped identify gaps and other necessary support.

“It has been an absolute pleasure to meet with you. Thank you for everything and especially your genuine support. It has given me lots to think about. I would also like to thank you for encouraging me to take up a position on a trustee board for the Sheffield Parent Carers Forum. I followed your recommendation. Thank you for the advice. It was very much appreciated.”

We provided access to a range of professional services to organisations to support their development and space needs.

Our Payroll service delivered payroll services for over 130 groups and supported three new groups to get started with payroll, setting them up with HMRC and pension providers, as well as bringing in human resources advice on setting up employment contracts.

We have made great use of The Circle which remains a central community hub for a variety of events, networks and one-to-one work.

The Circle offer Registered Office address services for smaller organisations and we have 14 tenants. Use of our room hire service grew during the year, putting The Circle back to pre-Covid levels of occupancy. Bookings of space in the building has grown and we hosted in excess of 1,500 bookings through the year.

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__________________ We have also utilised our gallery space to ensure that we offer a range of arts, culture and voice work to be expressed at the heart of our hub.

We established and broadened VCS networks and maximised the information and learning impact of this network.

Our Engagement Lead worked to connect VCS organisations, to find support from other peers and link to networks of support and of similar interests. Support, guidance and help has been given to many trustee boards when diversity insight has been asked for. Our Equality Lead has given support, suggestions, ideas and workshops on how to appeal to a more diverse audience.

Many outside organisations, for example universities and DEFRA look for advice on how to engage better with diverse communities in Sheffield, they are grateful for these links and support.

VAS Thursday morning online network

Our regular weekly cross-sector network meetings are still proving a good source of information sharing and problem solving. Regular attendance and a relaxed welcoming atmosphere have made these meetings a source of information and support for VCS staff across the city, in coming together with colleagues from the Council and the NHS. Often themes are identified and more focussed discussions are had around a certain topic, for example supporting people with voter ID and transport issues. Peer to peer support is very much in play here too. The network is a place where people come for their own support as well as feeding back.

We encouraged and supported people to volunteer and supported organisations to offer great volunteering opportunities.

We promoted benefits of volunteering for the city, communities and individuals, provided a strategic framework to make this a reality and provided volunteering support to individuals and organisations.

Our approach to volunteering is a dual one of supporting individuals to access volunteering and supporting organisations to develop and sustain high quality volunteer programmes following best practice.

Our focus is on raising the profile of volunteering and enabling those who are excluded from or experience barriers to volunteering to be aware of the benefits and have access to support to find a suitable volunteering opportunity.

Support to organisations focusses on good practice support, volunteering advice and facilitating peer to peer connections to develop skills and knowledge within the sector to run effective programmes.

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Implementing a new volunteering platform

Making it easy and simple for people to start volunteering is a core mission of the Volunteer Centre and an important part of that is offering a free online volunteering platform to allow charities to advertise volunteer roles and volunteers to find opportunities they might not hear about otherwise.

This year we adopted a new volunteering platform, Team Kinetic, which simplifies the volunteering process for individuals and also offers free volunteer management capability to charities to help them manage their volunteers.

To smooth the transition to the new platform we staged its implementation, producing user guides and providing weekly online training and support sessions for charities in the six weeks before the full launch of the platform in June 2023.

Since its introduction 187 organisations have registered on Team Kinetic, advertising 467 roles between them, and 1913 individuals have registered to search and apply for those volunteer opportunities.

Brokerage

Our drop-in advice service supports people wanting to find out more about volunteering and who prefer to get advice and support from someone face-to face rather than searching for roles independently online. The drop-in is currently open for one day each week and has had 358 visitors over the year. Numbers have grown steadily and we are monitoring the service to assess if and when there is sufficient demand to extend the service by opening an extra day each week.

A wide range of people accessed the service – diverse in terms of ethnicity, age and employment status. The data shows that 44% of users were from marginalised communities, the majority were under the age of 44 and high numbers of unemployed people sought volunteering advice.

Outreach activity

Our outreach work increased this year and we attended 19 events, engaging with 253 people to raise awareness of the Volunteer Centre and to promote both volunteering generally and the current volunteering opportunities in Sheffield.

Volunteer Centre staff and volunteers contributed to careers and jobs fairs at Job Centres, colleges and schools; spoke to people at ESOL classes at Firvale College; promoted volunteering to young people in care at the ‘Just Do It’ festival event for young adults struggling to get into work; and collaborated with the South East and South West Local Area Committees to deliver local volunteer fairs in their areas. Through these events we engaged with 224 people.

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We supported organisations to develop volunteering capacity and capability and enable people to access appropriate volunteering roles.

Quality checking volunteer roles – getting the basics right

Quality checking and advice to organisations protects charities, volunteers and service users. Each of the 467 roles on our volunteering platform has been checked against the minimum quality standards that organisations must meet for a role to be advertised.

Where standards have fallen short, we have worked with those organisations, providing advice and guidance on good practice in recruiting volunteers and encouraging them to make changes to ensure volunteering is as accessible and inclusive as possible so that everyone in the city can benefit from taking part.

Volunteer Standard

The Sheffield Volunteer Standard enables organisations to have an independent peer review of their volunteering programme and is awarded to organisations who can demonstrate that their volunteer programme follows agreed good practice principles.

This year the Standard has been awarded to SOAR and to Humankind.

Facilitating Peer to Peer support - Volunteer Co-ordinators forums

The Volunteer Co-ordinators Forum meetings facilitate the development of good practice in volunteering and are a key source of support to volunteer co-ordinators. During the year, the monthly meetings have been attended by volunteer co-ordinators from 45 organisations and there has been a strong emphasis on peer support and learning from the collective expertise of those managing volunteers in their organisations.

We embedded the Community Connector model of volunteering in Sheffield to increase skills, wellbeing, enhance services and provide leadership and expertise.

We secured funding from Sheffield City Council to develop the delivery of the Community Champion programme in Sheffield.

Community Champions invests in people in areas of the city with the greatest health inequalities through hyperlocal VCS groups, co-ordinated by VAS, sharing learning and expertise between the partners.

This model builds on existing local leadership, develops new leaders, engages members of the local community through mobilising and equipping volunteers. This gives a unique reach to positively influence, inform and support people, as well as unique insight from unheard voices not currently accessing services.

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__________________ Ten organisations host volunteers who engage in their local communities: Aspiring Communities Together (ACT); Darnall Well Being; Flower Estate Family Action (FEFA); Fir Vale Community Hub; Heeley Development Trust; Longley 4 Greens; Sharrow Community Forum; SACMHA; SOAR and Zest.

A review of the Community Champions programme was undertaken with partners to re-focus the project post-Covid, with a clear focus on training and developing volunteers as a mechanism for community empowerment agreed by the partners.

We built relationships and support to the partners and facilitated monthly peer support meetings for them. We co-ordinated the co-production of a core training package for all volunteers, enabling more experienced staff to support the learning and development of newer staff in other partners. This created learning and development across the partnership and gave staff their first experience of delivering volunteer training alongside peers.

The impact of the project has been described by volunteers as “life changing and life-saving” as people have found a purpose in their lives, and through connecting people to services, directly saved lives by supporting people to get early cancer diagnoses and treatment.

There are around 80 volunteers engaged each week across the city.

We worked in partnership with Ignite Imaginations to develop a volunteer network supporting culture and creativity through the Community Makers programme

The Sheffield Community Makers project was funded by the Arts Council England. In partnership with the lead organisation Ignite Imaginations, we set out to create two Sheffield-based networks. First, a network of organisations (hosts) who aimed to improve creative volunteering through shared best practice. The second was a volunteer network aiming to break down barriers for people who were interested in volunteering or new to it by offering opportunities to build knowledge, confidence and skills before giving it a try.

The project successfully recruited 23 community and creative sector organisations to be hosts for the project.

Hosts reasons for joining the programme including:

“To try and increase the opportunity for more creative volunteers within our sector [football]”;

“To help us recruit volunteers for specific roles and to gain some insight and support around best practice when hosting volunteers.”

Hosts also described a desire for new volunteers with different lived experience to their usual volunteers.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

__________________ The host organisations varied in size, artform and mission ranging from Hybrid 3 Music Studios, to Sheffield Museums, Greentop Circus and Broomhall Community Centre spread across the city to ensure that the project and opportunities were appealing and accessible geographically.

There were host organisations located in some of the most deprived areas of the city including Sharrow, Manor and Castle and Sheffield City Centre.

Two hosts, Sheffield City of Sanctuary (which works to build a safe and welcoming city for people seeking sanctuary) and Family Voice (which works with women to respond to whatever family’s needs are) are two excellent examples of how the project enabled people who had not had the opportunity before to gain new skills, build confidence and try volunteering.

Over the course of delivery of Community Makers:

402 people applied to volunteer
134 people started in 169 roles (some people did multiple roles)
Advertised 45 different roles at 23 creative or community organisations
Front of house at site gallery most popular with 34 recruited for this role alone
Ran 19 creative skills sessions, five volunteer training sessions and six volunteer good practice sessions for host organisation

We supported refugees and asylum seekers to establish themselves successfully in Sheffield and contribute to life in the city through the SPRING project and New Beginnings

SPRING is a VCS led collaboration of six organisations supporting newly granted refugees to navigate the complex and stressful “move on” period when they have 28 days before they are evicted from asylum accommodation and need immediate support to apply for benefits and housing.

Once these urgent needs have been addressed, we support individuals with their longer-term integration, such as learning English, therapeutic support and routes into volunteering, education, training, and finding employment.

