2022-03-31-accounts

One year in fifty from one safe house to a movement

Annual report and financial statements

2021-2022

Why we’re here

20212022

No one told me being in a relationship would be the end of my mind, my independence, my ability to think, my self-worth. That it would be like being put into an open Our National Domestic Abuse Helpline experienced jail that you can’t get out of and then faced by people who a record 61% increase in calls and contacts from ignorantly ask women, concerned friends and family members, and

women, concerned friends and family members, and

professionals between April 2020 and February 2021. We recruited 13 new Helpline staff to keep this vital, 24-hour lifeline running.

“Why did you not just leave? “

To those I ask if they know what it feels like to live in constant fear? To constantly be watched, monitored, and In the same period, visits to our Helpline website increased sevenfold. And we knew how hard it would stripped of all means to escape?

In the same period, visits to our Helpline website increased sevenfold. And we knew how hard it would be for a woman trapped at home with her abuser to pick up the phone. So we launched Live Chat. This

Until you have walked that path, never try to understand a allows women to communicate with our Helpline advisors in silence. woman who has been disempowered, because sometimes she herself does not know that she is being abused. Women, like me, normalise the abuse to SURVIVE until you cannot distinguish between abuse and normality because to you, in that black hole...there is no way out. Anna

1 in 4

women experience domestic abuse during their lifetime.[1] TWO women a week are killed by their current or former partner.[2]

1.ONS (2020), ‘Domestic abuse prevalence and trends, England and Wales: year ending March 2020’. 2. ONS (2020), ‘Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2019’.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Why we’re here

To ensure all women and children experiencing domestic abuse in England can access the services they need and deserve – to have the opportunity to live their lives free from fear, safe from abuse and empowered to regain control of their lives.

01.

WHY WE’RE HERE

Message from our chair 06 Message from our chief excutive 08 Message from our survivor ambassador 10 2021-2022 at a glance 12 50 years at a glance 14

06

WORKING TOGETHER 02. TO END DOMESTIC ABUSE

Our 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline 17 Our refuges 17 Our community based support 18 Our specialist services 18 Our greatest assets 20 Changing policy 22 Our partners 23 Raising awareness 24 Challenging attitudes 25 Our dedicated supporters 25 Our generous funders 26 Securing sustained funding 27 Our thanks 28 Every voice matters 30 Sharpening our focus 32 Setting our direction 33

03. LOOKING AHEAD

Our strategy for 2022-2025 34 Our priorities for 2022-2025 35 Maintaining our momentum 35 Expanding our movement 35

04. LEGAL, ADMINISTRATIVE & GOVERNANCE MATTERS

Legal, administrative and governance matters 36 INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS Independent auditor’s report 42 Financial statements 44

05. INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S

The world’s very first refuge for women and their children escaping domestic abuse, known then as Chiswick Women’s Aid, opened in 1971. This was a time when women lived with domestic abuse in silence. And when they were surrounded by silence. No one spoke about it. Few tried to understand it. Policy and provision were almost nonexistent.

Domestic abuse can be difficult to recognise. It’s complex. And it’s becoming even more so. Perpetrators are finding new ways to control, harass and intimidate women.

So what we do demands expertise as well as dedication. And we’ve worked hard to build both over 50 years. We’ve developed and expanded our services, from refuges to community support to specialist guidance.

We’ve raised awareness, challenged attitudes and campaigned for changes in law and policy. And we continue to collaborate across our sector.

What started as one safe house has grown into a survivor-led movement.

We are proud of our part in it.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Why we’re here

Message from our chair Hetti Barkworth-Nanton

A year of transformation

However, more people are now talking about domestic abuse.

This year, we’re seeing the pandemic’s longer-term impact on women’s experience of domestic abuse. We’ve reflected on what we’ve learned in our 50 years, consolidating our experience and expertise in how we work. And we’ve looked ahead, responding and adapting to tackle the new, complex ways that domestic abuse reveals itself. We’re doing what we can to equip and resource Refuge to be effective for the next 50 years.

There is far greater awareness of its warning signs. Women are looking for help sooner. The creative ways we reached out to the public and to policy makers during COVID-19 have led to permanent, positive changes. Since 2018-19, Refuge’s voluntary income has increased threefold, affording us more independence and stability as an organisation.

For the women and children who so desperately need our help, COVID-19 isn’t over.

Government funding and support has reached levels never seen before, though it’s still nowhere near where it needs to be. We’re hopeful this response and investment will become the long-term, ring-fenced funding our sector badly needs.

The increase in need we saw during the UK lockdowns is ongoing and demand continues to be above pre-pandemic levels. And many women are still dealing with domestic abuse while experiencing periods of isolation, at a time when friends, family and neighbours are returning to life as ‘normal’.

Our partnerships with other agencies are more solid than ever. We’re lobbying with one voice, collaborating on best practices, and signposting our services to survivors.

I’m deeply proud that we’ve welcomed seven survivor ambassadors to the Refuge family, recognising the incredible contribution that many of our survivors have made over many years. They are courageous and selfless in sharing their experiences and ensuring others are aware of the help Refuge offers. They join our committed and passionate group of high profile Ambassadors, many of whom have supported Refuge for many years

And I’m encouraged that the supporters, funders and partners who stepped up during the worst of the pandemic have stayed with us – they recognise the need is ongoing. We were thrilled to be joined by so many of them at a milestone event, hosted by Her Royal Highness, The Duchess of Cornwall in January. Together with politicians, lawyers, funders, colleagues from Refuge and across our sector – and our new survivor ambassadors – we marked the 50 years since we opened the world’s first refuge and acknowledged the work we need to do together over the next 50.

COVID-19 has changed us too.

Like many other organisations, we have only recently come together as a whole – in the same room – for the first time in years. And the energy this has ignited is reflected in the transformation we’re going through. Our staff are collaborating through new groups and forums. Our volunteers are contributing their insights in our training events. Everyone has been invited to share their perspectives in our strategy. We are becoming a more cohesive and inclusive organisation. The scale and pace of change we’ve gone through has been phenomenal. And it’s all so we can ensure that survivors get high-quality help when they need it.

I’m incredibly proud of our whole team.

They continue to give their passion, drive and perspectives to our work. Our new strategy has been built from the bottom up with the involvement of survivors, supporters, volunteers and staff. It’s a game changer and it’s sharpening our focus. Our services haven’t changed, but we are giving even greater attention to ensuring that every woman and child gets the quality of service they deserve from us. Whilst also putting partnership working, building an inclusive and empowering culture, and survivor-led campaigning at the heart of how we work.

“In 1971, when we opened the world’s first refuge, society didn’t recognise the problem we were working to remove.

50 years on, people are talking about domestic abuse. There is far greater awareness of its warning signs. Women are reaching out for help sooner. We’re changing the debate.

But the problem is still with us. Together we have the will and commitment to stop it’.”

We’ve continued to invest in the National Domestic Abuse Helpline with a focus on improving access, responding with more languages, and launching British Sign Language interpretation. And we are proud to have a team of almost 100 volunteers supporting the Helpline service, bringing a diversity of insight and experience that strengthens the whole of Refuge.

In 1971, when we opened the world’s first refuge, society didn’t recognise the problem we were working to remove. No one spoke about domestic abuse. In the 50 years since, our work has gone beyond providing services and support. Across our sector we’ve built and shared an understanding of the complexities of domestic abuse. This has prepared us to respond to the new ways that coercive control can manifest itself. We’re better equipped to empower women to protect themselves from the evermore complex, pervasive and dark nature of technological abuse. And we’re relentless in sharing our understanding with tech companies to help them build protection into their products.

We are alert and we’re learning.

As we face our next 50 years, we’ll continue to anticipate the different forms domestic abuse will take. We’ll continue to develop the practical solutions our survivors deserve and lobby for the protection they need. And – together with our survivors, supporters and partners – we’ll continue to work towards a society that believes it is unacceptable to experience domestic abuse.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Why we’re here

“Ultimately, we need to work together to change society.

Message from our chief executive Ruth Davison

Post-covid things still feel bleak

Our staff and volunteers are incredible. Everyone continues to step up, pouring a huge amount of themselves into our work. Everyone continues to show empathy and understanding, even when the pace is exhausting.

Women and children who need support are facing even more barriers than before. Financial barriers to leaving. Barriers to accessing services that are struggling to cope with demand. And emotional barriers triggered by ongoing reports of violence against women, failings in police responses, and government tolerance of inappropriate behaviour.

As leaders we’re trying to support our staff, volunteers and survivors as best we can. We’re all in this together. And we’re a survivor-led organisation – we’re shaping our strategy and decisions based on what survivors tell us they need.

The pandemic may be easing. But this epidemic of violence against women and girls is ongoing. It is more visible now. But it’s not yet fully embraced by society as something we will not tolerate. And society has yet to develop services at the scale and quality women need.

Our supporters are unbelievably generous.

The thin silver lining to the horror of this pandemic is that people’s understanding of

domestic abuse has increased. Empathy has increased. Supporters are engaging with us in greater numbers – amplifying our campaigns, mobilising behind young survivors, calling for policy change and helping us change the law.

We’re still reliant on the ongoing generosity of the public – because frontline services are not funded in the way they need to be – and we’re incredibly grateful to every person who has made a donation, taken an action or shared our messaging. We couldn’t do this without you.

The year’s highlights and challenges.

The law change brought by Erica Osakwe, one of our survivor ambassadors, will have an enormous impact, extending the 6-month charging and sentencing limit to give women more time to report common assault. So will the Home Secretary’s decision to make violence against women and girls a national policing priority, on a par with fighting terrorism, child sexual abuse and serious and organised crime. Millions of women will be better protected and have greater access to justice as a result of these changes.

We are also grateful this year for increased funding for safe accommodation. However, funding shortfalls mean there are still not enough refuge spaces. And there is still no statutory funding for community-based services. Some of the highest-risk survivors we support are women who are choosing to hold their perpetrator accountable and pursue justice through the courts without leaving their home and their community. There is still woefully inadequate funding for this very high-risk work.

Domestic abuse is changing. We are too.

Online abuse is now a part of almost every case we work with. But it’s still poorly understood. Many in the police and the criminal justice system still don’t understand that domestic abuse is a conscious pattern of behaviour, not a one-off incident. Therse’s even less understanding of how abuse is perpetrated online and through the use of technology.

We are still the only specialist provider with a dedicated tech abuse team. It’s an incredible service, overstretched and almost entirely funded by voluntary income. But now, so many women we support are experiencing multiple forms of tech abuse: control of their finances, stalking of their accounts, online abuse, sabotage of their social media or tracking their location. So ramping up our tech abuse services and working to influence the Online Safety Bill are both priorities.

Our vision for the next 50 years is world where domestic abuse and violence against women and girls is not tolerated – where women and children can live in safety and free from fear”

Our other priority is children. Two thirds of the residents in our refuges are children. And they are now recognised as victims and survivors of domestic abuse in their own right. But there is little understanding of their needs. There is still no statutory provision for them and the need for child support workers is urgent.

The legacy of the last 50 years.

In 1971 the world’s first refuge – a single house – was opened. Since then, we’ve seen the building of a movement. It’s driven by specialist organisations, led by and for women, working to support the specific needs of survivors. Cross-sector work is critical. Together, we have incredible insight, experience and expertise. As we grow, in response to the need of women and children, it’s our job to ensure that the movement grows with us. We will continue to collaborate. And we’ll continue to work alongside survivors as they step forward and support each other.

The work ahead.

Women are dying as a result of male violence. It must stop. Women’s lives are being cut short – their control, their choice, their ability to create futures for themselves and their children. Violence against women and girls is at epidemic levels and there is much work to do.

We will continue to call for the protection that women need in society: in law, in the response from police, in their experience of the criminal justice system. Ultimately, we need to work together to change attitudes. We need to continue to challenge policy and improve practice. We all need to call out unacceptable behaviour. We all need to prevent it happening.

Our vision for the next 50 years is of a world where domestic abuse and violence against women and girls is not tolerated, and where women and children can live in safety and free from fear.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Why we’re here

Message from our new survivor ambassador Erica Osakwe

My journey started with my own experience of abuse and assault as a teenager.

“I never wanted to be seen as victim, I’m a survivor and now I’m a law changer. I’m so proud of my journey and was delighted to work with Refuge, as well so many brave survivors.

For me, as for many women, it was hard enough to process the experience, let alone come forward to report it. After about three years I went public. I spoke up. And, hearing other people’s stories, I began to understand the magnitude of what I’d been through.

The police approached me and offered their support. Despite my initial reluctance, they assured me they would do what they could to ensure I received justice. I agreed to report the abuse I’d experienced.

Together we are more powerful, our voices are louder , and we can bring about real change for women and girls. ”

The process of reporting a serious crime is gruelling.

Weeks of waiting. Hours of painstakingly replaying the details of each incident of abuse – of remembering events, locations and witnesses. And then, for me, months of further waiting, only to learn that my report had been incorrectly filed and was lost. The police encouraged me to repeat my report. At first I refused to go through the gruelling process again. They persuaded me to brief them by phone.

Then the police told me there was nothing they could

do.

Because the crime perpetrated against me was considered to be Common Assault, prosecution had to start within six months of the offence. I was told it was too late. I had timed out. And that was it. To this day I have never heard back from the police. No follow up. No support. No closure. No help at all.

I had to take action.

I decided to change the law. My aim was simple, to change the six-month time limit on reporting Common Assault for victims of domestic abuse.

I couldn’t understand how someone could have long, historic experiences of abuse, finally come out of it, finally escape, seek support, get guidance, come forward to report, and be too late to access justice. For most victims, working through this process can take years. Many take years even to realise that what we’ve experienced is abuse. It just didn’t make sense. It felt inhumane. And that’s what drove my campaign, Victims Too.

So I sent my petition to the Petitions Committee in Parliament.

It went live. I needed a following. I messaged, emailed, called, connected. And I realised, even if I didn’t change the law, my campaign was raising awareness of the six-month time limit, so that other people could make the right decision for themselves.

