2024-03-31-accounts

23/24 CHAIR’S REPORT

Welcome to the 2024. Annual General Meeting of the Longford Village Hall Management Committee. I would initially like to introduce the committee to you, so that you know who to address questions to when the opportunity arises.

For those of you that are not familiar with the AGM process, this evening will cover the following:

• A round up of the activities that have taken place in the Hall, including community events and regular activities that are run for the benefit of the community.

• A financial report given by the current Treasurer

• Future works that we would like to undertake in the next 12 months

• Future fundraising update

• The resignation of the current committee members from their current posts and the committee.

• The election of a new committee with new appointments to be decided at the next committee meeting.

• Any Other Business – your chance to ask questions and raise any issues of concerns that you may have.

• Close of the meeting and the date of the first meeting of the new committee.

Prior to taking you through the activities round up I would like to take a moment to thank all the members of the committee, without their steadfast support throughout the last year we could not have achieved all that we have.

I would also like to make a plea to anyone out there who has any time to spare, and they are willing to commit to assisting us, either just to volunteer to help us run events as and when required or to be a full member of the committee helping to shape the future of the Hall and its running. Any help that can be provided would be very welcome. As you can see we are not a large group and like all people, we also have busy work, family and social lives and cannot commit to every event and as you will find out later not all of the committee are able to commit to next year, putting a further strain on our ability to organise events and provide the access that the community requires.

Community Space

Above all this is a community space and whilst I will talk about hiring the Hall and other activities, it would be remiss of me not to thank the volunteers and many others for their efforts during the flooding in early January.

Over the last few years, we have opened the car park to the community whenever any risk of flooding means that people need to have their vehicles away from the water.

However, we opened the Hall for a few days in early January to be able to provide a place of warmth for those people dealing with the flooding from both the victims and assistance organisations and volunteers.

I would like to thank the individuals and companies that provided reheat able food, fresh vegetables and cakes etc that helped provide some morale for all. The volunteers also stepped up and manned the kitchen throughout until the worst was passed, or people had been found alternative accommodation etc.

This has led to active collaboration with the Parish Council to ensure that we have plans in place for the future to ensure that we can provide assistance and open up the Hall in good time to support the community and potentially give those assisting in relief efforts a place to work and plan.

Hall Hire

With the plea for help complete, I can move on to discuss the activities that the Village Hall has provided throughout the last year.

• Hall Hire – The Hall is available for private hire for all members of the community and in the last year we have hired the Hall out to private hirers for activities ranging from business meetings through to baby showers, christening celebrations, birthday parties and religious celebrations and meetings.

• We have hired the hall out for these private events approximately 120 times, more than twice per week.

• This means that a volunteer has to be there to open the hall and then check and close the hall at the end of the hire and return deposits, sometimes quite late at night.

• We also have a number of groups that attend weekly, bi-weekly and monthly that have their own keys and are therefore pretty self-sufficient. There are approximately 12 different activities per week, ranging from Messy Play for tots to Brownies and Guides through craft and art to health and fitness activities, as well as retired occupational groups.

• As a committee we have also run:

• Car Boot Sales from May to August, the September one was cancelled last weekend due to the weather.

• 4 Quiz nights, once per quarter, with the next one on 5 Oct with a loose German theme, which are generally very well attended.

• A Christmas Craft Fayre that was very well attended

• The Village Fete in July, that was unfortunately almost a wash-out due to the great weather we have had this summer

For each of the events that the Hall supports, all of the monies raised go towards the upkeep of the premises and funds that will be used for improvements to the facility, which is the next subject in my report.

But before we go to that I will pass you over to our Treasurer to explain the finances over the last year and then I will explain how we have and propose to spend the Hall’s money.

This Year’s Work

This year has been pretty quiet in terms of infrastructure improvements; however, we have:

• Replaced all of the chairs with new easily cleanable, foldable chairs with trollies for storage at approximately £5k.

• Installed Wi-Fi in the Hall for the use of all.

This may not sound like much, but as you will have heard we do not make a huge amount of money and we do need to keep the lights on, so we have a very limited pot of which £5k is a lot of money.

Future Projects

As you have heard from Jules, the Hall does make a very small amount of money that we are using to make incremental improvements whilst trying to build the ‘war-chest’ that will allow us to apply for larger grants from grant giving organisations going forward.

Just a quick note to help you to see why we need to build this ‘war-chest.’ One of the items that we were unable to fund in the last works that were carried out in the Hall was the provision of the second room to be able to have more than one event running at a time. Some small business events and meetings, including the Parish Council and ourselves take up the whole Hall for 8-10 people. If we could move those meetings into a smaller more appropriate space, it may enable us to free up more slots for regular hires. We do get enquiries from groups that would like a regular once per week slot but some of these smaller groups have the hall once per month and often this makes it difficult to re-hire that slot for the other 3 weeks of the month.

A smaller space was in the plans for the original refurbishment. Post the massive increase in building materials post Covid this became unaffordable with the available funds. The last quote we had 2 years ago was £127k, which will obviously have increased since that time.