We provide:

A safe and welcoming, single point of contact for everyone seeking sanctuary.
Co-delivery of SPRING alongside people seeking sanctuary.
A clear client centred approach throughout the move on transition period.
Early intervention and expert support that reduces barriers and improves outcomes.
A strategic picture of systemic issues through oversight of the client journey.
Progression to independence.
A space for celebration and joy within the journey.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

__________________ We have led the partnership and collectively we have created and funded the ‘move on’ support infrastructure for Sheffield to ensure that all newly granted refugees have the core support they need in that time of change.

We have brought around £2m of funding from the EU from January 2019 to December 2023 to create this nationally recognised model of ‘move-on’ support.

Since 2019 the project has supported over 4,240 people from over 50 different countries.

2024 marks the beginning of a new phase of the project as we move forward working with funding from Sheffield City Council to continue to develop the partnership and support move on work for refugees.

In April 2023 we were delighted to secure a further three years funding for New Beginnings from the Big Lottery. Together with grant aid from Sheffield City Council and legacy funding from the Gina Clayton fund, we have secured the stability of this vital team and continue to deliver stories of individual success and contribution, often against difficult prevailing conditions.

This year our clients, volunteers and staff have shown resounding resilience and there have been huge successes within the project, highlighting the importance and value of community, diversity and inclusion. We worked with 723 clients from 56 nationalities.

Volunteers are crucial to the delivery of the New Beginnings project, both because it is part of our mission and values to create opportunities for refugees to develop skills and feel welcome in Sheffield, and also because they are essential to deliver a service that is refugee led and meets the scale of need.

In 2023/24:

84 clients started volunteering.
58 were new to the project and had never volunteered before.
Opportunities were matched in over 20 organisations, including Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, Site Gallery and Sheffield Cathedral.
Clients that participated through the volunteer administration pathway secured paid work.
Volunteers with lived experience supported the project by participating in nine roles.
Clients volunteered in three festivals: The Migration Matters Festival, Chance to Dance Festival and Sheffield Global Cinema Festival.

We developed a progression pathway within VAS

We established and delivered an in-house business administration pathway that allows clients to gain valuable UK experience that helps transition in to paid work. Starting in April 2023, in the first eight months five refugees joined the project as entry level volunteers, progressed through our four

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

__________________ internal levels and then moved on to get jobs. The pathway is scalable with potential to impact across the VCS. People not interested in paid work enjoy the social engagement and community, but the structured pathway is there for people focussed on an employment goal.

Since April 2023, 12 people have started on the pathway, with six securing paid employment.

“The volunteering opportunity that was connected by New Beginnings had a crucial part in my integration to this new environment.”

“New Beginnings also facilitated an admin volunteering opportunity for me within the organisation itself. This allowed me to gain first-hand experience operating in a UK office environment.”

The goal was to create a structure that could allow us to match our race equality ambitions with the limited staff capacity in the team. Now that we have proven the model works in the New Beginnings team, we want to embed the model as a way of working in VAS so we are role modelling creating volunteering opportunities for people that are most marginalised across the organisation, and promote the uptake of this approach across the sector.

We worked in partnership, bringing people and organisations together to optimise their impact.

We have taken a prominent role in leading city partnerships to rethink and reframe how we legitimately and collectively connect our work and strategic priorities to the needs of people in Sheffield.

Sheffield Youth - Neighbourhoods and Communities (SY-NC)

Increasing numbers of children, young people and families within our city are adversely affected by high levels of poverty, serious violence, school exclusions, mental health issues, exploitation and offending, in many ways driven by inequality in the city. Given the scale and complexity of issues that young people are facing, there is a need and an opportunity to collaborate across both statutory and community partners to develop shared purpose and approaches to working with young people in their communities.

The SY-NC project aims to develop skills and capacity through convening and supporting area hubs in key areas of Sheffield. The lead hub partner will coordinate activity to develop trust, build local multi-agency relationships and deliver youth-led community development.

The three area hubs have been up and running since July 2023 and are making great progress with engaging young people and families in their areas to develop youth activity and engagement and to bring awareness and conversations with young people about the risk and reality of exploitation.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

ReachUp Youth have been focusing on sport as a tool for engagement with young people and have had great success with recruiting new cohorts of young people to attend sessions at Verdon Street. Positive word of mouth and social media have increased participation.

The hub is working in three areas:

Working with boy-only and girl-only groups using sport as a way of approaching conversations about exploitation
Linking with schools in the area to engage young people and support staff with conversations about exploitation
Engaging with young people with special education needs. Initially working with parents, this has led to Thursday morning sessions where parents can bring children.

Manor and Castle Development Trust has partnered with MASSK, a local organisation that offers work with young people, and has trained youth workers for activity sessions including:

Parent and young people talk sessions and cinema nights.
Introduction of a new youth club with 29 young people registered since February.
Leading exploitation workshops in communities, with plans of taking these workshops into schools.

The Trust are going to focus on supporting parents as they recognise that parents need the tools to parent, to understand and to support their children.

Youth workers are also working with young people not in education and have developed a Recovery Fund application to do targeted work in community where young people congregate in front of shops in the area.

Darnall Wellbeing working in Darnall and Tinsley . Work in Tinsley is different to work being done in other localities as previously little youth work was taking place so lots of detached work has been necessary to build connections. Work is taking place around four main areas:

At Tinsley Forum a group for girls, while work with boys is taking place in the youth club.
Levelling up money locally means that community premises will be updated and the community allotment is starting to be used by some young people working with the hub partners.
Darnall Education and Sports Academy (DESA) is a delivery partner and supports Tinsley. DESA are focussed on exploitation with their youth group and are delivering one-to-one work with young people to support motivation and developing support for young people.
Darnall Wellbeing are developing training that can be offered to young people to move them forward with topics such as boundaries, self-confidence and leadership to complement the support being delivered.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Sheffield Autism Partnership Network (SAPN)

We continued to develop the work of SAPN during 2023-24. SAPN is hosted by VAS and is a network of organisations, Autistic people and their support systems that share a vision for a Sheffield where Autistic people can thrive.

SAPN works to develop a programme of priorities and understanding about what is needed to address stark disparities in the opportunities and health outcomes faced by Autistic people living in our city. It also provides a space for sharing, peer support and idea development, sharing understanding and thinking about how we progress needs in decisions, investment, opportunities and spaces.

In 2023-24, the network grew to 287 members, representing 120 organisations and additional individual members. Alongside the ongoing support and twice monthly newsletter that keeps people updated and connected, some specific needs were identified. We took action focussed on benefit navigation, navigating the asylum system as an Autistic person and supporting people impacted by cost of living rises. We distributed £20k of support to organisations helping Autistic people.

The network has been an important point for gathering intelligence and escalating risks through VAS membership of the Autism Partnership board, the Mental Health Learning Disability Dementia and Autism Delivery Group and the Inclusion Health and Health and Wellbeing Board. We have supported specific action around physical health checks and in 2024 will build on work we have done to develop a model to support suicide prevention, targeted towards people who are Autistic.

Diabetes Action Hub, demonstrating new ways of working in partnership

During the first part of 2023 we continued to develop the Sheffield Diabetes Action Hub, one of the demonstrator projects we are leading to grow skills and understanding in our organisation and wider City partnerships about how we fully enable the benefits of consent based, power sharing partnerships.

This work is developing an evidence base about how new ways of working together can impact on outcomes for people that current opportunities, services and support are not fully reaching. This project has a specific focus on prevention and management of Type 2 Diabetes.

A key part of the project is developing skills and practices, accompanied by work to evaluate and grow appreciation and understanding of how we can work differently to grow our collective impact across Sheffield organisations. We are taking this learning into a range of city partnerships and networks we are involved in, to support leadership, priority setting and decision making in the city.

During the first part of 2023 we focussed on establishing ways of working and setting up different governance approaches.

Continued development of this work has enabled the partnership to collectively identify practical tools and priority actions to support the needs of people in different communities.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

__________________ We have led a process that has enabled the distribution of an engagement fund, that has supported nine organisations to deliver community led work. A key part of the process of managing investment through this approach is that funding processes are accompanied by building and maintaining meaningful relationships with and connections between organisations.

A working group collectively developed thinking about options for culturally appropriate training and resources to teach about diabetes friendly diet. This generated high levels of interest from community organisations who have found it helpful to use this in their work to support the health and wellbeing of their communities. This also enabled some good collaboration with Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and Diabetes UK who delivered training to 30 community volunteers.

Alongside these strands of work, we have hosted informal networking events to connect people with a specific interest in Type 2 Diabetes across sectors.

We enabled statutory organisations to connect with, and be influenced by, people’s experiences and VCS activity.

Supporting People with Long Covid – shaping support with community expertise and trust

During this year we have been strengthening the work that is done in the city to support people experiencing Long COVID, working in partnership with communities and statutory health and care partners.

This work was guided by the value we place on community expertise and trust, to enable people to direct the support that is available to them.

The project we led facilitates people and communities to shape and develop the support offer for people with Long Covid in Sheffield, particularly for those currently under-represented in Long Covid services.

This joint project with Healthwatch Sheffield was funded by the NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, connecting people’s experiences to shape how services are adapted and run.

We did 21 in-depth interviews with people living with Long Covid and their carers, to help us understand their experiences. These interviews helped us bring people’s stories to life for people planning and delivering Long Covid support services.

Our community grants programme worked with 15 community organisations and consulted with 440 people from backgrounds who were under-represented in Long Covid services. These conversations highlighted what the gaps were in Long Covid information locally and nationally. Further rounds of funding helped the organisations to produce a total of 21 information resources about Long Covid in a variety of formats and languages and deliver them to 19,710 people living in Sheffield.

We are also producing a report of what people have told us, with local and national recommendations for better support for people with Long Covid.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

As a result:

People with Long Covid and their carers now have access to more information, resources and networks to support them on their journey to get the help they need.
The experiences of people with Long Covid are now at the centre of influencing the future care and support offer.
Statutory and voluntary sector services in Sheffield are connected in a shared understanding of the needs and the barriers that people with Long Covid experience.