In the first two months I had 2,000 signatures. And my conversations with other survivors gave me the momentum to keep going. Suddenly it wasn’t only about me. It was about preventing others having the same experience I’d had.

“Just don’t give up. You deserve more. You can give yourself more.”

Then we all heard about the horrific murder of Sarah Everard. The day before, my petition had 11,000 signatures. The day after, it had 55,000. People understood what it meant to seek justice. And they came together to push the petition toward the 100,000 needed for it to be considered for debate in Parliament.

My petition concluded with over 60,000 signatures. Then MP Yvette Cooper stepped in. She understood that abuse should not be treated as a one-off incident. She saw the opportunity to address the time limit with the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. She championed it through the House of Commons. Refuge, the Centre for Women’s Justice and Women’s Aid brought their expertise and their social media audiences to propel the campaign.

The BBC reported on the number of people who had been timed out of accessing justice – and therefore the number of perpetrators who had evaded justice. And I was beyond grateful to receive the Marie Claire Future Shapers ‘Women’s Rights Defender’ award in 2021, boosting my campaign even further.

Victims now have longer to report common assault.

The Bill, which contained a change to the length of time survivors have to report within, received Royal Assent in April this year.

But this is just the first step. Domestic abuse is intricate and complex. Policy and practice should reflect this.

Charities like Refuge are for people like us. I am thrilled to be one of their survivor ambassadors – to speak out about my experience, to listen to other survivors, and to help amplify all our voices.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

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Why we’re here

2021-2022 at a glance

We maintained our life-changing services at full pace, supporting 26,439 survivors and children.

Our specialist services helped survivors and children with complex needs

84% had experienced psychological abuse 59% had experienced physical abuse, with one third injured when they accessed our full services 40% had their lives threatened by their abuser 28% had experienced sexual violence

1,777 accessed our refuge provision

24,662 were supported in our community-based services

Demand for our National Domestic Abuse Helpline continues to be above pre-pandemic levels

40% had experienced abuse involving technology 39% had experienced economic abuse 19% had mental health difficulties

13,000 callers each month with:

•73% from people seeking information and support

14% disclosed needs related to prescription medication, 15% to drugs and 4% to alcohol

• •10% with police, social workers and healthcare staff

•10% with concerned friends, family members or neighbours

11% said they were feeling suicidal by the time they reached out to us 6% had no recourse to public funds with:

46,153+ average website visits per month

9,297 live chats 24/7 support in all languages maintained

•437 dealing with complex immigration cases, up 12% from last year

• •88 victims of modern slavery

We continued to make a difference to survivors’ safety and wellbeing

We maintained 306 units of safe accommodation within 43 refuges across 14 local authorities We received 18,743 community-based referrals and 1,140 accommodation referrals

We supported survivors through the charging of 226 perpetrators and 206 guilty verdicts

Our supporters campaigned alongside us

85,243 individuals took action to support our work 118 companies collaborated with us

7 survivor ambassadors shared their experiences and helped us widen our audience

Our social media content was seen 10.5 million times with:

•4.9 million Twitter post impressions

• •2.7 million TikTok views

• •1.4 million Instagram post impressions

•967,000 Facebook post impressions

• •484,000 LinkedIn post impressions

Domestic abuse demands a response from the whole of society, not just services like ours. How will we know this response is happening? And making a real difference?

When every woman can recognise domestic abuse sooner.

When she can access support the moment she needs it.

When her perpetrator is held to account. When she is helped to recover and get her life back quickly.

When we, as a society, make it unacceptable to experience domestic abuse.

We need to keep the pressure on. Together.

Our funders helped us deliver more than we can with limited statutory funding

We spent 87p in every £1 on our life-changing frontline services and surrounding costs.

We raised £10,110,107 in voluntary income. £97,000 in pro bono legal time was donated by partners.36,048 people signed up to a fundraising event.

Why we’re here

----- Start of picture text -----
Refuge launches ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign,
setting up 16 silhouettes outside New Scotland Yard
to represent the 16 women killed by current or
former police officers since 2009.
The Home Secretary reclassifies domestic abuse as Domestic Abuse Act comes into force in the UK. Refuge collaborates
a strategic policing priority. Refuge launches the across the sector and with politicians from all major parties
Unsocial Spaces campaign and report, to successfully influence several critical changes to the Act.
calling on the government to compel 2021 There is now a statutory requirement for local authorities
social media platforms to do much more to respond to provide safe accommodation for survivors fleeing abuse.
50 years at a glance to and prevent tech abuse on their platforms.
2021
UK Government launches new strategy for Tackling
Violence Against Women and Girls, aiming to increase
2021 support for victims and survivors, increase the number 2021
of perpetrators brought to justice and reduce the
prevalence of violence against women and girls
in the long term.
Refuge launches its Live Chat service to enable women
Harvey Weinstein is accused of to contact our Helpline online and in silence.
First Women’s Liberation The Equal Opportunities Commission sexual harassment and assault spanning Refuge launches The Naked Threat campaign
march in London takes place. comes into effect to oversee the Equal Pay Act three decades. An outpouring of stories follows to criminalise threats to share intimate
Over 4,000 people take to the streets. and Sex Discrimination Act. and the #MeToo movement is born. images. Refuge and the Co-operative Bank
The world’s first refuge for women and The Act enables married women to Refuge establishes its Tech Abuse Service 2019 publish Know Economic Abuse, revealing
children escaping domestic violence obtain a court order against their violent to support women who have had technology that 8.7 million people across the country
is opened by Refuge, formerly known as 1975 husbands without divorce or separation proceedings. used as a weapon of domestic abuse. have experienced economic abuse.
Chiswick Women’s Aid, in west London. The Equal Pay (Amendment) Act comes into force in 1985.
1971 Refuge runs the National Domestic Abuse Helpline
House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee on domestic violence 2017 independently, expanding and modernising to make it more accessible and support more calls and contacts. 2020
1971 turns to Refuge for evidence. 1976 Refuge and the Violence Against Women and Girls sector
successfully campaign against changes that risk closing
half of refuges across the country.
Home Office announces Multi Agency Risk
Assessment Conferences (MARACs) to be
introduced in all areas with Specialist
Domestic Violence Courts. These conferences are
UK ratifies the UN Convention on The Convention on the Elimination of Refuge develops its services to provide a 2011 central to ensuring a coordinated,
the Elimination of All Forms of 1980 All Forms of Discrimination Against Women ‘one stop shop’ approach to domestic multi-agency response for high-risk victims.
Discrimination Against Women. is created, an international bill of rights for women. abuse survivors.
The Council of Europe’s Convention on
1986 Women are allowed to apply for a loan or credit in their own names. Prior to this a woman 1979 2012 preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. The Istanbul 2006
had to get their father or husband to sign for a loan, Convention includes obligations for states to
even if they earned more. set up protection and services such as shelters,
rape crisis centres, helplines and counselling.
Signed by the UK but not yet ratified.
The Sex Offenders Act comes into
We become ‘Refuge’ in the presence of Diana, force in the UK, introducing a Sex
Princess of Wales. In the same year, violence against women is recognised 1994 Offenders Register. The Protection from Harassment Act allows courts 2003
for the first time as a violation of human to impose civil restraining orders.
rights.
2000 2001
Rape in marriage is made a crime Refuge and Women’s Aid establish a
1993 afer 15 years of serious campaigning 1997 2001 24-hour National Domestic Violence 2004
by women’s organisations. Helpline.
Prime Minister’s wife, Cherie Blair, a trustee of Refuge, Domestic Violence, Crime and Victim’s Act
hosts a reception to mark Refuge’s 30th anniversary. provides a major overhaul of laws
At this point, Refuge has supported more relating to domestic abuse.
than 300,000 women.
Refuge is a charity registered in England and Wales (277424)
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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Working together to end domestic abuse

Every single day, a woman takes the first step to access support, or is safer, or able to escape, or still alive, because of what we do.

We know we deliver real change for women and girls when we:

• •deliver high quality services

• •drive changes in policy and legislation

• •raise awareness and challenge attitudes.

We don’t do this alone. We can’t do this alone.

Our staff and volunteers are incredible. They have phenomenal insight, expertise and empathy. But the support that women and children deserve depends on much more than our own hard work and dedication.

Our work is strengthened by the courage and selflessness of our ambassadors – survivors and celebrities. It is fuelled by the enthusiasm and persistence of our supporters. It is sustained by the commitment and generosity of our funders. And it is informed by the insight and expertise of our partners across our sector.

Here are the highlights from our work together this year.

Our priorities this year

1. Ensure we deliver high-quality services for women and children facing domestic abuse.

2. Ensure our workforce is happy and healthy.

3. Galvanise society to realise our vision by developing our engagement strategy.

4. Continue to develop our equality, diversity and inclusion work.

5. Agree a clear and ambitious focus for Refuge.

6. Continue to strengthen our governance and leadership

Refuge saved my life. When I called the National Domestic Abuse Helpline in January 2015, I didn’t know how I was going to be able to flee my abusive partner. I’d lived in fear for years, not knowing who to turn to.

Going into a refuge saved my life. It provided safety for me when I needed it most. It provided me the first step to the rest of my life.

I am forever thankful.

Natasha

Priority 1 Ensure we deliver high-quality services for women and children facing domestic abuse

Since opening our first safe house 50 years ago, our specialist refuge staff continue to give women time and space to make decisions about their futures. They are on hand to provide one-to-one emotional and practical support. And they advocate for survivors to supplement and support existing local services.

Our 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline

We know that some women need extra help. Women with disabilities are twice as likely to experience domestic abuse and typically subject to abuse for longer than non-disabled women. So in May 2021 we launched video call access to Helpline Advisors via a British Sign Language interpreter. We also enhanced our website with screen reader compatibility, improved keyboard accessibility and three frequently needed languages. We’re striving to achieve Level AAA conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

This year we’re working even more closely with local partners to enhance our refuge services and deliver housing advocacy. We’ve joined ten other specialist sector partners to deliver trauma-informed, survivor-led support next year for women in safe accommodation across London.

We’re also responding to the growing number of young survivors contacting our live chat service about domestic and sexual abuse from peers. We’ve increased our training for our Helpline volunteers and streamlined our referral pathway to our tech and economic abuse services

Our refuges

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Working together to end domestic abuse

Priority 1 Ensure we deliver high-quality services for women and children facing domestic abuse

Our specialist services

Our community-based support

We are proud to be the sector leader in combating tech abuse. Our 40 tech champions, supported by 7 specialist staff, are trained to empower women with the knowledge to protect themselves online.

Many women don’t need emergency refuge accommodation. They need confidential, practical and emotional support in their own home or in a safe place in their community. And they need it throughout the process of dealing with domestic abuse – from making themselves and their children safe, to navigating the legal system, to rebuilding their lives.

In May 2021 we launched our Tech Safety website offering easy-to-follow guidance on how to secure common devices and accounts. Created with survivors, the website includes a chatbot in multiple languages offering real-time, automated guidance.

In October 2021 we followed up with our Home Tech interactive tool, developed with Avast, showing how to secure the ten connected home devices most commonly reported by women experiencing tech abuse.

We continue to support women whenever and wherever they need it: in their own homes, at our offices, or at local community drop-in centres. And our outreach workers provide tailored services, drawing on expertise on safety and housing, police and legal support, the civil and criminal courts, welfare rights, grants and loans, finances and debt, access to employment or training, gender-based violence services and culturally-specific language services.

----- Start of picture text -----
1 in 6
women
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1 in 6 women (16%) said that the online abuse they suffered came from an intimate partner or former partner.

Tech abuse has a devastating effect on women’s lives. On both their physical and mental wellbeing. We are proud to be a leader in combating tech abuse.

----- Start of picture text -----
Refuge helped me so
much, their tech team were
brilliant, they helped me
understand tech abuse and
secure my devices.
Women should not
be forced offline but
empowered to use our tech
safely and free from abuse.
Amy
----- End of picture text -----

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Working together to end domestic abuse

Priority 2 Ensure our workforce is happy and healthy

Our greatest assets – our people

• We’ve delivered a range of training for employees across 154 training courses. And we’ve relaunched the RQF Level 3 Supporting Survivors of Domestic Abuse qualification, registering 13 learners, 5 new assessors and 3 new internal quality assurers.

Our people – staff and volunteers – are phenomenal. They are our source of energy, creativity and dedication. They live our values – day in, day out – in everything they do.

• Thanks to a generous donation from Barclays, we’ve funded wellbeing sessions to support our staff in building resilience and learning how to self-care in the workplace and working from home. We’ve also offered knowledge-based courses run by Mental Health First Aid England.

Women’s need for support remains above pre-pandemic levels. And this year our team has continued to meet that growing demand, offering support to many thousands of women and children every day. And they’ve done so with empathy and understanding.

As an organisation, we’re responding by trying to support our staff, volunteers and survivors as best we can. We’re all in this together. We’re responding by trying to listen even more to each other.

• We’ve changed our Employee Assistance Programme to give staff and their dependents an enhanced service. From April 2022 it now includes eight counselling sessions per year, full triage and assessment, unlimited 24/7/365 confidential telephone support, legal information, debt advice and a family advice line.

We’re shaping our strategy and decisions based on what survivors tell us they need. And we continue to review our systems and processes so that our people can deliver their best work and offer the highest quality support to the women and children who need us.

• Having identified clinical supervision as a priority, we have now partnered with the British Red Cross. Monthly group sessions for all frontline staff started in February 2022, with quarterly sessions for all volunteers and non-frontline staff running from April 2022.

• We have supported the move to hybrid working, providing a range of homeworking, wellbeing and educational resources to staff. We’ll maintain hybrid working, wherever possible.

TRANSFORM EMPOWER FEMINIST EXPERT

Our values

Our greatest assets are our people, their dedication, energy and creativity.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Working together to end domestic abuse

Priority 3 Galvanise society to realise our vision by developing our engagement strategy

We welcomed the report in September 2021 of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, identifying failings in police engagement with women and girls and demanding a whole system approach.