We look out regularly for grants to do works and to see who might be able to help us out and what their conditions for giving grants are.

Many only offer small sums from a few thousand to 10-20k which will not get us the second room but a few do offer quite large sums but there are conditions attached, these include:

• Being the only or primary source of funding, so they can showcase what they have helped with.

• This means that we can only go to one organisation and that we then need a large sum from them or them to fund a large percentage of the monies.

• We need to provide a percentage of the monies, this can range from 10-30 % of the project price so we need a war chest of not less than £13k but more realistically £30-40k.

• There are also restrictions about when you can re-apply for funds following a successful and sometimes unsuccessful bid, so we need to pick and choose.

This means that we have a while to go before we can think of applying for a larger grant and that whilst we can apply once we have a level of funding we will also need to have a contingency in place for the unforeseen, for example we had over £30k worth of asbestos removal in the last refurbishment for which some money had been allocated but we found more than expected.

It is not all doom and gloom however, we do have plans to do some work over the next year or so for which, if we can, we apply for small grants.

• We need more storage. Until we can afford to have the changing rooms refurbished, which has been quoted at eyewatering prices. We want to turn the old toilets and hallway into storage and provide additional storage at the end of the hall.. This will serve a couple of purposes.

• Provide a secure storage area in the old accessible toilet for the storage of more valuable items, such as the tentage that we have bought for outside events.

• Allow the storage of the chairs and tables in the old entrance hall, freeing up their current cupboard to potentially make into an office space. So that people can do their Hall business in an appropriate space and so that we can store the Hall’s records which have retention periods as set out by the Charities Commission and under accounting rules.

• Kitchen refurbishment. The kitchen as many of you will know, is getting a little old and worn and due to some of the previous electrical work, has a lot of blanking plates on the wall. Ideally we would like to at least redecorate, put new lights in and perhaps change the cupboard doors and work surfaces to give it a more modern clean feel. If possible a complete replacement with catering type stainless steel facilities would be ideal, but of course this may be outside what is affordable.

Of course, as well as the projects that we would like to improve storage we also have routine maintenance to carry out, which does take time and money.

It is hoped that we can carry out a lot of this work ourselves without the need for expensive trades, however we also recognise that we are not experts and if there is anyone out there that knows people with the necessary skills who can advise us or ideally supervise us doing the work, it would be greatly appreciated.

The resignation of the current committee members from their current posts and the committee.

The election of a new committee with new appointments to be decided at the next committee meeting.

Any Other Business – your chance to ask questions and raise any issues of concerns that you may have.

Closing remarks

Thank you for coming to the AGM and showing your interest in the future of the Village Hall.

The current committee is likely to shrink to 6 people post this AGM, if no one comes forward. Under the current constitution the committee can be no smaller than 8 elected members and needs at least 1/3 of that committee to be able to make decisions i.e. 3 people.

If we have no more volunteers the current committee will be forced to look at alternatives from changing its constitution through to closing the Hall.

We are now at a crisis point and something needs to be done to prevent the Hall from permanent closure.

I do not want the last 7 years of Julie’s and my involvement with 6 as the treasurer and chair of the committee respectively to end in this way, however we both have full time jobs and commit a lot of time in the average week to the Hall and its administration.

DONM

22 October 24

Close of the meeting and the date of the frst meeting of the new committee .

Treasurer Report – AGM 24[th] Sept 2024

Report Covers period April 2023 to Mar 2024

Hello Everyone –

Thank you for coming tonight.

I have been Treasurer to Longford Village Hall since May 2019 having been voted in by the committee following the AGM of that year.

In the interests of not printing paper unnecessarily, copies of the Financial Reports will be available on request should anyone require them via email.

Our financial year starts 1[st] April to 31 March yearly and I will brief you covering the period April 2023 to Mar 24 these accounts are still to be audited but this is in hand, however, I can update you as we go along. 1[st] April 23 to 31[st] March 24 –

April 2023 started well with £12989.56 in the bank with £931 in Petty Cash. We ended this period in Mar 2024 with £23393.94 in the bank and £1329 in Petty Cash.

Our increase in income has been made up from the constant hire from both regular and casual hirers and fundraising events across the year. This included Car boots from May to Sept, Quiz Nights, which have proved very popular along with Summer and Christmas Fayres. These events have realised £3208.29 after expenses which has gone a long way to help maintain the running of the hall.

Our overall expenses, cover cleaning, all utilities, repairs and insurance but we have also incurred expenses for running the events, advertising them and also the accountancy fees.

In this year we also spent out on improvement expenditure in the form of the window and patio blinds, which were a long-awaited purchase after the recent hall refurbishment. They have been well received by the user groups to cut our light when films are being shown and for privacy during Yoga and even an afternoon disco party!

From the bank funds we have as a committee decided to apportion the overall balance and effectively ring fence funds to be sure we have enough money to accommodate various expenditures that may arise.

These are currently (but will be added to and expended from as needed) £5000 as a held Emergency Fund

£6413 as an accruing Build Fund to improve the hall and

£3412 as an accruing Maintenance Fund for repairs etc

This leaves a running balance, which is variable monthly to cover the running costs of the hall, including being able to reimburse any payments for hire made in advance to regular hirers should we close the hall tomorrow.