Operational development - enabling our collaborative approach with systems and structure

Significant work was undertaken this year on re-designing our operational structure to ensure that our roles, skills and other assets are aligned with our work. This included:

Restructuring our core operational team to enable greater human resources and finance capacity.
Commissioning a new online human resources database to deliver simpler, real-time support for staff in tasks such as booking leave, managing time off and accessing policy documents.
Commissioning a new customer relationship management database to develop better shared intelligence and enhance our support.
Establishing monthly line manager briefing sessions to share best practice and provide peer support.
Implementing a staff forum as a reference group to involve staff from across VAS in decision making and co-design of our work.
Redesigning our staff annual review system and aligned our review questions and structure against the values and priorities that are most important to us.
Designing a new website; a new design and structure for the site has been commissioned and will bring additional functionality for VAS members and supporters to engage with key content and book training and events online.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Looking ahead: Our vision, purpose and values for 2024-26

At the very end of the 2023-24, the VAS board agreed a new strategy and priorities for VAS. This was the culmination of a year’s work involving staff and many trustees and volunteers to collectively consider why VAS exists, reflect on our role in the city, and make decisions together about what we do, where our focus should be, and how we work.

As we approach our centenary year in 2026, this new strategy sets out a new course for VAS and a clear leadership role as the city takes on the mission to deliver a set of City Goals.

Summary of the revised VAS Purpose, Vision, Priorities, Values and Behaviours 2024-2026

Voluntary Action Sheffield is full of people who care about making a difference and want to leverage their position or privilege to support others.

Our purpose is:

Supporting people, communities and the VCS to lead positive change that really matters to local people and will help them get the best results now and in the future.

Our staff, volunteers and trustees bring a wealth of skills knowledge and experience to their work, alongside a continual willingness to learn. We encourage our team in any grade or role to be a leader in facilitating positive change which helps us recognise our vision:

People in Sheffield have the opportunity to live healthy, fulfilling lives, reach their potential, and thrive equally.

We’re a values led organisation - our values are:

Equity and social justice
Trust and mutual respect
Partnership
The power of people, communities, and the VCS

Our behaviours are:

We are ambitious and optimistic – we love Sheffield and want it to be a great and welcoming city. While there is much to celebrate, we recognise that our communities, services and organisations aren’t working for everyone in Sheffield. We recognise inequalities maintain poverty and injustice, and we work to address not just the symptoms but the systems which continue inequalities, and advocate for positive change led by communities, change that really matters to local people.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

VAS ACTS for social change:

We are Ambitious. We make Connections. We do it Together. We build Strength.

We achieve our purpose by:

Building, hosting and nurturing strong inclusive and effective partnerships to develop positive social change.
Supporting leadership and capacity in communities and the voluntary sector.
Creating volunteering and other opportunities for people that are most marginalised.
Supporting access and empowerment in the next generation of leaders.
Being a good employer and a well-run organisation, which cares for our resources.

We work in partnership with people, alongside the VCS and by bringing along our partners.

The context for the VCS, VAS and developing Sheffield City Goals

The timing of our review was in synergy with city-wide work throughout 2023 to build a set of shared City Goals that will shape the future of Sheffield. Like many cities across the world, Sheffield is facing a series of deeply worrying challenges, with growing inequalities and climate breakdown just the tip of the iceberg.

In summer 2022, the Sheffield City Partnership asked a few of its members, including VAS, to work in a voluntary capacity to bring together a working group with the core purpose to convene city stakeholders to build a set of shared City Goals to shape the future of Sheffield.

Many members of the VCS have been engaged in the city goals conversations about our aspiration for the city, and have played an important part to bring valuable insight together with hard data to make sense of where we are as a city and identify the scale of the challenges we face.

Challenges

Since the pandemic the gap between rich and poor has widened in Sheffield. For example, there is an 8.8 year difference in life expectancy for men and an 11.4 year difference for women between areas considered more affluent and those deemed more deprived.

The percentage of children in low-income families is 23.3% (significantly higher than the national average of 17%) and our employment rates and educational attainment falls short of both the regional and national averages.

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______________

Widening inequality, together with the anticipated challenges ahead, including an ageing population, the continuing housing crisis, economic inactivity and the climate emergency, provide a scale of challenge that will require significant change in policy, governance systems, public services and fundamentally our own choices as citizens.

Recognising communities as experts

In dealing with the challenges ahead, we need greater recognition that communities are expert in themselves – they know what is needed, and how it can best be delivered. The Covid pandemic revealed the extent to which the VCS is at the heart of community and life in the city. In the years since the pandemic, there has been a national and local shift in recognition for the role the VCS plays in supporting people and communities when they need it most. There is also increasing understanding that the VCS is representative of its people and communities and is much more than a service provider - VCS organisations are stewards of social action for change.

Sheffield has an amazing, vibrant voluntary and community sector which is over 3,000 organisations and groups strong. This growing evidence of the benefits of the VCS has created momentum, which together with policy shift in NHS and thinking in local government has opened the door to greater recognition and in many cases, a formal place at the table in the existing governance structures.

VAS’s role

There is a crucial role for local VCS infrastructure organisations to get alongside organisations struggling with the current cost-of-living crisis. The demands on the VCS is greater than ever in the current crisis, with community organisations stepping in to fill bigger gaps – making sure that people are warm, fed and have somewhere safe to live.

Our emergent and perhaps more critical role is to demonstrate and learn, and to lead in the changes we will need to see to meet the challenges we have described.

VAS is working with the VCS to begin to shape public sector reform from the outside in ways which are not possible from within.

Our current body of work within the wider system is to:

Seed change in ways of working and approaches that are more inclusive and participatory of our communities (valuing expertise) e.g. Diabetes hub, SY-NC, Move More Empowered Communities.
Influence for and amplify the role of communities in systems where they should and could play a more central role e.g. Sheffield Autism Partnership Network and their influence on autism awareness and inclusion in VCS and other sector organisations.
Make it easier to engage with a full range of VCS organisations e.g. across our range of themed networks and communications groups.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Structure, governance and management

Members of the Board of Trustees are nominated from and elected by the members. Each trustee is elected at an annual general meeting to serve for a three-year term, with approximately one third retiring each year. Casual vacancies may be filled by appointment by the Board until the next AGM. Honorary Officers (Chair, Vice-Chair and Treasurer) are nominated and elected by trustees annually, at the first Board meeting to follow the AGM.

The Board also has the power to admit observers, which is used to ensure close links with important partner organisations, such as the City Council and the NHS. Observers are not registered trustees nor directors, and do not have voting rights.

The Board is also served by its committees and working groups, each chaired by a member of the Board, which meet between three and five times per year. These are responsible for scrutinising specific areas of work, undertaking tasks delegated to them by the Board, and advising the Board on policy and strategy. In 2023/24 there was an Audit and Risk Committee.

The Board has undertaken a self-assessment against the Charity Governance Code and regularly reviews progress against a governance action plan.

All new Board members receive an induction with the Chair and Chief Executive. In addition, there are annual or twice-yearly away sessions with senior managers and trustees focusing on strategy and enabling trustees to understand the organisation and their responsibilities.

The senior management team is our executive decision-making body. This was restructured during the year and at the end of the financial year comprised the Chief Executive, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Director of Operations, Head of Finance, Chief Executive of Healthwatch Sheffield, Head of Volunteering, Head of Facilities and the SYNC Strategic Lead.

The link between the Board of Trustees and staff is maintained through the following mechanisms:

Line management of the Chief Executive by the Chair;
Senior staff attendance at meetings of the Board and committees;
Joint sessions of the Board and senior management team;
Designated link trustees, with a special interest in a particular strategic priority.

We have continued to benefit from having a skilled and experienced team of trustees who brought constructive challenge and support to the Executive. Relationships between trustees and the senior management team developed productively and positively.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Risk management

Our Audit and Risk Committee leads on risk management and scrutinises the strategic risk management register every quarter. The main risks included in the register are:

Ineffective leadership and governance resulting in poor/ill informed decision making.
A lack of focus and clarity of our role and purpose hampering our ability to deliver outcomes and manage our assets.
An inability to clearly articulate our impact, values and strategy.
Changes in statutory government arrangements disrupting our ability to engage and influence decision-making on behalf of our members, citizens and wider VCS.
Our pay, progression and funding security negatively impacting our ability to attract and retain key staff, and
Inefficient systems and ways of working negatively impacting on budgets, capacity, reputation and delivery.

Each trustee board meeting reviews the most significant risks to the organisation, and those where we are most reliant on mitigating actions to reduce the risk faced.

In addition, the Senior Management Team review an operational risk register, ensuring that the document remains live and responsive to changes in the organisation and its external environment.

Pay policy for senior staff

The determination of remuneration for all staff is reserved to the Board of Trustees. Salaries are reviewed annually as part of the budget setting process, taking into account cost of living increases and affordability. Periodically a more detailed review is carried out, comparing all salary grades with equivalent roles in the sector.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Financial review

Our income for the year was £3.32 million, up from £3.10 million the previous year. The principal sources of income were:

----- Start of picture text -----
% Breakdown of income by source
70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
grants Services hire
Public Sector Public Sector contracts Chargeable Rents & room Big Lottery Other grants Miscellaneous income
----- End of picture text -----

The biggest increases compared with 2022-23 are funding for our SPRING project (refugees) and our Community Champions project, which together have increased by £850k. The majority of this funding is passed onto VCS partner organisations. Just over 75% of our funding now comes from grants. The Circle has also continued its recovery from Covid with income going from £312k in 2022-23 to £404k in 2023-24.