Changing policy

Domestic abuse is the context of many other crimes against women and girls, including 36% of stalking and harassment cases and 19% of sexual offences. It is the most prevalent form of violence against women and girls, relating to around one in five homicides. In England and Wales 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. Two women a week will die. Yet only 8% of recorded domestic abuse crimes were charged or summonsed in 2020-21.

A month later we launched our ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign, in the wake of high-profile homicide cases, calling on the Home Secretary to put action behind her words on tackling violence against women and girls. Setting up 16 silhouettes outside New Scotland Yard, to represent the 16 women killed by current or former police officers since 2009, we achieved 212 press articles across 157 outlets with a potential reach of over 2 billion. Following our campaign, violence against women and girls is now a national policing priority, on a par with terrorism, child sexual abuse and serious and organised crime. The police are now required to increase their response to violence against women and girls, and actively try to prevent it.

The 2021 Domestic Abuse Act came into force at the start of this year, concluding years of work across the women’s sector. It contained many provisions that we had campaigned for: the duty of local authorities to commission domestic abuse safe accommodation, the recognition of economic abuse, the abolition of the ‘rough sex’ defence, the criminalising of non-fatal strangulation and the threat to share intimate images. However, the Act failed to make provision to protect migrant women and to amend aspects of Universal Credit payment arrangements that can exacerbate economic abuse.

We know that robust regulation is also needed in response to the use of technology as a tool of domestic abuse. However, the current failure of the Online Safety Bill to reference women and girls misses a huge opportunity to help women experiencing tech abuse. Our report Unsocial spaces in October 2021 formed the evidence base for our continuing work to influence this Bill.

Our work immediately shifted to the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill through parliament. Horrified by the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a Metropolitan Police Officer, and by the ongoing epidemic of violence against women and girls, we pushed even harder for change.

1 in 3 women

Have experienced online abuse in their lives.

Women and girls across the world have increasingly voiced their concern at harmful, sexist, misogynistic and violent content and behaviour online. It is therefore important to acknowledge that the Internet is being used in a broader environment of widespread and systemic structural discrimination and genderbased violence against women and girls.

The UN Special Rapporteur on VAWG

Our partners

When we work together, we can challenge and change attitudes more easily, build our expertise and provide women with the support they need and deserve. This year we’ve strengthened our coalitions across our sector and formed new partnerships to do more.

Throughout the year we have worked closely with our local authority commissioners to ensure that our services meet the needs of survivors in their area. Our commissioners are vital. They help us access the additional funding we need to grow and develop our services and deliver a best practice response. And they advocate for us with elected members, bringing our work to life for them. In turn, we help local authorities strengthen their response to domestic abuse. We offer training for local professionals, advise on campaigns and contribute to strategic groups.

The launch of our Home Tech interactive tool in October 2021, in partnership with Avast, showed women how to secure the ten connected home devices most commonly reported by those experiencing tech abuse. To mark our 50th anniversary in November 2021, Fleishman Hillard partnered with us to create our Domestic abuse is getting smarter campaign.

Our tech abuse expertise contributed directly to the work of a multi-agency coalition including Carnegie UK, The End Violence Against Women Coalition, Glitch, NSPCC, Refuge, 5Rights and academics Lorna Woods and Clare McGlynn. Together we shaped and published the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Code of Practice. It sets out detailed guidance for all tech companies to help them understand and respond to the breadth of online violence against women and girls.

Written to put before the Online Safety Bill Committee in May 2022, the code will evolve as the Bill progresses through Parliament and establishes tech providers’ legal obligations. If adopted, the UK would become the first country to hold tech companies to account on tackling online violence against women and girls. We will continue to lobby the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport for the implementation of a dedicated code of practice to regulate the response of tech and social media companies to online violence against women and girls.

In January 2022, our joint campaign with our survivor ambassador Erica Osakwe, Women’s Aid Federation of England and the Centre for Women’s Justice secured the extension of the Common Assault time limit from 6 months to 2 years, a huge win giving women and girls more time to seek justice.

Building on our earlier campaign and report, Know Economic Abuse, we fulfilled the commitment we made together with The Co-operative Bank to launch the Commission on Online Banking. With members including survivors, agencies, banks, MPs and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, we will conduct a collaborative, cross-sector review to identify and share good online banking practices and improvements.

More still needs to be done to raise awareness of violence against women, to increase survivors’ confidence in reporting, to improve the police response and to speed up the criminal justice system. Until misogyny is recognised as a form of hate crime, judges are limited in their sentencing powers, and crime data cannot be recorded in a way that informs and changes practice.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Working together to end domestic abuse

Priority 3 Galvanise society to realise our vision by developing our engagement strategy

Raising awareness

I was so devastated. I don’t even do any purchases online anymore. I used to use Amazon sometimes; I don’t even do that anymore. I don’t give out bank details. I’m quite cautious now. I don’t bother with the dating stuff now, I’ve just deleted it. I don’t want to do any of that.

During the pandemic, more of our lives moved online. Domestic abuse did too. And it’s growing in its complexity and pervasiveness. We now see very few cases of domestic abuse that don’t include some technological element. And we know there’s a direct link between online stalking, the control of devices, and physical abuse and violence.

So in November 2021, we used our 50th anniversary to put the spotlight on tech abuse.

• We created a compelling, multi-platform campaign, centred on a rug-pulling video advert.

Willow

• We shared the experiences of one of our survivor ambassadors.

• We drew attention to the importance of our work, 50 years on.

• We reached a total audience of over 62 million.

Our campaign encouraged many more calls to our National Domestic Abuse Helpline and contacts over social media. And many survivors got in touch wanting to share their experiences and support our work.

We reached an audience of 51,946,000 with 4 pieces of national coverage.

More than 25 celebrities and influencers reached out to 8,255,000 with 21 pieces of Instagram and Twitter coverage.

We reached 1,700,000 with 1 piece of broadcast coverage featuring one of our survivor ambassadors. 1 piece of regional coverage reached a further 500,000.

Challenging attitudes

Public awareness helps change public policy. And this year our celebrity supporters rallied around our ongoing efforts to influence two important pieces of government legislation.

In February 2022, famous faces including Olivia Colman, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Bronagh Waugh joined our ongoing call on the government to add misogyny to existing hate crime laws through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

The Newlove Amendment set out to give women and girls the same protections as others who are targeted solely because of who they are. Recognising misogyny as a hate crime would help identify trends, enable tougher sentences and give women more confidence in coming forward to report.

Our video highlights the everyday activities that women have to think about – and men don’t – and the ways in which they are expected to change their behaviour. Our campaigning work on this issue continues.

In preparation for the second reading of the Online Safety Bill in April 2022, Georgia Harrison joined us in demanding rapid action on revenge porn. Together we are calling for the Bill to acknowledge misogyny, misogynistic content and online abuse that specifically – and disproportionately – impacts women and girls.

We are also asking the government to include our cross-sector code of practice in the Bill, setting clear expectations for tech companies’ response to online violence against women and girls.

Our dedicated supporters

We have always been fortunate in having the support of passionate, dedicated, high-profile individuals. And in recent years we’ve partnered with more talented celebrities and influencers. This year, many other supporters have spontaneously taken the initiative to share our campaigns on their social media.

Survivors’ voices are at the heart of our work. Some bravely share their personal stories to strengthen our work. In November 2021, to mark our five decades and International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we were proud to appoint seven survivor ambassadors: Amy Aldworth, Erica Osakwe, Hollie Woolford, Melanie Clarke, Natasha Saunders, and Melony and Hayden Slack.

He’d send me voicemails - you can do that on Instagram. He made other accounts where he threatened to kill me and then he messaged my family on (social media). When I fell pregnant, that’s when all his history come up. It still continued after the relationship ended, he’s still trying to get in contact with me.

Scarlett

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Working together to end domestic abuse

Priority 3 Galvanise society to realise our vision by developing our engagement strategy

We are incredibly grateful to Bonhams for holding the auction, to Olivia Hall who was instrumental in bringing together the collection, to all the artists who kindly donated pieces and to everyone who supported our work by making a purchase.

Our generous funders

We rely on the generosity of many – individuals, companies and charities. Some directly fund our work. Some partner with us and contribute their expertise. They are too many to mention, and some choose to remain anonymous. This year, the contributions of our funders and supporters include these highlights.

The National Lottery Community Fund In February 2022, the National Lottery Community Fund committed £497,587 to our Eastern European Advocacy Service in West London from 2022 to 2025. Their generosity means that we can continue to provide specialist native-language support to Eastern European women and children who have experienced domestic abuse and other forms of gender-based violence including modern slavery and trafficking. 2022 marks the National Lottery Community Fund’s 10th year of support for the Eastern European Advocacy service, and we want to thank them for making the service what it is today.

Barclays

Barclays has supported our tech abuse and our culturally specific services since 2020. Alongside this commitment, they’ve strengthened our IT cybersecurity infrastructure, publicised our National Domestic Abuse Helpline, and sponsored resilience and wellbeing initiatives for our staff.

Their strategic level support is transforming how our experts tackle economic abuse and support survivors. Our work together this year led to us winning the ‘Partnership with a National Charity’ category in the Better Society Awards in May 2022. We are grateful and excited to continue our partnership together.

Our Christmas Appeal 2021

This year we launched our first digital-only Christmas appeal. A series of holiday related emails were sent to over 100,000 of our supporters, with requests for funding and invitations to share our Helpline and complete polls. We received over 1,000 messages of support for the women in our services, raised over £120,000 and gained the momentum to launch a range of successful paid digital marketing. The appeal raised over £1.2m for our lifesaving services. And almost 900 new monthly gifts were set up, bringing in a combined yearly income of over £100,000.

Bonhams

To mark our 50th anniversary, in December 2021 Bonhams hosted our first ever art auction. The sale raised a total of £33,800 and featured works donated by leading contemporary artists including Maggi Hambling, Chris Levine, and The Connor Brothers.

Virtual challenge events

Our dedicated and passionate supporters, across the country, jumped in again this year with both feet. Taking on a variety of challenges from crochet, to runs and walks, to cold water swims, they inspired each other to raise £1.87 million for our work.

Charity of the year community programme

We continue to be grateful to those organisations that choose us to be their charity of the year, encouraging the engagement of their employees. This year, we promoted our 50th year, asking supporters to set themselves a challenge related to the number 50. These valuable partnerships raised £186,000 for our work. Lloyd’s Market Association and Savanta each raised over £10,000, with their employees taking part in a huge range of activities including photo competitions, marathons and Christmas card appeals.

Securing sustained funding

Across our sector, life-changing services continue to be funded voluntarily by charities, companies and generous individuals. Their support is needed and deeply appreciated. But it makes planning and delivery difficult and potentially precarious. We’ve continued to campaign together for statutory funding for safe accommodation and expert community services so that all women and children can access the support they need and deserve.

The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 cements the government’s commitment to a legal duty to fund emergency accommodation refuges. However, women’s need for support remains significantly above pre-pandemic levels and the commitment has yet to be met with adequate funding.

This commitment is needed across all the services that women approach for support and justice. In response to the launch of the Victims Bill consultation in December 2021, we called for statutory funding for vital community-based services and multi-agency partnership, the cornerstone of a victim-centred, trauma-informed response to violence against women and girls. Community support can help a woman remain in her own home safely. Robust, rapid police investigation, charging decisions and court trials can help her remain within the criminal justice system without fear.

The Home Office’s new Domestic Abuse Plan signals a welcome intention to fund specialist services. This commitment allows us to plan for growth and innovation in our National Domestic Abuse Helpline, so that all women can access support in the way they need it.

Domestic abuse is estimated to cost society at least £66 billion each year. And a decade of austerity has meant that frontline organisations are constantly facing a funding cliff edge. We continue to collaborate across our sector to campaign for funding to match need. Only when adequate, long-term, sustainable, ring-fenced funding is made available will all frontline services be able to ensure no woman or child is turned away from the specialist support they deserve.

Across our sector, lifechanging services continue to be funded voluntarily, by charities, companies and generous individuals.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Working together to end domestic abuse

Priority 3

Galvanise society to realise our vision by developing our engagement strategy

Izzy and Alexander Leslie Jo Brand Lily Safra Lloyd’s Market Association Mark Haddon and Sos Eltis Marshall Wace Masonic Charitable Foundation McCann Nationwide Building Society Neil Amos Old Possum’s Practical Trust Olivia Colman Patrick Stewart PayPlan Penny Appeal Peter and Krystyna Holland Picturehouse Cinemas Ranvir Singh Saffron Hocking Savanta Smt Vidyaben Patel Stewarts Law LLP The Alan Edward Higgs Charity The Brook Trust The Chillag Family Charitable Trust The Co-Operative Bank The Dahan Family Foundation The Gloag Foundation The Inner London Magistrates Courts Poor Box Charity The John Coates Charitable Trust The Olwyn Foundation The Pye Foundation Tina The Musical Travers Smith Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP Winella – Dr Chandra Sayal Fund Zara McDermott

Our thanks

To all our loyal supporters and generous partners. To the families of those who left a gift in their will. And to our ambassadors and donors. Your commitment to our cause is truly remarkable. We cannot continue to give women the high-quality support they deserve without your help.

Thank you.

A+E Networks AMV BBDO Avast Avon Cosmetics Ltd Banham Foundation Barclays BBC Children in Need BBH Benefit Cosmetics Billie Piper Brian Woolf Trust Britain Thinks Catriona Cannon Charles Russell Speechlys Christopher A. Holder David Morrissey Fiona Bruce Fleishman Hillard Harrison-Frank Family Foundation Helen Mirren Helena Kennedy Hodge Jones & Allen ICAP Invesco

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Working together to end domestic abuse

Priority 4 Continue to develop our equality, diversity and inclusion work

We have reviewed our induction process and training, introducing quarterly welcome events for new colleagues, and establishing mandatory equality, diversity and inclusion training.

Every voice matters

Across our community, we have found new ways to attract a diversity of people to strengthen the whole of Refuge. And we’re involving survivors, the public, volunteers and staff to ensure our work is accessible and inclusive for all the women and children we work with.