The hall charges have been maintained at £20 per hour for casual hirers and £15 per hour for regular hirers. This seems to be a competitive price point and currently helps us cover our running expenses. Where it would be favourable to reduce the price unfortunately this has not been possible as we cannot run at a loss just to keep the hall

running. Heat and Light are a large expense especially as various user groups from toddler sessions to Yoga all have a need for a warm hall. Of course, in the summer months this reduces but we are still faced with the cost of fuel which is out of our control.

We have had some requests to allow the hall to be used for free when the hirers is needing the space to help raise money for another charitable cause. Our constitution doesn’t permit us to give funds to another charity but as our contribution we have offered the hall for free instead. This is a committee decision made on a case-by-case basis.

Overall, the hall has been regularly attended and we have many repeat hirers. The hard work put in by the committee has resulted in many gatherings of the community and the hall has for many been a little gem in the community. It has often been said by some that they were not aware that it was here and others have said if the hall was not here that they would miss it!

The work has continued since April 2024 , with preparations towards a Summer Fayre which we maintained each year since the Jubilee. We have continued with the Car Boot sales and the Quiz night have proved very popular indeed.

The diary is very busy and access for the casual hirers has meant that the volunteers have given up more of their time to open and close the hall to make sure everything is still in good order as the hire ends. We have been investigating a possible solution to have an electronic entry system to alleviate this issue allowing the volunteers to check on the hall later at their convenience. This is proving to be a challenge at the moment logistically but will also attract a significant cost to appease the insurance company too. This is more fundraising that needs to be considered

We have also had a complete overhaul on the set of dated chairs we had inherited. These have been replaced with the ones you are now sitting on! They were very costly at £5500! This seems hugely expensive but unfortunately, we didn’t have a choice. After a shout out to the community we were able to recycle them to various user groups locally and this with donations made from them raised another £500 towards the costs.

Our future plans rely on the fundraising and regular income from the user groups and casual hirers, but we intend to make good the hall as funds permit. Our next project is Storage and and Office within the current floor space and a refurbishment of the aged kitchen space. All of this is manageable but can only be achieved in stages. With the community support this could be something we can achieve in the very near future, however, only if we can have the support from volunteers.

Something else to be considered is perhaps the purchase of a computer to be able to maintain the data that we currently administer, covering advertising, emails notifications and also the accounts maintenance. In this digital age we need to be able to bring the hall into the modern era. Currently the information is maintained on a home computer which has its own restrictions

Thank you for listening. It is not all doom and gloom, but hopefully I have given you an overview of the commitments needed for the running of the hall.

If you feel you can help support as a volunteer, we would very much welcome you to the fold!

OFFICIAL

Longford Village Hall Statement of Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2024

R/C 274435

OFFICIAL

OFFICIAL

Income Statement

Income Statement INCOME Hall Hire Ring Fenced Funds Emergency Fund Ring Fenced Funds Build Fund Grants Events Donations Total Income LESS EXPENDITURE Cleaning Gas & Electric Water Repairs & Maintenance Insurance/Subscriptions Window Deposit Build Fund - Final Build Cost GPF Expenses Glasses & Table Cloths Fitted Blinds for Hall Summer Fayre Expenses Advertising Hall Incidentals Accountancy Jubilee/AGM Printing Locksmith Bank charges Internet Mobile phone top up Christmas Decorations Vacuum Cleaner SURPLUS ON ORDINARY ACTIVITIES

2024 2023 £ £ 16,875 13,572 4,500 - 670 - - 2,052 3,208 2,144 - 166 25,253 17,934 4,244 3,793 3,368 2,467 1,257 1,270 317 1,918 1,484 1,076 583 587 112 - 1,648 - 236 - 112 - 32 - 260 120 - 386 - 137 - 13 - 194 - 30 - 64 - 150 14,240 16,402 11,013 1,532

OFFICIAL

OFFICIAL

Balance Sheet

Balance Sheet CURRENT ASSETS Sundry Debtors Cash in Hand (Petty Cash) Cash at Bank (Cooperative) LESS CURRENT LIABILITES Creditors NET ASSETS GENERAL PURPOSE FUND As @ 01 April 23 Add Surplus For Year	2024 £ 1,152 1,330 23,483 25,965 970 970 24,995 13,982 11,013 24,995	2023 £ 965 931 12,989
		14,885 904
		904
		13,981
		12,449 1,532
		13,981

Independent examiner’s statement

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe that in any material respect:

1. accounting records were not kept in respect of the Trust as required by section 130 of the Act; or 2. the accounts do not accord with those records.

I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

Elaine Bailey FCCA 28/01/2025

OFFICIAL

92 Gilpin Avenue Hucclecote Gloucester GL3 3DF

28 January 2025

Longford Village Hall c/o Julie Leach

Dear Julie

Statement of accounts 2023/24

I have reviewed the accounting records of Longford Village Hall and attached is a copy of the Statement of Accounts, duly signed.

Best regards

Elaine Bailey