Other funding sources have decreased since 2022-23, largely because they were one-off grants. This includes Health Education England (£246k) and Healthy Activities and Food/Food Access project (£272k).

Our expenditure for the year was £3.31 million. The breakdown of expenditure by department was:

----- Start of picture text -----
% Breakdown of expenditure by department
35.00%
30.00%
25.00%
20.00%
15.00%
10.00%
5.00%
0.00%
and Being Professional Services Training and Development Partnership projects
Core services
accommodation Volunteer Centre Health and Well
----- End of picture text -----

This represents an increase of £854k compared with the previous year and largely reflects the increase in grant funding received. Where the expenditure has not increased this is because the funding was received towards the end of the year and has been carried forward as restricted funds. As shown in note 7 to the accounts, more than 40% of our income is passed onto the VCS partner organisations.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

The net movement in funds for the year was an increase of £11k, made up of a decrease in unrestricted funds of £8k and an increase of £19k in restricted funds (which were received in 2023/24 and must be used for restricted purposes in 2024/25). The decrease in unrestricted funds comprises a £4k increase in designated funds, largely to reflect the cost of the mortgage for The Circle less funds applied in the year, and a £12k decrease to the general fund. The decrease to the general fund was planned and reflects a conscious decision to utilise funds held in excess of the amount required by our reserves policy.

Reserves policy

The Board has determined:

(a) To maintain free reserves sufficient to cover redundancy and related costs for staff in case of wind-up, and a further £60,000 to manage risks such as short-term year-on-year budget fluctuations. The redundancy costs to be calculated each year as at 31 March.

To take a flexible approach to the precise amounts designated for each purpose if necessary.

The cost of redundancy and related costs for staff as at 31 March 2024, was calculated to be £257,370. Adding the £60,000 to manage risks, gives a requirement of £317,370. At that date, free reserves stood at £388,411, a decrease of £11,363 from 2023. This is more than the level required by the policy and is largely due to receiving a legacy of £104,399 in 2022-23. However, it is expected that there will continue to be a draw on reserves in 2024-25.

(b) That restricted funds must be kept in a risk-free and liquid form.

Restricted funds are all grants received in advance of delivery of objectives. They are held in VAS’s current account.

Designated funds totalled £1,558,001 at the year end. These relate to the Circle building less the outstanding mortgage and the amount owing to eliminate the pension fund deficit. It also includes amounts ring fenced for partnership projects, Healthwatch activities, development of The Circle as a venue, and IT infrastructure costs. See note 21 of the accounts for further details.

Fundraising Activities

VAS raises funds by applying to funding bodies for grants and charging for services. VAS does not proactively raise funds from the public, although it does receive small donations and occasional legacies from individuals.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD TRUSTEES’ RESPONSIBILTIES STATEMENT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Trustees’ responsibilities statement

The trustees (who are also directors of VAS for the purposes of company law) are responsible for preparing the Trustees’ Annual Report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

Company law requires 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 charitable company and of the incoming resources and application of resources, including the income and expenditure, of the charitable company for the period. In preparing these 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 2019 (FRS 102);
make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent;
state whether applicable UK Accounting Standards have been followed; and
prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the charitable company will continue in operation.

The trustees are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records that disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charitable company and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charitable company and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

In so far as the trustees are aware:

there is no relevant audit information of which the charitable company’s auditor is unaware; and
the trustees have taken all steps that they ought to have taken to make themselves aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the auditor is aware of that information.

On behalf of the Board of Trustees

Andy Buck Chair Date: 11 July 2024

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Independent Auditor’s Report to the Members of Voluntary Action Sheffield

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of Voluntary Action Sheffield (the ‘charitable company’) for the year ended 31 March 2024 which comprise the Statement of Financial Activities, the Balance Sheet, the Cash Flow Statement and notes to the financial statements, including a summary of 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 charitable company’s affairs as at 31 March 2024, and of its 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 charitable company 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 ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other information

The other information comprises the information included in the chair’s foreword and the trustees’ annual report. 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 the audit:

the information given in the trustees' report which includes the directors' report prepared for the purposes of company law, for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and
the directors' report included within the trustees' report has been prepared in accordance with applicable legal requirements.

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In the light of the knowledge and understanding of the charitable company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in 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:

adequate accounting records have not been kept, or returns adequate for our audit have not been received from branches not visited by us; or

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

the financial statements are not in agreement with the accounting records and returns; or
certain disclosures of directors’ remuneration specified by law are not made; or
we have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit;
the trustees were not entitled to prepare the financial statements in accordance with the small companies’ regime and take advantage of the small companies’ exemptions in preparing the directors’ report and from the requirement to prepare a strategic report.

Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the trustees’ responsibilities statement (set out on page 33), 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 trustees either intend to liquidate the charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Auditor responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

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.

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud is detailed below:

the responsible individual ensured that the engagement team collectively had the appropriate competence, capabilities and skills to identify or recognise non-compliance with applicable laws and regulations;

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

we identified the laws and regulations applicable to the entity through discussions with trustees and other management, and from our knowledge and experience of the charity sector;
we focused on specific laws and regulations which we considered may have a direct material effect on the financial statements or the operations of the entity, including safeguarding legislation, health and safety, data protection laws, employment law and GDPR;
we assessed the extent of compliance with the laws and regulations identified above through making enquiries of management and inspecting legal correspondence; and
we ensured identified laws and regulations were communicated within the audit team regularly and the team remained alert to instances of non-compliance throughout the audit.

We assessed the susceptibility of the entity’s financial statements to material misstatement, including obtaining an understanding of how fraud might occur, by:

making enquiries of management as to where they considered there was susceptibility to fraud, their knowledge of actual, suspected and alleged fraud; and
considering the internal controls in place to mitigate risks of fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations.

To address the risk of fraud through management bias and override of controls, we:

performed analytical procedures to identify any unusual or unexpected relationships;
tested journal entries to identify unusual transactions;
assessed whether judgements and assumptions made in determining the accounting estimates were indicative of potential bias; and
investigated the rationale behind significant or unusual transactions.

In response to the risk of irregularities and non-compliance with laws and regulations, we designed procedures which included, but were not limited to:

agreeing financial statement disclosures to underlying supporting documentation;
reading the minutes of meetings of those charged with governance; and
enquiring of management as to actual and potential litigation and claims.

There are inherent limitations in our audit procedures described above. The more removed that laws and regulations are from financial transactions, the less likely it is that we would become aware of noncompliance. Auditing standards also limit the audit procedures required to identify non-compliance with laws and regulations to enquiry of the directors and other management and the inspection of regulatory and legal correspondence, if any. Material misstatements that arise due to fraud can be harder to detect than those that arise from error as they may involve deliberate concealment or collusion.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

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.

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. 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, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

Rachel Heath (Senior Statutory Auditor) For and on behalf of BHP LLP, Statutory Auditor 2 Rutland Park Sheffield S10 2PD

Date: 11 September 2024

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Unrestricted Note Funds £ Income: Donations and legacies 3 19,543 Income from charitable activities 4/5 812,795 ___ Total income 832,338 ___ Expenditure: Costs of raising funds 6 (12,177) Expenditure on charitable activities 7/10 (805,948) Remeasurement of pension scheme - ___ Total expenditure (818,125) ___ Net income/(expenditure) 9 14,213 Transfers between funds 21 (21,722) ___ Net movement in funds (7,509) Funds brought forward as at 1 April 2023 1,953,921 ___ Funds carried forward as at 31 March 2024 1,946,412 ___	Restricted Funds £ 4,280 2,483,818 ___ 2,488,098 ___ - (2,490,908) - ___ (2,490,908) ___ (2,810) 21,722 ___ 18,912 1,450,036 ___ 1,468,948 ___	Total Total 2024 2023 £ £ 23,823 14,604 3,296,613 3,083,496 ___ _ 3,320,436 3,098,100 ___ _ (12,177) (10,481) (3,296,856) (2,444,904) - - ___ _ (3,309,033) (2,455,385) ___ _ 11,403 642,715 - - ___ _ 11,403 642,715 3,403,957 2,761,242 ___ _ 3,415,360 3,403,957 ___ __

All of the above results are derived from continuing activities. The result for Companies Act purposes comprises the net movement in funds of £11,403 (2023: Net movement in funds of £642,715).

The statement of financial activities includes all gains and losses recognised during the year.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD BALANCE SHEET AS AT 31 MARCH 2024

Note £ ixed assets angible assets 15 urrent assets Debtors 16 242,976 ash at bank and in hand 1,866,771 ___ 2,109,747 reditors: amounts falling due within one year 17 (284,390) ___ Net current assets otal assets less current liabilities reditors: amounts falling due in more than one year 18 Net assets harity funds estricted 19 Unrestricted Designated 21 1,558,001 General 23 388,411 ___ otal Charity funds 22		2024 £ 1,873,000 -------------- 1,873,000 1,825,357 3,698,357 (282,997) ___ 3,415,360 ___ 1,468,948 1,946,412 ___ 3,415,360 __		2023 £ 1,904,000 -------------- 1,904,000 696,372 1,398,423 _ 2,094,795 (227,864) _ 1,866,931 3,770,931 (366,974) _ 3,403,957 _ 1,450,036 _ 1,554,147 399,774 _ 1,953,921 ___ 3,403,957 __

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the provisions applicable to entities subject to the small companies regime.