We aim to be a survivor-led organisation. Our plans and developments are informed by the needs of survivors. And we’re transforming our approach, moving from consulting with survivors to genuine engagement with them. 50 years on, we continue to learn about the difference we make, the longer-term impact our services have on women’s lives, and how we can keep improving what we do.

To meet the ongoing post-pandemic demand, our volunteer team has doubled, bringing an ever-wider range of experiences and insights to our National Domestic Abuse Helpline.

The work of our survivor ambassadors is broadening our reach and amplifying our messages. Their voices are helping us connect with more women and children who need our services.

Our staff forum is recruiting new members and meeting monthly to engage everyone’s views on how we work. We have also established a range of employee network groups.

The unique perspectives and areas of expertise of our new trustees and independent sub-committee members are already contributing to the effectiveness of our board.

We have reviewed our equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) monitoring categories to bring them in line with good practice. We’ve established our EDI steering group and network groups.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Working together to end domestic abuse

Priority 5 Agree a clear and ambitious focus

Sharpening our focus

A third head of services role for children and young people has been created, along with a children’s programme lead. Children are our largest client group, and now recognised as victims and survivors of domestic abuse in their own right, but there is no statutory provision for them. We want to demonstrate what it looks like to provide children with high-quality, dedicated services.

This year, we’ve looked back over our five decades and responded to the pandemic’s more recent impact. We understand – better than ever – the new, complex ways that domestic abuse reveals itself and the devastating effect it has on women and their families.

These reflections strengthen our resolve to ensure that women and children receive the high-quality support they deserve. And we’ve reviewed our leadership structure to organise our experience and expertise around the services we know they need.

A fourth newly appointed head of services will focus on quality, measuring our performance and impact. They’ll gather the evidence we need to influence practice across our sector and policy across our society. A new services information database and reporting tools will support data-driven decision making across our services, empower our fundraising, and inform our external engagement work.

We have appointed a head of services to focus on delivering an excellent housing management response across our refuge accommodation. We are continuing to grow our National Domestic Abuse Helpline team to meet ongoing demand, provide consistent enhanced support, and strengthen our referral pathways to our refuge services and our tech and economic abuse teams.

A second newly appointed head of services will focus on our community-based, tech and economic abuse services. And we’re recruiting additional operational leaders into this team. We are the leading experts in supporting survivors through these increasingly prevalent forms of abuse. And we’re uniquely positioned to influence professionals, policy makers, legislators, technology and finance businesses.

Priority 6 Continue to strengthen our governance

Setting our direction

All organisations have faced huge challenges in recent years. Our board of trustees have guided Refuge through with enthusiasm and commitment, helping to future proof us. We’re grateful to all our trustees for giving us their time, expertise and oversight.

We’re sharing this transparency across our leaders, establishing clear terms of reference for our senior leadership team, extending leadership responsibilities by creating a senior management team and working groups, and deepening trust across all our leaders through active team building.

This year, our approach to appointing trustees is part of our ongoing journey to increase diversity within Refuge. We’ve looked for unique perspectives, experiences and areas of expertise that add to the overall effectiveness of our board. All our trustees show a commitment to justice and to our feminist values that enhances our approach to equality, diversity and inclusion across Refuge.

We’re introducing a new appraisal system. Currently in review, it includes 360-degree feedback and holds us to account for what we do and how we do it.

We’ve refreshed our articles of association, incorporated a Refuge trading subsidiary, successfully achieved BSI9001 reaccreditation, and ensured our alignment with all legislative and compliance requirements.

Together we set an ambitious goal of achieving best-in-class governance and leadership. And our progress is well underway.

Together with survivors, staff and volunteers, our trustees and leadership team have used this significant year to take stock. We’ve adjusted to how life is, for us and the women we serve, post-pandemic. And we’ve grown and transformed as an organisation.

We’ve redesigned our organisation risk register and created a cross-Refuge risk group to update and manage the action plan arising from it.

We’ve done this with an understanding of how domestic abuse is changing, what this means for women and children, and how society’s attitudes are shifting.

We’ve introduced consistent reporting and a combined action tracker for our five committees and our board, set meeting dates well in advance, reviewed terms of reference, and strengthened reporting lines into our senior leadership team.

The result is our new three-year strategy.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Looking ahead

Our strategy for 2022-25

50 years ago we set up the world’s first refuge – what’s changed?

Most of the people we support are children – they are two out of three residents in our refuges.

Domestic abuse is still the most prevalent form of violence against women and girls, relating to around one in five homicides. It is the context for many other crimes, including 36% of stalking and harassment cases and 19% of sexual offences. Yet only 8% of recorded domestic abuse crimes were charged or summonsed in 2020-21. We need even greater recognition of the extent of domestic abuse and the harm it causes.

Recognising the huge and disproportionate impact domestic abuse has on children’s lives – and doing more to respond to their needs as individuals – is a priority for us. We need to show what it looks like to support children. We need to make the case for specialist funding to provide child support workers in all refuges. We need to report the difference this can make in their lives.

Refuge is committed to a world where domestic abuse and violence against women and girls is not tolerated and where women and children can live in safety.

It’s time to stop thinking about domestic abuse as something that happens within the home.

Refuge has become the leader in combating tech abuse. We are the only frontline organisation with a specialist tech team. But the threat is growing. Ultimately, robust regulation is needed to ensure a strong response from tech companies and the criminal justice system. So we’re working hard to maintain momentum around the Online Safety Bill. We need to grow our tech abuse services and we need to keep changing the debate.

Refuge believes that domestic abuse and violence against women and girls will only end when we create gender equality.

Our priorities for 2022-2025

1. Provide emergency specialist accommodation, community-based and specialist support services

2. Deliver high quality services and set quality standards for domestic abuse services

3. Drive policy change to ensure sustainability of domestic abuse services.

4. Prevent violence against women and girls through awareness raising and changing harmful and pervasive societal attitudes

5. Build partnerships to share and grow our expertise and expand our impact.

Maintaining our momentum

To achieve our strategic priorities, we will:

1. Demonstrate and deliver the leadership, behaviours and culture that create a high performing and diverse workforce who are motivated and committed.

2. Deliver the strategic plan by improving infrastructure, systems and processes, and by ensuring good governance, impact and transparency.

3. Ensure survivors are at the heart of our

4. work by strengthening our safeguarding, including in our user voice work, and delivering positive change and safe interactions for survivors accessing our services.

5. Fund our services by influencing and collaborating to enhance our service delivery, while mobilising the public to raise awareness and funds.

Expanding our movement

We are immensely proud of the way our frontline staff and volunteers support our survivors. We’re deeply grateful to our ambassadors, our supporters and our funders for their courage, energy and commitment. And we’re strengthened by the dedication and expertise of our partners. Together we’re raising awareness and influencing policy makers. And, as a society, we’re more ready to notice and call out abusive behaviours.

That’s important. Public awareness helps change public policy. But, 50 years on, we’re still facing a national challenge. We have to recognise violence against women and girls as one of the UK’s biggest domestic crises.

We, as a society, should make it unacceptable to experience domestic abuse.

We need the will to stop it. We need a full public response.

This is the time to work together to prevent domestic abuse happening in our society.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Legal, administrative and governance matters

Administrative Details

Charity Number: 277424 Company Number: 1412276 Regulator of Social Housing Number: 4730

Principal Office:

One America Square, 17 Crosswall, London, EC3N 2LB

Auditors:

Moore Kingston Smith LLP, 9 Appold Street London EC2A 2AP

Bankers:

HSBC Bank Plc, 281 Chiswick High Road, London, W4 4HJ Barclays Bank Plc, 1 Churchill Place, London, E14 5HP

Investment Managers:

Charles Stanley & Co, 70-72 Chertsey Street, Guildford, Surrey, GU1 4HL

Solicitors:

Weil Gotshal and Manges LLP, 1 South Place, EC2M 2WG Bindmans LLP, 236 Grays Inn Road, London, WC1X 8HB Bates Wells, 10 Queen Street, London, EC4R 1BE CMS Cameron McKenna LLP, 78 Cannon Street, EC4N 6AF Winckwoth Sherwood LLP, Minerva House, 5 Montague Close, London, SE1 9BB

Trowers & Hamlins LLP, The Senate, Southernhay Gardens, Exeter, EX1 1UG

Rradar Limited, Suite 4B, Platform, New Station Street, Leeds, LS1 4JB

Family Law Matters Scotland LLP, Queens House, 19 St. Vincent Place, Glasgow G1 2DT Stewarts Law LLP, 5 New Street Square, London, EC4A 3BF

Structure, Governance and Management

Trustees, officers, and advisors

Under its Memorandum and Articles of Association, Refuge was originally incorporated as Chiswick Family Rescue on 30th January 1979 as a company limited by guarantee not for profit and not having share capital. The name was subsequently changed to Refuge on 5 March 1993.

It is a charity with a registered office at One America Square, 17 Crosswall, London, EC3N 2LB. On 13 August 2012 Refuge became a Registered Provider of Social Housing regulated by the Homes and Communities Agency. Trustees (who are also members of the charitable company) oversee Refuge’s policies and the execution of its activities. Trustees are appointed following a decision to appoint made by the Board of Trustees. Trustees may resign their membership by writing to the Chair of the Board.

The members of the Board of Trustees who held office during the year were:

Board:

Hetti Barkworth–Nanton (Chair) Dheepa Balasundaram (Appointed 8 November 2021) Andrea Daniels Elizabeth Edwards Katie Farrington (Resigned 22 March 2022) Christine Higgins (Resigned 2 December 2021) Ayanna Nelson (Appointed 22 March 2022) Carolyn Pearson (Resigned 2 December 2021) Jon Rowney (Appointed 6 July 2021) Selina Sagayam Ruth Smith Kirsten Walkom

James Watson O’Neill (Appointed 6 July 2021, Resigned 22 March 2022)

Refuge has four committees with the following remit:

• Audit and risk (oversees risk and audit issues within the organisation and its subsidiaries)

• Resources (oversees corporate services, strategic insights and partnerships and fundraising and communications)

• People, nomination and remuneration (oversees senior leadership remuneration, Trustee and senior leader appointments and people strategies and policies)

• Services and safeguarding (monitors the services and safeguarding functions of the charity)

• In terms of membership, each committee consists of three Trustees, one of whom acts as the committee chair. All committees except ARC have committee members who are subject matter experts.

Ambassadors:

Cherie Booth CBE QC Jo Brand (Stepped down 4 March 2022) Fiona Bruce Olivia Colman CBE Baroness Helena Kennedy QC Dame Helen Mirren Sir Patrick Stewart OBE

Chief Executive

Carole Easton (Appointed as Interim CEO 23 June 2020 – Resigned 21 April 2021) Ruth Davison (Appointed 6 April 2021)

Company Secretary

Osbert Klass (Appointed 29 July 2020 – Resigned 14 July 2021) Lornette Pemberton (Appointed 15 July 2021 – Resigned 15 October 2021) Dr Sally Oglesby (Appointed 16 October 2021)

Governing document

Refuge is a charitable company limited by guarantee, originally incorporated as Chiswick Family Rescue on 30 January 1979 and registered as a charity on 31 March 1979. The company was established under a Memorandum of Association which established the objects and powers of the charitable company and is governed under its Articles of Association which were updated by Special Resolution on 2nd December 2021. In the event of the company being wound up members are required to contribute an amount not exceeding £1.

Recruitment and appointment of Trustees

The directors of the company are also charity Trustees for the purposes of charity law. Each Trustee retires from office at the third Annual Retirement Meeting following the commencement of the term of office and can serve a maximum of three terms before taking a break and being reappointed.

Induction and training of Trustees

All new Trustees receive an induction pack containing detailed information about Refuge, its organisation and its work. They also spend time with the Chief Executive, Chair and senior staff to familiarise themselves with Refuge’s activities and their role and responsibilities as a charity Trustee. Training opportunities are offered to introduce Trustees to their legal and governance duties. There are opportunities for specific training and presentations by staff at board meetings. All Trustees have received a copy of the Charity Commission publication ‘The Essential Trustee’.

Organisation

The Board of Trustees is responsible for the overall governance of Refuge and has a maximum of 12 members. Trustees have a range of skills and experience including Legal, Financial, Property, Business, Social Care and Communications that support Refuge in the delivery of its objectives. The charity’s Board of Trustees meets regularly to manage its affairs. Refuge’s Chief Executive, Ruth Davison, is responsible for the day-to-day management of the charity and the implementation of policy, supported by a highly dedicated and professional team of staff and volunteers.

Partnerships:

Housing associations:

BPHA, Central and Cecil, Clarion Housing Group, Peabody, Gateway, Hexagon, London and Quadrant, Metropolitan Thames Valley, Notting Hill Genesis, Optivo, Orbit, Paragon, Sanctuary Supported Living, Home Group, Southern Housing, Town and Country and Tuntum.

Statutory partners:

The London Boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Brent, Ealing, Hackney, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Kingston on Thames, Lewisham, Lambeth, Merton, Redbridge, Richmond, Southwark, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth and Westminster. The counties of Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, East Sussex and Warwickshire. The city of Derby, Derby Homes and the borough of Warrington. The Greater London Authority. London Councils. Police Crime Commissioners (PCC): Derbyshire, Warwickshire, Hertfordshire, Cheshire, Cambridgeshire; Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.

Objectives:

Refuge exists to ensure all women and children facing domestic abuse in England can access the services they need and deserve, ensuring they are safe from abuse and empowered to regain control of their lives and futures free from fear.