These accounts were approved and authorised for issue by the Board on 11 July 2024 and are signed on its behalf by:-

K Dickinson A Buck Honorary Treasurer Chair Company Registration No.00215695

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD CASHFLOW STATEMENT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

2024
£
Cash flows from operating activities:
Net cash provided by operating activities
541,353
Cash flows from financing activities:
Repayment of borrowing
(73,005)
Net cash used in financing activities
(73,005)
___
Net increase in cash and cash equivalents
468,348
___
Cash and cash equivalents at 1 April 2023
1,398,423
___
Cash and cash equivalents at 31 March 2024
1,866,771
_
Cash and cash equivalents consists of:
Cash at bank and in hand
1,866,771
___
Cash and cash equivalents at 31 March 2024
1,866,771
_
Reconciliation of net income to net cash flow from operating activities
2024
£
Net income for the reporting period
11,403
(as per the statement of financial activities)
Adjustments for:
Depreciation charges
31,000
Decrease/(increase) in debtors
453,396
Increase/(decrease) in creditors
51,243
Decrease in pension deficit provision
(5,689)
___
Net cash provided by operating activities
541,353
___

2023
£
419,646
(71,028)
(71,028)
_
348,618
_
1,049,805
_
1,398,423
_
1,398,423
_
1,398,423
_
2023
£
642,715
31,000
(227,413)
(20,584)
(6,072)
_
419,646
_

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

1. Accounting policies

(a) General information and basis of preparation

Voluntary Action Sheffield is a registered charity in the United Kingdom and a company limited by guarantee in England and Wales. In the event of the charity being wound up, the liability in respect of the guarantee is limited to £1 per member of the charity. The address of the registered office is given in the charity information on page 1 - 2 of these financial statements. The nature of the charity’s operations and principal activities are detailed in the Trustees’ annual report.

The charity constitutes a public benefit entity as defined by FRS 102. The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) issued in October 2019, the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102), the Charities Act 2011, the Companies Act 2006 and UK Generally Accepted Practice.

The financial statements are prepared on a going concern basis under the historical cost convention, modified to include certain items at fair value. The financial statements are prepared in sterling which is the functional currency of the charity and rounded to the nearest £.

The significant accounting policies applied in the preparation of these financial statements are set out below. These policies have been consistently applied to all years presented unless otherwise stated.

(b) Funds

Unrestricted funds are available for use at the discretion of the trustees in furtherance of the general objectives of the charity and which have not been designated for other purposes.

Designated funds comprise unrestricted funds that have been set aside by the trustees for particular purposes. The aim and use of each designated fund is set out in the notes to the financial statements.

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 particular purposes. The cost of raising and administering such funds are charged against the specific fund. The aim and use of each restricted fund is set out in the notes to the financial statements .

(c) Income recognition

All incoming resources are included in the Statement of Financial Activities (SoFA) when the charity is legally entitled to the income after any performance conditions have been met, the amount can be measured reliably and it is probable that the income will be received.

For donations to be recognised the charity will have been notified of the amounts and the settlement date in writing. If there are conditions attached to the donation and this requires a level of performance before entitlement can be obtained then income is deferred until those conditions are fully met or the fulfilment of those conditions is within the control of the charity and it is probable that they will be fulfilled.

Donated facilities and donated professional services are recognised in income at their fair value when their economic benefit is probable, it can be measured reliably and the charity has control over the item. Fair value is determined on the basis of the value of the gift to the charity. For example the amount the charity would be willing to pay in the open market for such facilities and services. A corresponding amount is recognised in expenditure.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

1. Accounting policies (continued)

No amount is included in the financial statements for volunteer time in line with the SORP (FRS 102). Further detail is given in the Trustees’ Report.

For legacies, entitlement is the earlier of the charity being notified of an impending distribution or the legacy being received. At this point income is recognised. On occasion legacies will be notified to the charity where it is not possible to measure the amount expected to be distributed. On these occasions, the legacy is treated as a contingent asset and disclosed.

The charity receives government grants in respect of Infrastructure Support to the Voluntary and Community Sector, the Sheffield Healthy Holiday scheme and the Volunteer Centre. Income from government and other grants are recognised at fair value when the charity has entitlement after any performance conditions have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and the amount can be measured reliably. If entitlement is not met then these amounts are deferred.

Investment income is interest earned on the Charity’s current account.

(d) Expenditure recognition

All expenditure is accounted for on an accruals basis and has been classified under headings that aggregate all costs related to the category. Expenditure is recognised where there is a legal or constructive obligation to make payments to third parties, it is probable that the settlement will be required and the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably. It is categorised under the following headings:

Costs of raising funds - This relates to the cost of obtaining the grants referred to in note (c). It includes 25% of the Marketing & Communications Officer’s salary together with related office costs.
Expenditure on charitable activities - These are the direct costs of VAS’s work to meet its charitable activities plus governance costs. Governance includes the direct and indirect costs relating to external audit and to the constitutional and statutory requirements for managing the charity. The following costs have been allocated to governance:
One day per week of each of the Chief Executive, Head of Business Growth and Head of Finance together with related office costs.
Auditor costs.

Irrecoverable VAT is charged as an expense against the activity for which expenditure arose.

Grants payable to third parties are within the charitable objectives. Where unconditional grants are offered, this is accrued as soon as the recipient is notified of the grant, as this gives rise to a reasonable expectation that the recipient will receive the grants. Where grants are conditional relating to performance then the grant is only accrued when any unfulfilled conditions are outside of the control of the charity.

(e) Support costs allocation

Support costs are those that assist the work of the charity but do not directly represent charitable activities and include office costs, governance costs, administrative and payroll costs. They are incurred directly in support of expenditure on the objects of the charity and include project management. Where support costs cannot be directly attributed to particular headings they have been allocated to cost of raising funds and expenditure on charitable activities on a basis consistent with use of the resources. Premises overheads have been allocated on a cost per square foot basis and other overheads have been allocated on a staff hours basis.

Fund-raising costs are those incurred in seeking voluntary contributions and do not include the costs of disseminating information in support of the charitable activities.

The analysis of these costs is included in note 7.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

1. Accounting policies (continued)

( f) Intangible assets

Research expenditure is written off in expenditure in the SoFA in the year in which it is incurred. Identifiable development expenditure is capitalised to the extent that the technical, commercial and financial feasibility can be demonstrated. Intangible assets are amortised on a straight line basis over their useful lives.

(g) Tangible fixed assets

Tangible fixed assets are stated at cost (or deemed cost) or valuation less accumulated depreciation and accumulated impairment losses. Cost includes costs directly attributable to making the asset capable of operating as intended.

Depreciation is provided on all tangible fixed assets, at rates calculated to write off the cost, less estimated residual value, of each asset on a systematic basis over its expected useful life as follows:

Leasehold land	Nil
Leasehold buildings	50 years straight line
Computer equipment	3 years straight line
Fixtures and fittings	10 years straight line

The lease term for leasehold land starts 1 January 2005 for a period of 250 years. The trustees have considered the fair value of leasehold land and annually consider the need for an impairment review. As a consequence, depreciation has not been charged.

(h) Debtors and creditors receivable / payable within one year

Debtors and creditors with no stated interest rate and receivable or payable within one year are recorded at transaction price. Any losses arising from impairment are recognised in expenditure.

(i) Loans and borrowings

Loans and borrowings are initially recognised at the transaction price including transaction costs. Subsequently, they are measured at amortised cost using the effective interest rate method, less impairment. If an arrangement constitutes a finance transaction it is measured at present value.

(j) Impairment

Assets not measured at fair value are reviewed for any indication that the asset may be impaired at each balance sheet date. If such indication exists, the recoverable amount of the asset, or the asset’s cash generating unit, is estimated and compared to the carrying amount. Where the carrying amount exceeds its recoverable amount, an impairment loss is recognised in profit or loss unless the asset is carried at a revalued amount where the impairment loss is a revaluation decrease.

(k) Provisions

Provisions are recognised when the charity has an obligation at the balance sheet date as a result of a past event, it is probable that an outflow of economic benefits will be required in settlement and the amount can be reliably estimated.

(l) Leases

Rentals payable and receivable under operating leases are charged to the SoFA on a straight line basis over the period of the lease.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

1. Accounting policies (continued)

(m) Employee benefits

When employees have rendered service to the charity, short-term employee benefits to which the employees are entitled are recognised at the undiscounted amount expected to be paid in exchange for that service.

The charity operates a defined contribution plan for the benefit of its employees. Contributions are expensed as they become payable.

The charity contributes to the Pension Trust Growth Plan for its employees. This is in most respects a money purchase arrangement, but does include certain guaranteed benefit elements. The Plan is a multi-employer scheme. Since the charity has entered into an agreement (the Recovery Plan that determines how each employer within the scheme will fund the overall deficit), the contributions paid are shown in the income and expenditure account. Under FRS 102, the fair value of the commitment is recognised. The calculation of their fair value of the commitment is subject to an assumption on the discount rate. The discount rate is determined by reference to market yields at the reporting date on high quality bonds.

(n) Tax

The charity is an exempt charity within the meaning of schedule 3 of the Charities Act 2011 and is considered to pass the tests set out in Paragraph 1 Schedule 6 Finance Act 2010 and therefore it meets the definition of a charitable company for UK corporation tax purposes.

(o) Going concern

The financial statements have been prepared on a going concern basis as the trustees believe that no material uncertainties exist. The trustees have considered the level of funds held and the expected level of income and expenditure for 12 months from authorising these financial statements. The budgeted income and expenditure is sufficient with the level of reserves for the charity to be able to continue as a going concern.

(p) Judgements and key sources of estimation uncertainty

Estimates and judgements are continually evaluated and are based on historical experience and other factors, including expectations of future events that are believed to be reasonable under the circumstances. The charity makes estimates and assumptions concerning the future. The resulting accounting estimates and assumptions will, by definition, seldom equal the related actual results.

There are no estimates and assumptions that have a significant risk of causing material adjustment to the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities within the next financial year.