We strive to

•Drive policy change (influencing policy and practice, including legislative change which ensures sustainable services) supported by strategic research;

• •Prevent domestic abuse through awareness raising and attitudinal change;

• •Develop, maintain and nurture partnerships that grow our expertise

The objects of the company are:-

To provide for the relief of women and their children or other victims who have been subject to: (i) physical, sexual, emotional and/or mental abuse within an intimate or “family” relationship (“domestic abuse”);

or (ii) other gender-based abuse, which term, for the purposes of these Articles, shall include but not be limited to rape, prostitution, gang abuse, sex-trafficking or female genital mutilation, in either of cases or (ii) above, throughout the United Kingdom and abroad

To provide specialist supported housing and social housing and any associated amenities in England, designed to meet the needs of women and children who are the victims of domestic abuse and/or other gender-based abuse, and other services designed to facilitate their onward progression;

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

and to advance public education, research and training on understanding of the issues of domestic abuse and gender- based abuse throughout the United Kingdom and abroad. Refuge’s mission continues to be that of providing emergency accommodation and support to women and children escaping domestic abuse whilst raising awareness and understanding of the issue. Its principal aims and objectives are to:

Provide a range of high quality specialist services to women and children escaping domestic abuse including a Freephone 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline, a growing number of safe houses with additional specialist support services for women and children, outreach and floating support services, refuges and outreach for black, Asian, minority ethnic and refugee (BAMER) women, independent domestic abuse advocates and specialist support.

Raise public awareness of the issues surrounding domestic abuse and campaign to ensure the voices of survivors are heard.

Our objectives for 21/22, as defined by our one-year business plan were:

•Ensure that we deliver high-quality services for women and children facing domestic abuse •Focus on ensuring our workforce is happy and healthy •Agree a clear and ambitious strategic focus for Refuge to 2027 •Continue to strengthen our governance and leadership •Continue to develop our equality, diversity and inclusion programme of work •Galvanise society to realise our vision by developing our external engagement strategy

Public benefit statement

Refuge operates for public benefit. The Trustees confirm that they complied with the duty in section 17 of the Charities Act 2011 to have due regard to the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit, “Charities and Public Benefit”.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion

Equality, diversity, and inclusion are central to our core principles and are reflected in our service provision, diverse workforce, Board and Partners and in the way in which we work. We aim to achieve this by advocating fairness, consistency, and transparency, in our organisational decision-making and by establishing fair policies and procedures that are consistently applied.

We respect and value people’s differences and we proactively seek to create a culture where people feel comfortable to be themselves and have a sense of belonging.

In 2021 we established an EDI steering group to help us to embed an environment where everyone feels valued. Equality and inclusion are at the heart of all our activities and discrimination is challenged. In addition, seven employee network groups (ENGs) were created to provide staff with a supportive and safe environment to share lived experiences.

The chairs of these groups are members of the steering group, ensuring staff from marginalised and minoritized groups contribute to holding us accountable for our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion.

These measures support us in ensuring that we create a positive, inclusive, and safe environment for all our employees, volunteers, trustees, contractors, and service users.

Fundraising

In 2021-22 we raised a total of £10m in voluntary income towards the provision of our lifesaving and life-changing services. This income is the result of generosity of our supporters and partners, and a huge amount of work across the team. Our public fundraising programme includes community-driven fundraising, individuals taking on challenges and public donations, as well as gifts supporters leave in their wills. Our philanthropy and partnerships programme includes larger donations from individuals, trusts and companies.

We occasionally partner with professional fundraisers or commercial participators to help deliver this work. We worked with 4 professional fundraising organisations for payroll giving recruitment. We also work with companies across a variety of sectors to build mutually beneficial partnerships

We sometimes use professional fundraisers or commercial participators to help us carry out this work. We worked with four professional fundraising organisations for payroll giving recruitment. We also work with companies across a variety of sectors to build mutually beneficial partnerships.

Our corporate partners contractually commit to a minimum guaranteed level of £25,000 of funds (net of any VAT payable under commercial participation regulations) per partnership year; this can be raised through a range of mechanisms including commercial participation, staff or customer fundraising, events and company donations. We are also grateful for the support of a number of corporate supporters and donors who fund us through one off or regular donations. We conduct due diligence as part of our research process in relation to both proactive and reactive fundraising from businesses, trusts, foundations and high net worth individuals. This is to ensure alignment with our ethical policy as well as assess potential risks by association. Whilst we generally seek unrestricted funding, we do work with some partners and donors who prefer to restrict their support to particular areas of our work.

We are conscious of the trust supporters place in us when they donate towards our work. We are members of the Fundraising Regulator and abide by their Fundraising Promise and the Code of Fundraising Practice. We are deeply committed to protecting the data and privacy of our supporters and adhere to all relevant legislation and best practice. We proactively seek updates from the regulator that may impact on our programmes.

All fundraising staff are provided with training in our compliance policies and are active owners of the policies that relate to their work. We minimise any risk of breaches to the Code of Fundraising Practice by ensuring regular review of these policies in line with any updates from the regulator or learnings from our work. We ensure these policies are available to and understood by all fundraisers and supporting functions.

We recognise that work with third parties can support our fundraising activities and improve the efficiency of our programmes. We aim to ensure any agencies we employ observe the highest standards in terms of fundraising practice, and we ensure that the work of the suppliers is regularly monitored. We expect any third party to comply with data protection legislation as set out in the Code of Fundraising Practice, including the requirements of the Telephone, Mailing and Fundraising Preference Services. We follow a robust procurement procedure when recruiting third parties to work on our behalf. We apply a proportionate level of due diligence to the size of the contract and work with them to ensure they are delivering the standards we expect for our supporters. Refuge ensures that all suppliers have a Supporters in Vulnerable Circumstances policy that puts safeguards in place for those in a vulnerable situation. We are committed to providing the highest levels of supporter care and value feedback we receive regarding our fundraising activities. In 2021/22 we received 21 complaints, which were resolved without any being escalated to the Fundraising Regulator. We responded to all complaints within three working days, in line with our Complaints Policy. The theme of these complaints included not receiving fundraising materials, issues with processing e-cards from donations and concerns on our position supporting all people experiencing domestic abuse.

Refuge has a robust Supporters in Vulnerable Circumstances Policy in place to protect supporters, whether those circumstances be permanent or temporary. We have a duty and obligation to ensure that we make reasonable adjustments and put in place appropriate additional support mechanisms to take account of these needs and to ensure supporters and members of the public are not at risk of undue detriment. We have protocol on what vulnerability may look like, including guidance on age of the supporter. How we engage with supporters is set out in an 8 point Supporter Promise published on our website. All our emails set out clear instructions for how supporters can opt out of future communications should they wish to.

We did not engage in face-to-face or telephone activity in 2021-22.

Refuge is signed up to the Fundraising Preference Service and has received and actioned 3 requests between 1 April 2021 – 31 March 2022.

Principal risks

The Board is responsible for establishing and monitoring internal control systems within Refuge.

The Board reviews the major risks which may impact on the operations of Refuge on a regular basis and are satisfied that the system of internal control currently in place is sound and effective, whilst recognising that it is designed to manage rather than eliminate risk.

The Board agree that the following are the principal risks that Refuge faces:

Safeguarding. The high-risk nature of Refuge’s work supporting women and children experiencing domestic abuse means that we navigate complex safeguarding issues on a regular basis. There are appropriate policies, processes, and ways of working to meet our high safeguarding standards including comprehensive external reviews of services where issues have been raised. We have invested funds in a new department which works closely with other directorates and staff across the charity to further embed and strengthen an informed safeguarding culture for survivors and staff/ volunteers.

Pressure on services – The increased level of demand we saw during Covid for specialist services continues and is remaining significantly above pre-covid levels. This will increase pressure on our specialist services and place more demand on our frontline staff. We are working to mitigate the very real risk of burnout for frontline staff.

Cost of living crisis. The current economic situation presents a risk to Refuge for two reasons: Firstly, we can expect more women to need support from our economic abuse teams, increasing demand on our specialist services, and secondly because it could impact our fundraising efforts. Supporter fundraising is a significant part of our income, and this may be reduced as the cost of living crisis increases. In addition to these key risks, rising interest rates and inflation are likely to significantly increase the running costs of our accommodation-based services

Our IT systems have been significantly overhauled and our move into new office premises has been completed. This has enabled us to migrate databases, strengthen our networks and improve our communications infrastructure but we continue to work to enhance our cyber security and build the resilience of our IT infrastructure.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Risk management

The trustees bear overall responsibility for ensuring Refuge operates appropriate controls, financial and otherwise, to provide reasonable assurance that:

• •The charity is operating efficiently and effectively;

• •Proper records are maintained, and financial information is reliable and accurate;

• The charity has an appropriate framework for safeguarding all who come into contact with the organisation and

• The charity complies with relevant laws and regulations.

The Audit & Risk Committee has delegated responsibility for monitoring the effectiveness of Refuge’s risk framework and reports the results of this monitoring to the Board.

Over the past 18 months, Refuge has strengthened its risk framework, by:

• •Training staff across the organisation on the recognition, recording, monitoring and scoring of risks;

•Updating the methodology used in scoring risks to consider current guidance from the Charity Commission and the Institute of Risk Management;

• •Creation of a Risk Management & Escalation Policy.

Furthermore, the Board has categorised the key risks of the organisation into the following areas and has assigned committees who will retain detailed oversight of these risk areas, with these then ultimately feeding back to the organisational Risk register which is reviewed by the Audit & Risk Committee:

Category	Responsibility
People & Culture	People, Nomination & Remuneration Committee
Safeguarding	Services & Safeguarding Committee
Health & Safety	Services & Safeguarding Committee
Propertymaintenance	Audit & Risk Committee
Financial controls	Resources Committee
Governance & Oversight	Chair
Resourcing(non-staf)	Resources Committee
Stakeholder engagement/ reputational risk	Resources Committee

Investment powers and policy

The Articles of Association contains powers for the Board to invest funds in any investments, securities and properties

Financial review

The results for the year to March 2022 was a total income of £24m (2021:£34m). The income was 28% lower than 2021; which had been an unprecedented year, showing a fantastic response to Refuge’s appeal for funds through various methods, Virtual Challenges, Christmas appeals, general appeals and came from all types of funders, individuals, groups and corporates during COVID-19. Grants to March 2022 were also lower by £3m at £3m (2021:

£6m). Previous year included one off additional income of £1.4m, National Emergencies funding a partnership between Refuge and partners in the devolved nations, both COVID-19 and lockdowns related with the remaining funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Total expenditure increased by 13% to £25m (2021: £22m) this reflects the start of the investment to enable Refuge to maintain and enhance the increased capacity of services delivered during the lockdown.

The closing Fund balances amounted to £14.5 m (2021: £15.4m) of which £13.4m was held as general unrestricted reserves and £1m as restricted reserves. The cash balances at the end of the year were £13.9m (2021: £16.3m) with net assets of £14.5m (2021: £15.4m)

Reserves policy

At 31 March 2022, Refuge had total funds of £14.4m, of which £1m were Restricted and thus not available for the general purposes of the charity.

Of the balance of £13.4m arising from Unrestricted activities: •£1m relates to tangible and intangible fixed assets which cannot be easily realised.

• •£3m relates to designated funds detailed in note 20 of the Financial Statements.

•This leaves free reserves of £9.4m (2021: £10.4m), which is within the desired range specified in Refuge’s Reserves Policy. This provides for a range of between £6.4m and £10m. The 2022-23 forecast is a deficit of £3.2m

The impact of Covid-19 and going concern

The increased demand we saw for our services, which remained open throughout sustained lockdowns, has not abated, and the strategies we brought forward to help meet this, continue to provide a means of meeting some of this increase.

We were fortunate to receive significantly higher levels of income during the pandemic, meaning that our reserves are now at the upper end of our target. This combined with a three year financial plan have been reviewed by the Board who, on the basis of this information, have a reasonable expectation that the charity has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future, being at least twelve months from the date of approval of these financial statements. Accordingly, the financial statements continue to be prepared on a going concern basis.

Statement of the Board of Trustees’ responsibilities

As far as the Board of Trustees is aware:

The Board of Trustees (who are also members of the Charity for the purposes of company law) is responsible for preparing the Trustees’ report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

• •There is no relevant audit information of which the charitable company’s auditor is unaware; and

• •The Board of Trustees has 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

Company law requires the Board of Trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year which give a true and fair view of the state of the affairs of the company and of the outgoing resources and application of resources, including the income and expenditure, of the company for that period. In preparing these financial statements, the Board of Trustees is required to:

• •The Board of Trustees is responsible for ensuring the pay and remuneration of key management personnel and any benchmarks, parameters or criteria used in setting pay. Director salaries are determined by the People, Nominations and Remuneration Committee (PNRC) annually in April of each year.

A separate policy outlines the approach to CEO pay which is capped relative to other salaries and may be reviewed every 3 years by the Board. The policy is published and can be found on our website: CEO pay policy statement.

• •Select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently

• •Observe the methods and principles in the Housing and

Charities SORP

• •Make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent

On behalf of the Board of Trustees, Hetti Barkworth-Nanton (Chair) confirms:

•State whether applicable UK Accounting Standards have been followed, subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements

•Prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the company will continue in business

This report acts as a directors’ report for the charitable company as required by s415 of the Companies Act 2006 and includes the Strategic Report which has been approved by the Board of Trustees in their capacity as company directors.

The Board of Trustees is responsible for keeping proper 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.

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Registered charity number 277424

Independent auditors report to the members of Refuge

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of Refuge (‘the company’) for the year ended 31 March 2022 which comprise the Statement of Financial Activities, the Balance Sheet, the Cash Flow Statement and notes to the financial statements, including significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including FRS 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 2022 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 including FRS102 the Financial Reporting Standard applicable to the UK and Republic of Ireland, the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, and the Accounting Direction for Registered Providers of Social Housing 2019; and

• •Have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 and the Charities Act 2011.

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.

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 annual report, other than the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. The trustees are responsible for the other information contained within the 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 course of 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 there is 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 strategic report and the trustees’ annual report for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and

•the strategic report and the trustees’ annual report have 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 company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the strategic report or the trustees’ annual report.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters where the Companies Act 2006 and Charities Act 2011 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

• •The financial statements are not in agreement with the accounting records and returns; or

• •Certain disclosures of trustees’ remuneration specified by law are not made; or

• •We have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit.

Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the trustees’ responsibilities statement set out in the Statement of The Board’s Responsibilities, 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’s 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 aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

As part of an audit in accordance with ISAs (UK) we exercise professional judgement and maintain professional scepticism throughout the audit. We also:

Our approach was as follows:

•We obtained an understanding of the legal and regulatory requirements applicable to the charitable company and considered that the most significant are the Companies Act 2006, the Charities Act 2011, the Charity SORP, the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, the Accounting Direction for Registered Providers of Social Housing 2019, the Housing SORP, and UK financial reporting standards as issued by the Financial Reporting Council]

•Identify and assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to fraud or error, design and perform audit procedures responsive to those risks, and obtain audit evidence that is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion. The risk of not detecting a material misstatement resulting from fraud is higher than for one resulting from error, as fraud may involve collusion, forgery, intentional omissions, misrepresentations, or the override of internal control.

•We obtained an understanding of how the charitable company complies with these requirements by discussions with management and those charged with governance.

• •We assessed the risk of material misstatement of the financial statements, including the risk of material misstatement due to fraud and how it might occur, by holding discussions with management and those charged with governance.

•Obtain an understanding of internal control relevant to the audit in order to design audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purposes of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the charitable company’s internal control.

•We inquired of management and those charged with governance as to any known instances of non-compliance or suspected non-compliance with laws and regulations.

•Evaluate the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of accounting estimates and related disclosures made by the trustees.

•Based on this understanding, we designed specific appropriate audit procedures to identify instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. This included making enquiries of management and those charged with governance and obtaining additional corroborative evidence as required.

•Conclude on the appropriateness of the trustees’ use of the going concern basis of accounting and, based on the audit evidence obtained, whether a material uncertainty exists related to events or conditions that may cast significant doubt on the charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern. If we conclude that a material uncertainty exists, we are required to draw attention in our auditor’s report to the related disclosures in the financial statements or, if such disclosures are inadequate, to modify our opinion. Our conclusions are based on the audit evidence obtained up to the date of our auditor’s report. However, future events or conditions may cause the charitable company to cease to continue as a going concern.

There are inherent limitations in the audit procedures described above. We are less likely to become aware of instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations that are not closely related to events and transactions reflected in the financial statements. Also, the risk of not detecting a material misstatement due to fraud is higher than the risk of not detecting one resulting from error, as fraud may involve deliberate concealment by, for example, forgery or intentional misrepresentations, or through collusion.

•Evaluate the overall presentation, structure and content of the financial statements, including the disclosures, and whether the financial statements represent the underlying transactions and events in a manner that achieves fair presentation.

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 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 any party other than the charitable company and charitable company’s members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

We communicate with those charged with governance regarding, among other matters, the planned scope and timing of the audit and significant audit findings, including any significant deficiencies in internal control that we identify during our audit.

Explanation as to what extent the audit was considered capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud

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.

Andrew Stickland (Senior Statutory Auditor)

The objectives of our audit in respect of fraud, are; to identify and assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements Date: due to fraud; to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence regarding the assessed risks of material misstatement due to fraud, through designing and implementing appropriate responses to those assessed risks; and to respond appropriately to instances of fraud or suspected fraud identified during the audit. However, the London primary responsibility for the prevention and detection of fraud rests with both management and those charged with governance of EC2A 2AP the charitable company.

for and on behalf of Moore Kingston Smith LLP, Statutory Auditor Date:

9 Appold Street

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Statement of financial activities for the year ended 31 March 2022 (incorporating the income and expenditure account)

----- Start of picture text -----
Unrestricted Restricted Total Total
Funds Funds Funds Funds
Note 2022 2022 2022 2021
£ £ £ £
Income and endowments from:
Donations and legacies 4 8,793,664 1,316,443 10,110,107 16,607,559
Operating activities
Contracts for Support Services 5 6,405,717 - 6,405,717 6,349,475
Housing Management 4,412,821 - 4,412,821 4,949,086
Grants 6 - 3,174,699 3,174,699 6,057,003
Other trading activities 8 169,239 169,239 2,708
Investments 7 26,889 26,889 17,749
Other income -
Total income and endowments 3 19,808,330 4,491,142 24,299,472 33,983,581
Expenditure on:
Raising funds 9 3,322,184 - 3,322,184 2,374,009
Operating activities
Refuge provision 8,017,376 809,169 8,826,545 7,879,692
Advocacy 3,388,853 614,958 4,003,811 4,087,329
Integrated services 3,618,450 376,994 3,995,444 3,557,774
Outreach and Floating Support 234,167 1,259,240 1,493,407 1,105,847
Freephone 24 Hour National
Domestic Violence Helpline 727,189 1,554,518 2,281,707 2,467,902
Public information 1,347,356 - 1,347,356 803,301
Specialist support services - 27,783 27,783 30,805
Total Expenditure 3,11 20,655,575 4,642,662 25,298,237 22,306,658
Realised gains/(losses) on investments 15 2,086 2,086 (2,202)
Unrealised (losses)/gains on investments 15 18,429 - 18,429 136,109
Net income/(expenditure) (826,730) (151,520) (978,250) 11,810,830
Transfers between funds 20,21 - -
Net movement in funds (826,730) (151,520) (978,250) 11,810,830
Reconciliation of funds: - - -
Fund balances brought forward 14,251,239 1,173,401 15,424,640 3,613,810
Fund balances carried forward at 31 March 2022 20, 21,22 13,424,509 1,021,881 14,446,390 15,424,640
----- End of picture text -----

Balance sheet as of 31 March 2022

----- Start of picture text -----
Note 2022 2022 2021 2021
£ £ £ £
Fixed Assets
Tangible assets 13 759,614 93,130
Intangible assets 14 225,633 277,398
Financial Investments 15 709,022 694,667
1,694,269 1,065,195
Current Assets
Debtors 16 4,027,942 2,701,150
Cash at bank and in hand 13,929,303 16,367,480
17,957,246 19,068,630
Creditors: Amounts falling due
within one year 17 (4,964,959) (4,339,185)
Net Current Assets 12,992,286 14,729,445
Total Assets less Current Liabilities 13,706,555 15,794,640
Provisions for liabilities and charges 19 (240,165) (370,000)
Net Assets 14,446,390 15,424,640
Represented by:
Unrestricted Funds 20
General 10,420,140 10,414,166
Designated 3,004,369 3,837,073
13,424,509 14,251,239
Restricted Funds 21 1,021,881 1,173,401
Total Funds 22 14,446,390 15,424,640
----- End of picture text -----

Approved by the Board on 27th September 2022

Approved by the Board on 27th September 2022

Hetti Barkworth-Nanton

Jon Rowney

………………………………… Hetti Barkworth-Nanton Company Number:1412276

………………………………… Jon Rowney

Notes 1 to 24 form part of these financial statements.

All of the activities of the charitable company related to continuing operations. There were no recognised gains and losses other than those included in the Statement of Financial Activities

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

Cash-flow statement for the year ended 31 March 2022

----- Start of picture text -----
Note 2022 2021
£ £
Statement of Cash Flows
Net Cash Inflow from Operating Activities 1 (1,688,931) 12,384,516
-
- Investment income 7 26,889 17,749
Capital Expenditure and financial investment
- Payments to acquire Tangible Fixed Assets 13 (764,583) (128,619)
- Payments to acquire Intangible Fixed Assets 14 (17,712) (272,842)
- Payments to acquire Financial Investments 15 (83,276) (107,095)
- Investment disposal proceeds 91,156 104,600
Increase in Cash and Cash Equivalents 2 (2,436,457) 11,998,309
Notes to the Statement of Cash Flows
Reconciliation of Changes in Resources to Net Cash Outflow
from Operating Activities
Net movement in funds (978,250) 11,810,830
Depreciation 98,099 168,155
Amortisation 69,477 7,570
Investment income (26,889) (17,749)
Unrealised/Realised losses/(gains) (20,515) (133,907)
(Increase)/Decrease in trade and other Debtors (1,326,792) (602,709)
(Decrease)/Increase in trade and other Creditors 625,776 1,152,326
Movement in provision (129,837)
(1,688,931) 12,384,516
2 Reconciliation of Net Cash Flow to Movements in Net Funds
Increase in Cash and Cash at Bank in the year (2,436,457) 11,998,309
(Decrease)/Increase in net funds (2,436,457) 11,998,309
Net funds at 1 April 2021 16,400,193 4,401,884
Net funds at 31 March 2022 13,963,736 16,400,193
Reconciliation of net funds to cash at bank and in hand
Net funds 13,963,736 16,400,193
Cash held with investment managers (34,433) (32,713)
Cash at bank and in hand 13,929,303 16,367,480
----- End of picture text -----

Notes 1 to 24 form part of these accounts.

1. Accounting policies

Basis of accounting

The accounts are prepared on the historical cost convention of accounting, as modified by the revaluation of Fixed Asset Investments and in accordance with applicable Accounting Standards and in compliance with The Accounting Direction for Private Registered Providers of Social Housing 2019, Housing SORP 2018, the Statement of Recommended Practice “Accounting for Registered Social Providers”, the Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with “The Financial Reporting Standard Accounts applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland” (“FRS 102”). The Charities Act 2011 and the requirements of the Companies Act 2006. The charity is a public benefit entity for the purposes of FRS 102.

Going concern

These financial statements are prepared on the going concern basis. The funding received by the company has increased significantly during and following lockdown following increased awareness of the effects of domestic abuse. The Board therefore have a reasonable expectation that the company will continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future based on budgets, forecasts and projections for the following year and up to 12 months from the date the financial statements are approved. The Board are not aware of any material uncertainties that may cast significant doubt upon the charity’s ability to continue as a going concern.

Tangible Fixed Assets - Depreciation

Tangible fixed assets costing more than £500, except items of high wear and tear for refuges, have been capitalised and recorded at cost. Depreciation is provided on all fixed assets at rates calculated to write off the cost of each asset over their estimated useful lives or the length of the contract/project for which the fixed assets were acquired.

Leasehold improvements Freehold buildings	5years straight line 50years straight line
Fixtures and fttings Ofce equipment	1 - 4years straight line 1 - 4years straight line

Intangible Fixed Assets - Amortisation

Intangible assets costing more than £500 are recognised at cost and are subsequently measured at cost less accumulated amortisation. Amortisation is recognised so as to write off the cost of assets over their useful lives on the following bases:

Sofware	1	-	4	years	straight line
Website	1	-	4	years	straight line

Income

All income is accounted for when the company has entitlement to the funds, receipt is probable and the amount can be measured reliably. Donations and legacies include donations, gifts, legacies and some grants receivable.

Gifts in kind and intangible income are treated either as donations in the period the gift or intangible income is received, or as an asset, in both cases at a reasonable estimate of the gross value to the charity.

Contractual income and legacies are recognised as income where there is entitlement, probability of receipt and measurability.

Fundraising income is shown gross except for small fundraising events where the cash is received net of expenditure.

Investment income is accounted for on a receivable basis.

Grants are recognised when the entitlement to the grant is confirmed and any conditions not within the company’s control have been met..

Grants that provide core funding, or are of a general nature provided by the government and charitable foundations, are recorded as voluntary income.

Costs of raising funds

Fundraising expenditure comprises costs incurred encouraging people and organisations to contribute financially to the charity’s work. This includes costs of advertising and staging of special fundraising events.

Governance costs

Governance costs comprise all expenditure not directly related to the charitable activity or fundraising ventures including audit fees. The costs are allocated over the activities on the same basis as other administrative costs.

Provisions

Provision relates to the Board’s estimate of the present value cost of dilapidations work that is required to be undertaken on expiry of and in accordance with the terms of the company’s lease, on the premises at Head Office.

This includes an estimate to future deficits concerning Refuge’s Admitted Body Status of Hertfordshire LGPS scheme.

Bad debts

Bad debts are recognised when all arrears and debt collection procedures have been exhausted. Bad debts are written off on a percentage basis depending on their age and the probability of collection.

Investments

Investments are held in the balance sheet at market value at the year end. Any change from market value at the previous balance sheet date or from cost if purchased during the year, is included in the Statement of Financial Activities.

Stocks

No value has been ascribed to stocks of publications on the basis that the majority of these are normally given away and therefore it is considered prudent to account for the costs of all publications in the period they are incurred.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

1 Accounting Policies (Continued)

Cash and cash equivalents

Cash and cash equivalents include cash in hand, deposits held at call with banks, other short-term liquid investments with original maturities of three months or less, and bank overdrafts. Bank overdrafts are shown within borrowings in current liabilities. These financial statements are prepared on the going concern basis.

Financial instruments

The company has elected to apply the provisions of Section 11 ‘Basic Financial Instruments’ and Section 12 ‘Other Financial Instruments Issues’ of FRS 102 to all of its financial instruments.

Financial instruments are recognised in the company’s balance sheet when the company becomes party to the contractual provisions of the instrument.

Financial assets and liabilities are offset, with the net amounts presented in the financial statements, when they legally enforceable right to set off the recognised amounts and there is an intention to settle on a net basis or to realise the asset and settle the liability simultaneously.

Basic financial assets

Basic financial instruments, which include trade and other receivables and cash and bank balances, are initially measured at transaction price including transaction costs and are subsequently carried at amortised cost using the effective interest method unless the arrangement constitutes a financing transaction, where the transaction is measured at the present value of the future receipts discounted at a market rate of interest.

Other financial assets

Other financial assets, including investments in equity instruments which are not subsidiaries, associates or joint ventures, are initially measured at fair value, which is normally the transaction price. Such assets are subsequently carried at fair value and the changes in fair value are recognised in profit or loss, except that investments in equity instruments that are not publicly traded and whose fair values cannot be measured reliably are measured at cost less impairment.

Trade debtors, loans and other receivables that have fixed or determinable payments that are not quoted in an active market are classified as ‘loans and receivables’. Loans and receivables are measured at amortised cost using the effective interest method, less any impairment.

Interest is recognised by applying the effective interest rate, except for short-term receivables when the recognition of interest would be immaterial. The effective interest method is a method of calculating the amortised cost of a debt instrument and of allocating the interest income over the relevant period. The effective interest rate is the rate that exactly discounts estimated future cash receipts through the expected life of the debt instrument to the net carrying amount on initial recognition.