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VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

2. Prior Year Statement of Financial Activities – for comparison

Unrestricted Funds £ Income: Donations and legacies 14,604 Income from charitable activities 793,453 ___ Total income 808,057 ___ Expenditure: Costs of raising funds (10,481) Expenditure on charitable activities (668,674) Remeasurement of pension scheme - ___ Total expenditure (679,155) ___ Net income/(expenditure) 128,902 Transfers between funds (33,318) ___ Net movement in funds 95,584 Funds brought forward as at 1 April 2022 1,858,337 ___ Funds carried forward as at 31 March 2023 1,953,921 ___	Restricted Funds £ - 2,290,043 ___ 2,290,043 ___ - (1,776,230) - ___ (1,776,230) ___ 513,813 33,318 ___ 547,131 902,905 ___ 1,450,036 ___	Total 2023 £ 14,604 3,083,496 ___ 3,098,100 ___ (10,481) (2,444,904) - ___ (2,455,385) ___ 642,715 - ___ 642,715 2,761,242 ___ 3,403,957 ___

All of the above results are derived from continuing activities. The result for Companies Act purposes comprises the net movement in funds of £642,715 (2022: Net movement in funds of £556,979).

The statement of financial activities includes all gains and losses recognised during the year.

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

3. Income: Donations and legacies

3. Income: Donations and legacies	3. Income: Donations and legacies	3. Income: Donations and legacies
Total Total Unrestricted Restricted 2024 2023 £ £ £ £ Marjorie Coote Old People’s Charity 10,000 - 10,000 10,000 Sheffield Town Trust 2,500 - 2,500 2,500 James Neill Trust Fund 2,000 - 2,000 2,000 Church Burgesses Trust 5,000 - 5,000 - Lemonaid Motor Legal Ltd - - - (500) David and Jane Richards Family Foundation - - - 250 WANdisco International Ltd - - - 250 Naomi Cohen - 540 540 - David Blunkett Foundation - 2,000 2,000 - Various donations for Awards event - 1,725 1,725 - Sundry donations 43 15 58 104 ______ ______ ______ __ 19,543 4,280 23,823 14,604 ______ _ _ ____ 4. Income from charitable activities: analysis by activity This income can be analysed over the following activities: Unrestricted Funds Restricted Funds Total 2024 Total 2023 Core Services and accommodation 454,825 10,000 464,825 412,892 Volunteer Centre 46,298 454,234 500,532 203,437 Health and Wellbeing 209,952 415,937 625,889 1,007,851 Professional Services 93,059 - 93,059 173,855 Training and Development 8,661 270,530 279,191 434,205 Partnership Projects - 1,333,117 1,333,117 851,256 Total 812,795 2,483,818 3,296,613 3,083,496			Total 2023 £ 10,000 2,500 2,000 - (500) 250 250 - - - 104 ______ 14,604
	812,795 2,483,818	3,296,613 3,083,496

An analysis of the sources of this income is shown in note 5.

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

5. Income from charitable activities: analysis by funding source

Sheffield City Council – Voluntary Sector/revenue grants Sheffield City Council – Other Funding - Healthwatch - Sheffield Healthy Activities Fund - Food co-ordination - Community Champions - Changing Futures - Shared Prosperity fund - Collaborative Conversations - ESF Employment project - SPRING - Help Yourself - Homes for Ukraine (New Beginnings) Sheffield ACP Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board Move More Big Lottery - NRC New Beginnings – (Ref. RC/5/010423756) – Restricted Fund - Big Lottery Diabetes - Big Lottery SY-NC Esmee Fairbarin SY-NC Asylum and Migration Integration Fund SACMHA Access to Work Department of Culture, Media and Sport Care Quality Commission Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust South Yorkshire Community Foundation Health Education England Sustaining Nature Ignite Imaginations NAVCA Voluntary Action Rotherham Other grants less than £5,000 The Circle – Rental income / room hire / conferencing Chargeable services / sundry income	2024 £ 162,930 209,952 7,854 - 315,400 25,000 123,060 - 40,054 391,793 6,981 53,471 - 97,900 111,188 9,919 32,134 107,957 172,404 63,799 700,121 40,300 1,060 2,500 5,000 20,000 10,000 - - 23,750 5,000 - - 403,709 153,377 ___ 3,296,613 ___	2023 £ 167,430 209,952 192,140 88,000 57,000 12,500 20,000 46,000 35,206 - - - 12,500 143,400 205,429 97,771 - 75,261 164,576 176,752 499,927 - - - - - - 245,548 50,000 23,750 15,000 5,000 17,059 312,468 210,827 _ 3,083,496 _

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

6. Costs of raising funds Staff costs Other costs	2024 £ 11,625 552 __ 12,177 ____	2023 £ 9,991 490 __ 10,481 ____

7. Expenditure on charitable activities

Support costs totalling £265,624 (2023: £276,247) have been allocated across activities. Costs have been allocated either on the basis of time spent by the departments in supporting the activities, or other usage of the service.

Finance Human Resources ICT internal services Executive management and administration	2024 2023 £ £ 36,526 31,985 30,365 29,489 32,308 40,852 166,425173,921 __ 265,624276,247 _ ______

Expenditure can be analysed over the following activities:-

Core services and Accommodation Less: Support costs recharged to projects Volunteer Centre Health and Well-being Professional Services Training and Development Partnership Projects	Activities Activities undertaken undertaken Support Total Total directly by partners costs 2024 2023 £ £ £ £ £ 579,928 32,715 265,624 878,267 660,476 -161,818 - -235,670 -397,488 -394,150
	418,110 32,715 29,954 480,779 266,326 196,022 190,000 36,538 422,560 330,341 514,855 293,874 88,692 897,421 690,179 82,940 - 15,082 98,022 160,931 233,797 51,800 46,467 332,064 293,608 239,290 777,829 48,891 1,066,010 703,519
	1,685,014 1,346,218 265,624 3,296,856 2,444,904

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

8. Governance costs Staff costs Related office costs Audit 9. Net income/(expenditure) for the year is stated after charging: Auditor’s remuneration Operating lease rentals in respect of equipment and vehicles Depreciation of fixed assets 10. Interest payable Bank loans/mortgage 11. Staff costs and employee benefits Wages and salaries Social security costs Pension contributions – current service Pension contributions – scheme deficit (see note 13)	2024 2023 £ £ 32,435 27,097 1,103 816 14,721 13,925 ______ __ 48,259 41,838 ______ _ 2024 2023 £ £ 14,721 13,896 1,763 1,996 31,000 31,000 ______ 2024 2023 £ £ 32,136 24,747 ______ 2024 2023 £ £ 1,243,4641,171,165 103,122 96,630 71,782 63,731 6,102 6,102 ____ 1,424,4701,337,628 ___ ______	2023 £ 27,097 816 13,925 __ 41,838 _ 2023 £ 13,896 1,996 31,000 ___ 2023 £ 24,747

The average number of employees during the year was 58 (2023: 54).

No employee earned more than £60,000 per annum (2023: nil).

12. Trustees, key management personnel remuneration and expenses and related party transactions

None of the trustees receive any remuneration in respect of their role as director/trustee of VAS. No travel expenses were paid during the year (2023: nil). No trustees received payment in respect of training and consultancy (2023: nil).

Several VAS trustees are also employees or trustees of VAS member organisations to which VAS provides various services including payroll services and rent/room hire. The charges for these services are relatively small and always on normal commercial terms. One trustee, James Lock, is a director and shareholder of Opus Independents that provided services to a value of £3,960 (2023: £1,330). James is also an entrepreneur in residence for Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) and another trustee, Joanne Arch, is an associate lecturer for SHU. VAS received no funding for the Move More project via SHU (2023: £97,771).

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Two trustees, Joanne Arch and Ruth Brown work for the NHS in Sheffield, from whom VAS receives funding as detailed in the notes above. Various NHS bodies also sponsored our awards event in the autumn at a total of £20,000. None of the Trustees have authority or influence over the funds given to VAS.

One trustee, David Bussue is an employee of SACMHA which received £20,000 in funding from the Community Champions project, £1,500 funding to attend various workshops and £1,000 grant to contribute to a piece of work that Healthwatch carried out on end of life care. (2023: £10,000 Community Champions and £330 as a backfill payment to attend Diabetes project steering meetings). In addition VAS received a grant of £40,300 from SACMHA for our Autism Waiting lists project (2023: nil). One trustee, Safiya Saeed is the project manager of Reach Up Youth which received £17,640 HAF funding, £45,462 funding from the SYNC project, a £1,000 Collaborative Conversations grant, a £1,000 Long Covid grant, a £500 Cost of Living grant and £250 to attend Diabetes meetings. (2023: £150 from the Collaborative Conversations project). Safiya is also a councillor for Sheffield City Council, from whom VAS receives funding as detailed in the notes above. SCC also sponsored our awards event in the autumn at £5,000. Safiya has no authority or influence over the funds given to VAS. Another Trustee, Tim Furness, is a Trustee of Age UK Sheffield, who were the lead partner on a joint project with VAS, for which VAS received £2,500 (2023: £2,500). In addition, Age UK received £30,575 from VAS as a partner in our Stroke project. During the period, trustees made donations to the charity totalling £1,000 (2023: £Nil).

VAS Chief Executive, Helen Sims, is a non-executive Director of South Yorkshire Climate Action which received £1,450 funding from the Collaborative Conversations project (2023: nil). One member of the senior management team, Lloyd Samuels, is also an employee of ZEST which received £20,027 in funding from Community Champions (2023: £10,000 Community Champions project and £566 for workshop/steering group attendance). Another member of the senior management team, Helen Steers, is a trustee of Citizens Advice Sheffield which received £181,720 from VAS as part of the SPRING consortium (2023: £153,441 SPRING consortium and £125 for workshop attendance).

The total amount of employee benefits received by key management personnel is £382,562 (2023: £339,264). The Trustees consider key management personnel to comprise: Chief Executive Officer, Director of Operations, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Head of Finance, Buildings and Facilities Manager, Head of Volunteering, Human Resources Manager, Healthwatch Chief Officer and SY-NC Strategic Lead.

13. Pension costs

VAS makes payments on behalf of employees into individuals defined contributions pension schemes. The assets of these schemes are held separately from those of VAS in independently administered funds. The pension cost charge in the statement of financial activities represents contributions payable by VAS to the funds and amounts to £77,884 (2023: £69,833). £6,102 of the contributions in 2024 related to the deficit on the Pensions Trust scheme (see note 26) (2023: £6,102). Contributions of £8,955 were due at the year-end (2023:£8,753).

14. Taxation

As a charity, VAS is exempt from tax on income and gains falling within the available tax exemptions to the extent that these are applied to its charitable objects. No tax charges have arisen in the Charity.

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

15. Tangible assets

Long Leasehold land and Computer building equipment £ £ *Cost* At 1 April 2023 4,305,888 130,232 Disposals - (99,692) ___ ______ At 31 March 2024 4,305,888 30,540 ___ ______ *Depreciation* At 1 April 2023 2,401,888 130,232 Charge for the year 31,000 - Eliminated on disposal - (99,692) ___ ______ At 31 March 2024 2,432,888 30,540 ___ ______ *Net Book Value* At 31 March 2024 1,873,000 - ___ ______ At 31 March 2023 1,904,000 - ___ ______ 16. Debtors Debtors falling due within one year Trade debtors Prepayments Grants and legacies receivable Other debtors 17. Creditors: amounts falling due within one year Amount held on behalf Help Yourself Directory Bank loan Pension scheme deficit contributions Accruals Deferred income – income received in advance (see note (a) below) Tax and social security Staff holiday accrued	Other fixtures £ 188,203 (10,240) _ 177,963 _ _ 188,203 - (10,240) _ _ 177,963 _ _ - _ - _ 2024 £ 202,356 19,583 20,842 195 _ 242,976 _ 2024 £ - 80,767 4,988 132,200 23,875 24,408 18,152 ______ 284,390 _	Total £ 4,624,323 (109,932) __ 4,514,391 __ 2,720,323 31,000 (109,932) __ 2,641,391 __ 1,873,000 __	Total £ 4,624,323 (109,932) __ 4,514,391 __ 2,720,323 31,000 (109,932) __ 2,641,391 __ 1,873,000 __
		1,904,000
			_ 2023 £ 499,975 17,732 178,254 411 _ 696,372
			_ 2023 £ 6,981 74,370 6,102 62,162 35,009 28,836 14,404 ______ 227,864 _

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

17. Creditors: amounts falling due within one year (continued)

The bank loan is secured on freehold land and buildings of the company over 10 years from February 2018, at a rate of 3% over Unity Trust Bank’s base rate, subject to a minimum rate of 3%.

(a) Deferred income:

Tenant rent deposits Training course fees Contract income Other 18. Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year Bank loan Pension scheme deficit contributions Bank loan maturity analysis: In less than one year In more than one year but not more than two years In more than two years, but not more than five years	16,754 - 6,679 442 ______ 23,875 _ 2024 £ 282,997 - ___ 282,997 ___	__	16,754 8,661 9,044 550 ______ 35,009 _ 2023 £ 362,399 4,575 _ 366,974 _ 74,370 80,767 281,632 ___ 436,769 _
	80,767 86,997 196,000 ___ 363,764 ___	_ __

See note 26 for details of the pension deficit payments.

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

19. Restricted funds

Core Awards Ceremony Thriving VCF Group Collaborative Conversations Voice & Leadership Cohesion Sheffield Volunteering Volunteer Centre Refugee & Asylum Seekers New Beginnings project Community Champions Community Makers Health and Wellbeing Healthwatch VCS Infrastructure support VAS Long Covid People Keeping Well Autism support Move More Empowering Communities Diabetes Action Hub Changing Futures Health Education England Training and Development Lunch Club Referral Service Development Team Food Network Co-ordination Shared Prosperity Fund Holiday Activities and Food Partnership Projects SPRING Sheffield Youth Neighbourhoods and Communities (SYNC)	Balance Income Expenditure Transfers Balance at 01/04/23 at 31/03/24 2,053 3,725 5,778 - - 990 - - - 990 33,875 - 30,590 - 3,285 14,000 10,000 20,000 10,000 14,000 6,131 - 792 - 5,339
	57,049 13,725 57,160 10,000 23,614
	3,860 - 190 - 3,670 57,320 115,084 105,968 - 66,436 73,542 315,400 228,038 - 160,904 10,064 24,290 24,656 - 9,698
	144,786 454,774 358,852 - 240,708
	70,779 58,900 89,589 - 40,090 129,854 53,500 175,510 - 7,844 78,238 - 40,925 - 37,313 12,489 44,300 37,204 - 19,585 76,293 96,361 88,364 - 84,290 - 9,919 9,919 - - 69,996 107,957 126,709 - 51,244 416 25,000 16,044 - 9,372 243,000 20,000 92,557 - 170,443
	681,065 415,937 676,821 - 420,181
	- 28,188 32,091 3,903 - 11,191 132,342 163,644 23,111 3,000 69,000 - 41,867 6,333 33,466 20,000 110,000 16,241 - 113,759 150,259 15 78,222 - 72,052
	250,450 270,545 332,065 33,347 222,277
	21,953 1,096,914 782,041 (3,625) 333,201 294,733 236,203 283,969 (18,000) 228,967
	316,686 1,333,117 1,066,010 (21,625) 562,168

	1,450,036 2,488,098 2,490,908 21,722 1,468,948

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

19. Restricted funds (continued) Prior Year restricted funds – for comparison

Balance at 01.04.22 *Core* Awards Ceremony 2,053 Thriving VCF Group 990 Collaborative Conversations - Voice and Leadership 18,455 Cohesion Sheffield 6,923 Shared Prosperity Fund - _ 28,421 _ *Volunteer Centre* Volunteer Centre 3,860 Refugee & Asylum Seekers New Beginnings Project 89,999 Sheffield Business Together 5,949 Community Champions 150,000 Community Makers - _ 249,808 _ *Health and Wellbeing* Healthwatch 63,000 People Keeping Well 18,337 VAS Long Covid 90,000 Health Leadership 74,193 Autism project 62,195 Move More Empowering Communities 8,648 Diabetes Action Hub 24,600 Changing Futures 11,942 Health Education England - _ 352,915 _ *Training and Development* Lunch Club Referral Service 305 Development Team 44,649 Food Network Co-ordination - Holiday Activities and Food 58,358 _ 103,312 _ Consortium Service SPRING 119,420 Sheffield Youth - Neighbourhoods 49,029 and Communities (SYNC) _ 168,449 _ Total 902,905 _	Incoming resources £ - - 46,000 - - 20,000 ______ 66,000 ______ 5,000 82,481 (500) 57,000 23,750 ______ 167,731 ______ 124,627 47,000 - 130,241 67,500 97,771 75,260 12,500 243,000 __ 797,899 __ 28,188 131,564 88,000 183,905 __ 431,657 __ 509,927 316,829 __ 826,756 __ 2,290,043 __	Resources expended £ - - 12,125 4,455 792 - _ 17,372 _ 20,000 121,937 5,449 133,458 13,686 _ 294,530 _ 116,848 52,848 11,762 74,580 53,402 106,419 29,864 24,026 - __ 469,749 __ 30,034 150,022 19,000 92,004 __ 291,060 _ 607,394 96,125 __ 703,519 __ 1,776,230 __	Balance at Transfers 31.03.23 £ £ - 2,053 - 990 - 33,875 - 14,000 - 6,131 - 20,000 _ _ - 77,049 _ _ 15,000 3,860 6,777 57,320 - - - 73,542 - 10,064 _ ______ 21,777 144,786 _ _ - 70,779 - 12,489 - 78,238 - 129,854 - 76,293 - - - 69,996 - 416 - 243,000 _ _ - 681,065 _ ______ 1,541 - (15,000) 11,191 - 69,000 - 150,259 _ ______ (13,459) 230,450 _ ______ - 21,953 25,000 294,733 _ ______ - 316,686 _ _ 33,318 1,450,036 _ _

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

19. Restricted funds (continued)

Core - Funding to support core running costs.

All of the other restricted funds relate to specific projects being undertaken by VAS. The projects are shown separately, but categorised into the main activities of VAS. Details of many of these projects are given in the Trustees’ Annual Report.

Those restricted projects that are believed to need further narrative to explain what services they provide are detailed below. More information can be found on our website (www.vas.org.uk).

Project
Healthwatch Sheffield
SPRING
Changing Futures
Community Makers
Collaborative Conversations
Shared Prosperity Fund

Service
Established 1 April 2013 as part of the Government health reforms, to
strengthen the patient, service user and public voice in shaping health and
social care services. Gives citizens and communities a stronger voice to
influence and challenge how health and social care services are provided
in their locality.
A collaboration of six organisations helping refugees settle into the local
community. It is funded by the Asylum Migration and Integration Fund.
A government funded programme aiming to improve outcomes for adults
experiencing multiple disadvantage – including combinations of
homelessness, substance misuse, mental health issues, domestic abuse
and contact with the criminal justice system.
A project funded by Arts Council England (via Ignite Imaginations) to
promote volunteering within the creative arts sector in Sheffield.
This project aims to create a common way of having meaningful
conversations about what happens in our city. This will support local
people to collaborate on decisions that affect their lives and create action
that really matters.
A three-year government funding stream that replaces European
Structural and Investment Funds. The fund aims to improve pride in place
and increase life chances across the UK by investing in communities and
supporting local businesses, people, and skills.