Impairment of financial assets

Financial assets, other than those held at fair value through profit and loss, are assessed for indicators of impairment at each reporting end date.

Financial assets are impaired where there is objective evidence that, as a result of one or more events that occurred after the initial recognition of the financial asset, the estimated future cash flows have been affected. The impairment loss is recognised in the Statement of Financial Activities.

Derecognition of financial assets

Financial assets are derecognised only when the contractual rights to the cash flows from the asset expire, or when it transfers the financial asset and substantially all the risks and rewards of ownership to another entity.

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Registered charity number 277424

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

2. Comparative statements of financial activities for the year ended 31 March 2021 and 31 March 2022

1 Accounting Policies (Continued)

Critical judgements

Pension funds

Refuge operates a defined contribution pension scheme for all staff. The amount charged to the Income and Expenditure Account in respect of pension costs is the contributions payable in the year.

Operating lease agreement

Rentals applicable to operating leases where substantially all of the benefits and risks of ownership remain with the lessor are charged against profits on a straight line basis over the period of the lease.

Research and development

Research and development costs are expensed to the SOFA in the year that they are incurred.

Fund account

Restricted funds represent monies received for specific projects undertaken by the charity. Designated funds represent monies set aside by the trustees for a specific purpose. General unrestricted funds of the charity are available for the general purposes of the charity.

Status Refuge is a registered social landlord with the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA). The register number is 4730.

The company is limited by guarantee and does not have a share capital. It is also a registered charity (Number 277424). In the event of the company winding up, members are required to contribute a sum not exceeding £1.

Judgements and key sources of estimation uncertainty In the application of the company’s accounting policies, the directors are required to make judgements, estimates and assumptions about the carrying amount of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. The estimates and associated assumptions are based on historical experience and other factors that are considered to be relevant. Actual results may differ from these estimates.

The estimates and underlying assumptions are reviewed on an ongoing basis. Revisions to accounting estimates are recognised in the period in which the estimate is revised where the revision affects only that period, or in the period of the revision and future periods where the revision affects both current and future periods.

The following judgements (apart from those involving estimates) have had the most significant effect on amounts recognised in the financial statements.

The company has an obligation to pay dilapidations on expiry of the company’s lease. The cost of these reinstatements and the present value of the obligation depend on a number of factors including the expected rise in cost of building maintenance, uncertainty over the timing of the cost of reinstatements, and the discount rate. Management estimates these factors in determining the net dilapidation provision in the balance sheet. The assumptions reflect historical experience and current trends. See note 19 for the disclosures relating to the dilapidation provision.

The company makes an estimate of the recoverable value of trade and other debtors. When assessing impairment of trade and other debtors, management considers factors including the current credit rating of the debtor, the ageing profile of debtors and historical experience. See note 16 for the net carrying amount of the debtors and associated impairment provision.

The annual depreciation charge for property, plant and equipment is sensitive to changes in the estimated useful economic lives and residual values of the assets. The useful economic lives and residual values are re-assessed annually. They are amended when necessary to reflect current estimates, based on technological advancement, future investments, economic utilisation and the physical condition of the assets. See note 13 for the carrying amount of the property, plant and equipment and note 1 for the useful economic lives for each class of asset.

Similarly the amortisation charge for intangible assets is sensitive to changes in the estimated useful economic lives and residual values of the assets. The useful economic lives and residual values are re-assessed annually. They are amended when necessary to reflect current estimates, based on technological advancement, future investments and economic utilisation of the assets. See note 14 for the carrying amount of the intangible assets and note 1 for the useful economic lives for each class of assets.

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Income and endowments from:
Donations and legacies 4 8,793,664 1,316,443 10,110,107 15,621,590 985,970 16,607,559
Operating activities - - - - -
Contracts for Support Services 5 6,405,717 - 6,405,717 6,349,475 - 6,349,475
Housing Management 4,412,821 - 4,412,821 4,949,086 - 4,949,086
Grants 6 - 3,174,699 3,174,699 - 6,057,003 6,057,003
Other trading activities 169,239 169,239 2,708 2,708
Investments 7 26,889 - 26,889 17,749 - 17,749
Other income 8 - - - - - -
Total income and endowments 3 19,808,330 4,491,142 24,299,472 26,940,609 7,042,973 33,983,581
Expenditure on:
Raising funds 9 3,322,184 - 3,322,184 2,374,009 - 2,374,009
- - -
Operating activities
Refuge provision 8,017,376 809,169 8,826,545 6,725,645 1,154,047 7,879,692
Advocacy 3,388,853 614,958 4,003,811 2,684,417 1,402,911 4,087,329
Integrated services 3,618,450 376,994 3,995,444 3,215,566 342,207 3,557,774
Outreach and Floating Support 234,167 1,259,240 1,493,407 129,351 976,495 1,105,847
Freephone 24 Hour National
Domestic Violence Helpline 727,189 1,554,518 2,281,708 516 2,467,386 2,467,902
Public information 1,347,356 - 1,347,356 778,301 25,000 803,301
Specialist support services - 27,783 27,783 3,447 27,358 30,805
Total Expenditure 3, 11 20,655,575 4,642,662 25,298,237 15,911,252 6,395,405 22,306,658
Realised gains/(losses) on 15 2,086 - 2,086 (2,202) (2,202)
investments
Unrealised gains/(losses) on 15 18,429 - 18,429 136,109 - 136,109
investments
Net income/(expenditure) (826,730) (151,520) (1,958,250) 11,163,263 647,567 11,810,830
Transfers between funds 20, 21 - -
Net movement in funds (826,730) (151,520) (978,250) 11,163,263 647,567 11,810,830
Reconciliation of funds:
Fund balances brought forward 14,251,239 1,173,401 15,424,640 3,087,976 525,834 3,613,810
Fund balances carried forward 20,21, 13,424,509 1,021,881 14,446,390 14,251,239 1,173,401 15,424,640
at 31 March 2022 22
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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

3a. Particulars of turnover, cost of sales, operating costs and operating surplus

	2022	2022	2022	2021	2021	2021
	Turnover	Operating	Operating	Turnover	Operating	Operating
		Costs	Surplus/ (defcit)		Costs	Surplus/ (defcit)
	£	£	£	£	£	£
Social housinglettings	4,412,821	4,978,711	(565,890)	4,949,086	4,817,068	132,018
Other social housingactivities:
Contracts for Support Services	2,280,289	2,252,959	27,330	2,467,218	2,466,541	677
Othergrants and donations	1,152,312	1,152,312	-	1,230,658	1,230,658	-
	7,845,422	8,383,982	(538,560)	8,646,962	8,514,267	132,695
Non-social housingactivities	16,454,050	16,914,255	(460,205)	25,336,619	13,792,391	11,544,228
Total:	24,299,472	25,298,237	(998,765)	33,983,581	22,306,658	11,676,923

3b. Particulars of income and expenditure from social housing lettings

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2022 2021
£ £
Social housing income
Rent receivable net of identifiable service charges 1,897,927 2,058,139
Service charges receivable eligible for Housing Benefit 2,774,150 2,058,139
Service charges receivable ineligible for Housing Benefit 271,720 271,709
Rent losses due to voids (530,976) (389,090)
Turnover from social housing lettings 4,412,821 4,949,086
Expenditure on social housing lettings
Services 1,382,111 1,304,237
Management 1,687,649 1,691,151
Routine maintenance 351,685 202,641
Planned maintenance 124,143 123,389
Bad debts 60,840 122,831
Lease charges 1,371,599 1,372,135
Property depreciation 684 684
Operating costs on social housing lettings 4,978,711 4,817,068
Operating surplus/(deficit) on social lettings (565,890) 132,018
Social housing units
The number of supported housing units under management at the end of the period: 2022 2021
Owned and managed 8 8
Not owned but managed 293 348
301 356
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4. Donations and legacies

----- Start of picture text -----
2022 2021
£ £
Trusts 347,156 379,916
Corporates 607,279 2,000,000
Major donors 663,886 12,852,143
Private donors 7,338,663 (389,090)
8,956,984 16,337,559
Legacies 1,153,123 270,000
10,110,107 16,607,559
----- End of picture text -----

5. Contracts for Support services

	2022	2021
	£	£
Refuge provision	2,014,702	2,169,894
Advocacy	2,350,819	2,266,726
Integrated services	2,010,073	1,861,216
Outreach and foatingsupport	30,123	51,640
	6,405,717	6,349,476

Support services under housing related support would encompass such activities that enabled the service user to develop the appropriate skills needed for maintaining independence in their own home once outside of the support service framework i.e. building local networks for support, making links into the community, understanding benefit entitlement and how to apply, developing personal finance awareness to pay rent and other associated household bills.

Contracts for support services are awarded to Refuge as the Service Provider by the Administering Authority (Local Authority/Borough) with approval of the Commission Body “(a partnership of local housing, social care, health and probation statutory services)”.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

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2022 2021
6. Grants
£ £
Restricted Restricted
Bain Capital 14,199 19,801
BBC Children in Need 25,783 35,974
Big Lottery Fund 20,135 290,161
Cambridgeshire Community Foundation - 5,000
Cambridgeshire County Council 52,877 135,435
Comic Relief 29,167 77,091
Department for Work and Pensions - 972
Derby City Council 58,382 56,002
Derby Homes Limited 100,000 -
Derbyshire Community Foundation - 4,890
East Sussex County Council 9,162 -
Greater London Authority 330,736
HMRC Furlough - 1,533
Home Office 807,874 803,303
Hounslow MHCLG 19,625 -
John Coates Charitable Trust - 5,000
Kingston Council - 17,477
London Borough Barking and Dagenham 267,599 133,155
London Borough of Hounslow 43,315 -
London Borough of Lewisham 288,589 143,278
London Borough of Redbridge - 29,711
London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and Wandsworth 177,786 244,533
London Councils 127,613 127,613
London Stock Exchange Group Foundation - 10,000
Masonic Charitable Foundation 200,000 -
Mayor’s Office for Policing & Crime (MOPAC) 167,712 -
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government - 890,597
Ministry of Justice (London Community Foundation) - 153,454
Morrisons Trust - 24,724
National Emergencies Trust - 1,443,378
NHS Derby and Derbyshire Clinical Commissioning Group - 100
Permira Foundation - 75,300
Rugby Borough Council - 29,409
Shroder Charity Trust - 10,000
Sir John Priestman Charitable Trust - 2,000
Southwark Council - 5,000
Standard Life Foundation - 25,000
Standing Together Against Domestic Violence - 73,843
Stratford Town Trust - 18,333
STRATFORD-ON -AVON DISTRICT COUNCIL 10,000 -
The Alan Edward Higgs Charity - 6,320
The Albert Hunt Trust - 5,000
The Brian Woolf Trust - 5,000
The Julia and Hans Rausing Trust - 500,000
The Mayor’s Young Londoners Fund - 49,277
The Police and Crime Commissioner for Derbyshire 175,662 173,628
The Police and Crime Commissioner for Warwickshire 61,139 78,214
The Police and Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire 187,344 45,633
The Police and Crime Commissioner for Cheshire - 76,085
The Police and Crime Commissioner for Hertfordshire - 32,120
The Violet Melchett Children’s Trust - 5,000
Tides Foundation - 65,000
Warwickshire County Council - 123,659
Totals 3,174,699 6,057,003
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6. Grants (continued)

In accordance with section 37 of the Local Government Act 1989 the grant from London Councils of £127,613 was used in respect of the period 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022, as follows:

Towards general running costs and salaries of the 24 hour Freephone	£
National Domestic Violence Helpline. The grant was fully used.	127,613

7. Investment income

7. Investment income
2022	2021
£	£
Listed investments 10,339	11,170
Interest receivable 16,550	6,579
26,889	17,749
8. Other trading activities 2022 £	2021 £
Logo licence 44,820	-
Commercial participants 120,896	-
Merchandise 3,523	2,708
9. Costs of raising funds 2022 £ 169,239 Refuge has 1 trading subsidiary which was incorporated on 14th December 2021.	2021 £ 2,708
Staf costs 1,331,811	956,184
Depreciation and amortisation 1,457	2,415
Advertising 775,719	692,238
Events expenses 483,009	236,909
Other costs 714,018	486,263
3,306,014	2,374,009

10. Governance costs	2022 2021
Auditors’ remuneration (net)	£ £ 21,250 19,750
Auditors’ remuneration non-audit (net)	850 2,350
Irrecoverable VAT/accruals	4,920 4,420
Grant audit	2,500 -
Total auditors’ remuneration inclusive of VAT	29,520 26,520
Legal advice and recruitment of trustees	16,816 47,804
Tax review	2,444 -
Totalgovernance costs	48,780 74,324

Governance costs for the year which are included in support cost in note 11 are £48,780 (inclusive of irrecoverable VAT) (2021 - £74,324 representing less than 1% of our total costs.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

1. Total expenditure

----- Start of picture text -----
2022
24-Hour
Cost of Floating National
Raising Refuge Integrated Support Domestic Public Specialist 2020/21
and Violence
Funds Provision Advocacy services Outreach Helpline Information Services Total
£ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £
Direct Costs including Operational Support 2,979,053 6,780,056 3,159,255 3,509,693 1,163,569 1,891,938 856,759 23,872 20,364,195
Support Costs 343,131 2,046,089 844,556 485,751 329,838, 389,769 490,597 3,911 4,934,042
3,322,184 8,826,545 4,003,811 3,995,444 1,493,407 2,281,707 1,347,356 27,783 25,298,237
Support costs include governance costs of £74,324 incl. VAT
2021 24-Hour
Cost of National
Raising Refuge Integrated Domestic Public Specialist 2019/20
Floating Violence
Funds Provision Advocacy services Support Helpline Information Services Total
and
Outreach
£ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £
Direct Costs including Operational Support 2,152,833 6,770,363 3,733,536 3,343,588 977,850 2,275,248 579,976 27,358 19,860,752
Support Costs 221,176 1,109,329 353,793 214,185 127,997 192,654 223,325 3,447 2,445,905
2,374,009 7,879,692 4,087,329 3,557,774 1,105,847 2,467,902 803,301 30,805 22,306,658
Expenditure Analysis 2022 2021
£ £
Staff costs 14,341,315 12,525,831
Temporary staff 629,113 371,984
Consultants 673,307 316,261
Other staff costs 846,886 376,518
Property costs 2,645,058 2,473,371
Equipment costs 11,176 15,988
Telephone 545,030 465,775
Audit 29,520 23,700
Depreciation and amortisation 167,576 175,725
Other costs 5,409,256 5,561,504
25,298,237 22,306,658
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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

12. Staff Costs

----- Start of picture text -----
2022 2021
£ £
Wages and salaries 12,388,377 10,806,971
Staff benefits 45,600 46,268
Social security costs 1,199,810 1,077,403
Pension costs 707,528 595,189
14,341,315 12,525,831
----- End of picture text -----

The average number of employees (full time equivalents), analysed by operating activities, during the year was:

Refuge provision	2022 2021 No. No. 101 82
Advocacy	66 73
Integrated Services	70 57
Outreach and FloatingSupport	34 22
24 Hour National Domestic Violence Helpline	44 28
Public information	11 8
Specialist services	4 1
Other Refuge services	26 58
	356 329
Redundancy and termination payments	2022 2021 £ £
	179,449 71,827

12. Staff costs (continued)

The number of employees whose renumeration (including benefit in kind but excluding employers’ National Insurance and employers’ pension contributions was in excess of £60,000.