20. Transfers between funds

There were transfers of £21,722 between restricted and unrestricted funds during the year (2023: £33,318). These represent unrestricted funds applied to restricted projects.

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

21. Designated funds

The unrestricted funds of the Charity include the following designated funds which have been set aside out of unrestricted funds by the Board of Trustees for specific purposes:-

Balance at 01.04.23 Transfers £ £ Fixed assets 1,456,554 - Consortium Service funds 14,225 - IT infrastructure and equipment fund 20,387 - Healthwatch 31,048 - Circle Redevelopment Fund 19,933 - Strategic Review fund 12,000 - _ _ 1,554,147 - _ _ Prior Year designated funds – for comparison Balance at 01.04.22 Transfers £ £ Fixed assets 1,410,454 - Consortium Service funds 14,225 - IT infrastructure and equipment fund 15,000 - Healthwatch 41,526 - Circle Redevelopment Fund 19,933 - Strategic Review fund - - _ _ 1,501,138 - _ _	Utilised/ New realised Designations £ £ - 47,694 - - (12,875) 7,518 (10,649) - (15,834) - (12,000) - _ _ (51,358) 55,212 _ _ Utilised/ New realised Designations £ £ - 46,100 - - - 5,387 (10,478) - - - - 12,000 _ _ (10,478) 63,487 _ _	Balance at 31.03.24 £ 1,504,248 14,225 15,030 20,399 4,099 - __ 1,558,001 ___
		Balance at 31.03.23 £ 1,456,554 14,225 20,387 31,048 19,933 12,000 __ 1,554,147 ___

Fixed assets are funds which represent the net book value of the fixed assets (£1,873,000) less the amount outstanding on the mortgage relating to the building (£363,764) and the amount committed to eliminating the deficit on the pension fund (£4,988). See note 26 for more details of the pension deficit payments.

Consortium Service funds are funds donated to Voluntary Action Sheffield by Sheffield Cubed as part of the agreement to transfer a significant proportion of their undertakings to VAS. The Board have decided to designate these funds in order to cover the cost of making the Consortium Service viable.

IT infrastructure and equipment fund is a fund to cover the cost of new/updated databases identified by the Trustees as required to improve the communication facilities at VAS.

Healthwatch is funds set aside to cover additional staff costs for the Healthwatch function.

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

21. Designated funds (continued)

Circle redevelopment fund is a fund set up to cover the cost of developing facilities at The Circle in order to continue to attract room hire customers.

Strategic Review Fund is a fund to cover the cost of a strategic review that was carried out in 2023.

22. Analysis of Charity funds balances between net assets as at 31 March 2024

Unrestricted
Funds
£
Fixed assets
-
Current assets
491,694
Current liabilities
(103,283)
Creditors: amounts falling due
in more than one year
-
_
388,411
_
Prior Year analysis – for comparison
Unrestricted
Funds
£
Fixed assets
-
Current assets
520,616
Current liabilities
(120,842)
Creditors: amounts falling due
in more than one year
-
_
399,774
_

Designated
Restricted
Funds
Funds
Total Funds
£
£
£
1,873,000
-
1,873,000
53,753
1,564,300
2,109,747
(85,755)
(95,352)
(284,390)
(282,997)
-
(282,997)
___
_
__
1,558,001
1,468,948
3,415,360
___
_
___
Designated
Restricted
Funds
Funds
Total Funds
£
£
£
1,904,000
-
1,904,000
97,593
1,476,586
2,094,795
(80,472)
(26,550)
(227,864)
(366,974)
-
(366,974)
___
_
__
1,554,147
1,450,036
3,403,957
___
_
___

23. Statement of movement on unrestricted reserves Balance at 1 April 2023 Net movement in fund Balance at 31 March 2024	General Designated reserve reserves £ £ 399,774 1,554,147 (11,363) 3,854 _ __ 388,411 1,558,001 _ __

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

24. Obligations under operating leases

At 31 March 2024, the total of future minimum lease payments under non-cancellable operating leases for each of the following periods are as follows:-

not later than one year later than one year and not later than five years Total	2024 £ 1,588 1,720 ______ 3,308 ______	2023 £ 1,622 3,308 _ 4,930 ___

These payments relate to two photocopiers at The Circle.

25. Commitments

As at the year end, VAS had capital commitments outstanding of £nil (2023: £nil).

26. Pension costs and liabilities

SCHEME: TPT Retirement Solutions – The Growth Plan

VAS participates in two pension schemes – a defined benefit scheme and a defined contribution scheme. They are both with The Pension Trust (TPT) and are part of their Growth Plan Scheme. The defined benefit scheme is closed to new members and to the accrual of benefit by existing members. The only payments to this scheme therefore relate to the funding deficit, details of which are given below.

Defined Contribution Scheme

For the defined contribution scheme, VAS paid contributions at the rate of 6% during the accounting period and members paid contributions at rates between 1% and 11% during the accounting period. As at the balance sheet date there were 50 (2023: 40) active members of the Plan employed by VAS. VAS continues to offer membership of the defined contribution scheme to its employees.

Defined Benefit Scheme

The defined benefit pension scheme that VAS participates in is a multi-employer scheme which provides benefits to some 638 non-associated participating employers. It is not possible for VAS to obtain sufficient information to enable it to account for the scheme as a defined benefit scheme. Therefore it accounts for the scheme as a defined contribution scheme.

The scheme is subject to the funding legislation outlined in the Pensions Act 2004 which came into force on 30 December 2005. This, together with documents issued by the Pensions Regulator and Technical Actuarial Standards issued by the Financial Reporting Council, set out the framework for funding defined benefit occupational pension schemes in the UK.

The scheme is classified as a 'last-man standing arrangement'. Therefore the company is potentially liable for other participating employers' obligations if those employers are unable to meet their share of the scheme deficit following withdrawal from the scheme. Participating employers are legally required to meet their share of the scheme deficit on an annuity purchase basis on withdrawal from the scheme.

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

26. Pension costs and liabilities (continued)

A full actuarial valuation for the scheme was carried out at 30 September 2020. This valuation showed assets of £800.3m, liabilities of £831.9m and a deficit of £31.6m. To eliminate this funding shortfall, the Trustee has asked the participating employers to pay additional contributions to the scheme as follows:

Deficit contributions

From 1 April 2022 to 31 January 2025: £3,312,000 per annum (payable monthly)

Unless a concession has been agreed with the Trustee the term to 31 January 2025 applies.

Note that the scheme’s previous valuation was carried out with an effective date of 30 September 2017. This valuation showed assets of £794.9m, liabilities of £926.4m and a deficit of £131.5m. To eliminate this funding shortfall, the Trustee asked the participating employers to pay additional contributions to the scheme as follows:

Deficit contributions

£11,243,000 per annum (payable monthly and increasing by 3% each From 1 April 2019 to 30 September 2025: on 1st April)

The recovery plan contributions are allocated to each participating employer in line with their estimated share of the Series 1 and Series 2 scheme liabilities.

Where the scheme is in deficit and where the company has agreed to a deficit funding arrangement the company recognises a liability for this obligation. The amount recognised is the net present value of the deficit reduction contributions payable under the agreement that relates to the deficit. The present value is calculated using the discount rate detailed in these disclosures. The unwinding of the discount rate is recognised as a finance cost.

When an employer withdraws from a multi-employer defined benefit pension scheme which is in deficit, the employer is required by law to pay its share of the deficit, calculated on a statutory basis (known as the buyout basis). The calculation basis that applies to the Growth Plan was amended due to a change in the definition of money purchase contained in the Pensions Act 2011 and therefore Series 3 liabilities have to be included in the calculation of an employer’s debt on withdrawal.

VAS has been notified by the Pensions Trust of the estimated employer debt on withdrawal from the Plan based on the financial position of the Plan as at 30 September 2022. As of this date, the estimated employer debt for VAS was £93,094 (2021: £162,107).

The present value of the deficit repayment provision and the rates of discount used are as follows:

	31 March 202431 March 2023 31 March 2022	31 March 202431 March 2023 31 March 2022	31 March 202431 March 2023 31 March 2022
Present value of provision (£)	4,988	10,677	16,748
Rate of discount (% per annum)	5.31	5.52	2.35

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

26. Pension costs and liabilities (continued)

Reconciliation of opening and closing provisions

	2024	2023
	£	£
Provision at start of period	10,677	16,748
Unwinding of the discount factor/ impact of any change in assumptions	409	316
Deficit contributions paid	(6,102)	(6,102)
Impact of changes in assumptions	4	(285)
Amendments to contribution schedule – revised recovery plan	-	-
	_	_
Provision at end of period	4,988	10,677
	_	_
Disclosed as creditors:
Due in less than one year	4,988	6,102
Due in more than one year	-	4,575
	_	_
	4,988	10,677
	_	_

VOLUNTARY ACTION SHEFFIELD

TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT AND ACCOUNTS

FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

APPENDIX A – ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE 2023/24 as at 31.3.24

----- Start of picture text -----
Board of Trustees
Audit and Risk
Committee
Healthwatch Advisory
Board
Chief Executive
Director of Operations
Director of Strategic Partnerships
Head of Healthwatch Head of SY-NC Head of VCS Head of Head of
Programme Chief Volunteering Strategic Partnerships Facilities Finance
and Project Officer Lead and
Inclusive Opportunities
Practice
Development
Communications Office and
Manager HR
Manager
Health and Healthwatch SPRING/ New SY-NC and team The Circle Payroll
Wellbeing Team Beginnings/ Team reception Services
Team Volunteer and
Development
Centre services
Team- Lunch
team
Clubs,
workforce
development
& training
----- End of picture text -----