----- Start of picture text -----
2022 2021
No. No.
£70,001 - £80,000 2 4
£80,001 - £90,000 2 -
£90,001 - £100,000 - 1
£120,001 - £130,000 1 -
£200,001 - £210,000 - 1
Includes keyman health cover and pension supplement from 2017
2022 2021
£ £
Pension contributions in respect of the highest
paid employees above 36,057 33,834
Emoluments to key management personnel 2022 2021
£ £
The remuneration paid to the key management personnel of Refuge (the Chief
Executive, the Director of Operations, the Director of Fundraising, the Director of
Communications and External Relations, the Head of Finance and IT, the Head of HR,
the Head Of People And Transformation and the Head of Development) was:
Emoluments (including pension contributions, employers National Insurance and 743,736 784,385
benefits in kind)
Emoluments (excluding pension contributions) paid to the highest paid member of 135,486 202,439
key management personnel
----- End of picture text -----*

During the year members of the Board received reimbursement of expenses totalling £312 (2020 - £2,486). No members of the Board received any remuneration during the year (2020 -£Nil).

Remuneration Policy

The remuneration of key management personnel is set by undertaking an annual review of their roles considering:

• Any change or additional scope to the role requiring a re-evaluation

• The benchmarking of similar roles within the market relevant for the professional field and /or sector

• Recruitment and retention issues or requirements Any changes are discussed by the chief executive and the chair of the Board, before the remuneration is agreed.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

13. Tangible Fixed Assets

13. Tangible Fixed Assets
2021/22	Leasehold	Fixtures
Freehold	improvements	and	Ofce
Property		Fittings	Equipment	Total
£		£	£	£
Cost
At 1 April 2021 34,173	36,779	367,963	250,854	689,769
Additions -	100,743	216,803	447,037	764,583
Written of -	(36,779)	-	(25,547)	(62,326)
At 31 March 2022 34,173	100,743	584,766	672,344	1,392,026
Depreciation
At 1 April 2021 16,418	36,779	350,247	193,195	596,639
Charge for the year 684	1,199	16,420	79,796	98,099
Written of -	(36,779)	-	(25,547)	(62,326)
At 31 March 2022 17,102	1,199	366,667	247,444	632,412
Net Book Value
At 31 March 2022 17,071	99,544	218,099	424,900	759,614
At 31 March 2021 17,755	-	17,716	57,659	93,130

----- Start of picture text -----
15. Financial Investments 2022 2021
£ £
Investments at market value at beginning of the 661,954 525,552
year
Additions at cost 83,276 107,095
Disposal proceeds (91,156) (104,600)
Realised/unrealised (losses)/gains 2,086 (2,202)
Unrealised/unrealised gaines (losses) 18,429 136,109
674,589 661,954
Cash held with investment managers 34,433 32,713
Market value at end of the year 709,022 694,667
Historic cost at end of the year 563,322 561,087
Comprising:
Global fixed interest 113,204 118,346
UK equities and funds 176,127 208,662
Overseas equities and funds 326,587 287,858
Property 14,975 5,379
Alternatives 43,696 41,709
Cash 34,433 32,713
All investments are listed on a recognised stock exchange 709,022 694,667
Trading Subsidiary 1 -
----- End of picture text -----

In the opinion of the Board, the value of the company’s freehold property is considerably in excess of its book value. Due to the costs involved, it is not considered practicable to quantify the difference.

14. Intangible Fixed Assets

There were no individual holdings the market value of which is considered to be material in the context of the portfolio as a whole. Refuge Trading Limited was incorporated in December 2021, but did not commence trading until after the year end.

----- Start of picture text -----
2020/21 Website Software Total
£ £ £
Cost
At 1 April 2021 294,902 126,367 421,269
Additions 17,712 - 17,712
Disposals -
At 31 March 2022 312,614 126,367 438,981
Amortisation
At 1 April 2021 21,221 122,650 143,871
Charge for the year 67,921 1,556 69,477
Disposals
At 31 March 2022 89,142 124,206 213,348
Net Book Value
At 31 March 2022 223,472 2,161 225,633
At 31 March 2021 273,681 3,717 277,398
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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

1. Provisions for liabilities and charges

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

----- Start of picture text -----
16. Debtors: Amounts falling due within one year 2022 2021
£ £
Trade Debtors 1,372,650 760,669
- -
Bad debt provision
Prepayments 472,698 515,497
Rent deposit 201,377 202,977
Other Debtors 1,981,217 1,222,007
4,027,942 2,701,150
----- End of picture text -----

17. Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year

----- Start of picture text -----
17. Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year 2022 2021
£ £
Trade Creditors 2,769,565 1,710,889
Accruals 1,038,374 975,512
Deferred income (note 18) 695,161 1,056,820
Other taxes and social security 374,205 342,741
Other Creditors 87,654 253,222
4,964,959 4,339,185
2022 2021
£ £
Financial liabilities measured at amortised cost 3,895,593 2,939,623
18. Deferred Income At At
1 April 31 March
2021 Created Released 2022
£ £ £ £
Deferred income 1,056,820 3,666,074 (4,027,733) 695,161
At At
1 April 31 March
2020 Created Released 2020
£ £ £ £
Deferred income 981,106 802,219 (726,505) 1,056,820
----- End of picture text -----

19. Provisions for liabilities and charges	2022	2021
	£	£
Provision at beginningof the year	370,000	340,000
Created duringthe year	170,165	30,000
Released duringthe year	(300,000)	-
Balance at the end of the year	240,165	370,000

The provision relates to the Board’s estimate of the present value for cost of dilapidations work that will be required to be undertaken on expiry of and in accordance with the terms of the company’s lease, on the premises at Head Office of £50,000, rent payable of £120,165 covering the rent free period. The remaining £70,000 is towards the future deficits concerning Refuge’s Admitted Body Status of Hertfordshire LGPS scheme.

20. Unrestricted Funds

----- Start of picture text -----
1 April 31 March
2021 Incoming Outgoing Transfers * 2022
£ £ £ £ £
General 10,414,166 19,828,845 (19,822,871) - 10,420,140
Designated 3,837,073 - (832,704) (3,004,369) -
Property Fund - - - 360,000 360,000
Quality Assurance Fund - - - 112,000 112,000
Automation Fund - - - 50,000 50,000
Performance Improvement Fund - - - 2,482,369 2,482,369
-
14,251,239 19,828,845 (20,655,575) 13,424,509
1 April 31 March
2020 Incoming Outgoing Transfers * 2021
£ £ £ £ £
General 2,750,903 27,076,717 (15,913,454) (3,500,000) 10,414,166
Designated 337,073 - - 3,500,000 3,837,073
-
3,087,976 27,076,717 (15,913,454) 14,251,239
----- End of picture text -----

General funds

These funds are available for Refuge’s general purposes.

Designated funds

Designated funds comprise unrestricted funds that the Board have set aside to support innovations in service delivery, the strengthening of support infrastructure, diversification of income streams and to provide for sinking fund repairs of leased and owned properties. Property fund

Is a designated fund to undertake health and safety work and other property improvement work at Refuges

Quality assurance fund

Is a designated fund to develop the quality assurance framework and improve quality standards at Refuges

Automation fund

Is a designated fund to undertake a scoping exercise to introduce, automate and improve the various IT databases across Refuge.

Performance Improvement Fund

Is a fund created to allow investment into the infrastructure of Refuge, including the strengthening of our Finance, People, Property and Technology functions.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

21. Restricted Funds

----- Start of picture text -----
1 April 31 March
2022 Incoming Outgoing Transfers * 2022
£ £ £ £ £
Refuge provision 543,263 766,661 (805,740) - 504,184
Outreach and Floating Support 40,335 1,250,738 (1,259,240) - 31,833
Integrated Services 27,943 364,242 (376,994) - 15,191
Big Lottery Fund 3,429 - (3,429) - -
Freephone 24 Hour National
Domestic Violence Helpline 327,815 1,554,518 (1,554,518) - 327,814
Public information - - - - -
Specialist Services - 27,783 (27,358) - -
Advocacy 230,616 527,200 (614,958) - 142,860
-
1,173,401 4,491,142 (4,642,662) 1,021,881
At
1 April 31 March
2020 Incoming Outgoing Transfers * 2021
£ £ £ £ £
Refuge provision 458,705 1,238,605 (1,154,047) - 543,263
Outreach and Floating Support 23,424 993,406 (976,495) - 40,335
Integrated Services 2,577 367,573 (342,207) - 27,943
Big Lottery Fund 5,714 290,161 (292,446) - 3,429
Freephone 24 Hour National
Domestic Violence Helpline - 2,795,201 (2,467,386) - 327,815
Public information - 25,000 (25,000) - -
Specialist Services - 27,358 (27,358) - -
Advocacy 35,414 1,305,669 (1,110,465) - 230,616
-
525,834 7,042,974 (6,395,409) 1,173,401
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Refuge provision Housing benefit and Supporting People funding used in an emergency accommodation setting to provide critical support services to women and children fleeing from domestic violence. Relevant support activities range from support to set up and maintain a home making links with community groups and organizations; assistance in developing independent living skills (finance, social and domestic/life); signposting to specialist services to help maintain health and well being; signposting to culturally specific legal services, health services, counselling and advocacy.

Advocacy Used to fund intensive short to medium support to women at high risk of domestic violence as they pursue legal remedies and protection through the criminal and civil justice systems.

Big Lottery Fund - Eastern European Independent Gender Violence Advocacy Service

Used to fund support and information to Eastern European women and children experiencing domestic violence across three London boroughs.

Big Lottery Fund - LEAP Caseworkers for Victims of Domestic Violence in Lambeth Used to fund support and information to women and children experiencing domestic violence in Lambeth.

Integrated services

Refuge runs a number of integrated services, which act as the first point of contact for any victim of gender-based violence. This service supports those who have experienced domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, prostitution, stalking, trafficking, forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and so-called ‘honour’ based violence. Our clients are able to come to one place to access a range of specialist support, including safety, alongside emotional and practical support.

Outreach & floating support

Used in the local community setting to provide critical support services to women and children fleeing from domestic violence. Relevant support activities range from support to maintain a home; making links with community groups and organizations; assistance in developing independent living skills (finance, social and domestic/life); signposting to specialist services to help maintain health and well being; signposting to culturally specific legal services, health services, counselling and advocacy.

24 Hour Freephone National Domestic Violence Helpline

Used to fund the 24 Hour Freephone National Domestic Violence Helpline

Specialist services

Used to fund support workers to improve outcomes for women and children who have experienced domestic violence.

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2021

22. Analysis of Net Assets between Funds

23. Commitments

Analysis of Net Assets between Funds 2022	Unrestricted	Restricted
	Funds	Funds	Total
	£	£	£
Tangible fxed assets	759,614	-	759,614
Intangible fxed assets	117,669	107,964	225,633
Financial Investments	709,022	-	709,022
Net current assets	12,078,369	913,917	12,992,286
Provisions	(240,165)	-	(240,165)
	13,424,509	1,021,881	14,446,390
Analysis of Net Assets between Funds 2020	Unrestricted	Restricted
	Funds	Funds	Total
	£	£	£
Tangible fxed assets	83,361	9,769	93,130
Intangible fxed assets	78,734	198,664	277,398
Financial Investments	694,667	-	694,667
Net current assets	13,764,477	964,968	14,729,445
Provisions	(370,000)	-	(370,000)
	14,251,239	1,173,401	15,424,640

At the year-end the company had future minumum lease commitments under non-cancellable operating leases as set out below:

	2022	2022	2021	2021
	Land and		Land and
	Buildings	Other	Buildings	Other
	£		£	£
Up to oneyear	410,421	1,537	320,960	10,689
Between one and fve years	895,773	-	587,981	2,985
	1,306,1941	1,537	908,941	10,689

Operating lease costs in the year amounted to £665,914, (2021: £870,549) in respect of land and buildings, and 8,703 (2021: £ 15,362) in respect of other leases.

24. Related Party Transactions

During the year trustees received reimbursement of expenses totalling £1,583 (2021 - £312) Donations from trustees during the year were:

24. Related Party Transactions Donations from trustees during the year were: During the year trustees received reimbursement of expenses totalling £1,583 (2021 - £312)
	2022	2021
	£	£
	-	30

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Registered charity number 277424

Registered charity number 277424

One year in fifty from one safe house to a movement

Refuge One America Square, 17 Crosswall, London, EC3N 2LB 020 7395 7700