Chair’s Report
LPRG&CA 53rd AGM
Good evening and a warm welcome to you all.
We have spent our own money and money given by grants and charities over the last couple of years improving our facilities here in Lawrance Park. The building is getting old and things need repairing, improving or replacing. The toilets fitted last year are so much nicer and having the externally accessible one stops disruption for indoor hirers when the MUGA or Park are being used.
This year our attention was drawn to the children’s play area. It is well used throughout the year especially with the extra seating but it became obvious that there were two items of equipment which were beyond any further repair. Efforts had been made over a period of years to make them safe and replace worn out parts but these parts were no longer available. An approach was made to The Causeway Charity to ask if they would help fund their replacement. They very kindly agreed to help so a group from the Management Committee was set up to move the project forward. Meetings were held with several companies, their suggestions considered and adapted and the contract was finally given to Sovereign, a smaller company than Wickstead which we had previously used. They were more sensibly priced and we now have the play area back to full activity mode with the new items fitted in time for peak playing season. The replacement for the original tower has more features and is accessible by small children as well as the older ones with hanging bars on a separate item. I’m sure they will be well used for many years, and our thanks go to the Causeway Charity for making this happen.
Last year, in an attempt to increase our lettings we made an effort to become more prominent on social media. There does seem to be a slight increase in the number of parties and events booked into the hall over the weekends but the economic situation is not helping. We are grateful for our regulars which have not altered from last year: Scouts and Beavers, Thurlby Ladies, Smartfit, Tae Kwan Do, Thurlby Tigers and Kid’s Club but it would be good to attract more groups to fill the empty sessions.
Looking at our accounts you will see our income is mainly generated by hiring out the hall and field. We supplement this by holding fund raising events but we would struggle without financial assistance, especially in the upkeep of the park including grass cutting and arborist services. We are very grateful once again this year for Thurlby Parish Council stepping in to help with these costs. We have also had a donation from Thurlby Races following another successful race day.
Our main fundraising activity is always Bonfire Night, always held on 5 th of November which was a Tuesday this year. We were blessed with good weather and many family and friends turned up to help us run the event from collecting entrance donations and counting them, cooking and selling food and drink and glow bands to clearing up afterwards. The bonfire and fireworks were as brilliant as ever thanks to the amazing pyrotechnic team. It’s a great village event enjoyed by many which we couldn’t hold without so many willing volunteers so I am sure they were very pleased to hear we made a profit of £4,681.20.
We continue to provide drinks and snacks on Saturday mornings on a rota system during the football season. We have raised a healthy sum by being there in all weathers. This venture is much more profitable now we have a card machine, so few people had any change on their person that we were losing sales. Thank you to Jane for organising this and shopping for the stock and to everybody who participates, freezing to death on some occasions. There is great joy at the end of the morning when you realise your efforts have been worthwhile and we’ve taken more than £20!
Lisa Lowe ran more of her popular bingo sessions this year benefitting Lawrance Park and is continuing to run more for charity. Thank you, Lisa for your commitment.
We have had some issues with the cleaning of the hall this year and we were very fortunate to have Mrs Murfet help us out during a particularly tricky time. We now have a new lady, Gemma Parry looking after the hall. We thank our groundsman Tim Sleight, Pete who inspects our play equipment on a regular basis and Yvonne, the lettings clerk.
We continue to work with Thurlby Academy to ensure the environment is safe and secure for their pupils and we somehow make the unique Chance to Share scheme work for for the benefit of both parties
On you way into the hall this evening you will have noticed the car Park has been marked with spaces, a disabled bay, turning area and no parking zone. Hopefully it will make parking much easier as it was dreadful before and after school.
Keeping the hall and grounds working would not be possible without the continued input of Lawrance Park committee members, everybody giving up time to attend meetings, make decisions and get involved. I would especially like to thank Colin, our treasurer, Jane, our secretary, and Alan who has much valuable advice to offer. We all work to make Lawrance Park something to be proud of now and into the future.
Treasurer’s Report to Thurlby Parish Council AGM
An insight into 24/25 at Lawrance Park
Thank you, Lady Chair and Councillors for giving me the opportunity to report on Lawrance Park Recreation Ground & Community Association activity in the year to March 2025.
For this year’s report, I propose to give you an insight into how The Trustees manage the Charity with some focus on finances.
In terms of how we view our operations, we see the cost structure in broadly two sections, The Community Hall and then the Field/Playground. This is because the Community Hall is our main income stream, also the Community Hall is jointly used by the Academy with whom we have a Chance to Share legal agreement.
The fees for the hire of the Community Hall resulted in net proceeds, after Hall costs, of £5437. The total revenue from the Hall was nearly £15,000, with £12,800 coming from our regular hirers – Kids Club being our largest contributor. The casual hiring is only £2,057, an increase of £260 from the previous year – this represents about an extra 5 sessions. On average we have a casual booking in 40 weeks of the year. Although, we might increase casual bookings, we are constrained by the fact that we cannot undertake day bookings on week days: this is because of the Academy usage. This excludes us from taking bookings from the likes of U3A. Ideally, we need to find regular bookings for Monday and Thursday evenings and this will be a focus this coming year. We continue to give all parishioners booking a 25% discount on the hire rates: we look to this maintain this as long as we can financially afford to do so.
From the Field and Playground side, our costs exceed income by £5,700. These costs are mainly associated with the cutting of grass and maintenance of the park. Last year, the cost of managing the trees was virtually zero, this is usually a biannual cost associated with our arborist inspection: two years ago, tree maintenance cost over £4000. During last year we erected a gate off Chapel Lane for emergency access purposes. We also concreted the area adjacent to the outside toilet. We are thus most grateful to TPC for the grant of £4,000 towards our Field and Playground costs each year: this year reducing the deficit to £1700.
Above this, our own fundraising netted £6,374), primarily raised by the fireworks (£4,700) and Saturday football refreshments (£1400), proceeds from Bingo contributed the balance. Additionally, we also received a donation from The Thurlby Run committee which is a completely separate organisation from Lawrance Park.
During the year we also made the deposit payment for new playground equipment. We commissioned the replacement of the Naseby Tower and the Climbing Frame, both becoming increasingly difficult to maintain and not cost effective to do so. We have replaced the old tower with a new two Tower structure connected by a bridge, a Traversing Forest, and a Monkey frame. The cost of these is £40,000, with more than half the cost in the rubber wet pour. We are most grateful to The Thurlby Causeway Estate Charity for funding this. Alan and I have decided that the new tower is called the Causeway Tower in recognition of their support.
The playground is aging, as is the case with most of our property, many of the trees are also coming to the end of their life: we had to fell sixteen (mainly Cherry) trees two years ago due to disease, also two last year through them dying as a result of soggy ground at the South East corner of the Park. The Field, Hall, Play area are now over 50 years old.
The cost of maintaining all these in the future means that the Trustees must be mindful of the cost burden that that will bring.
The policy established by the Trustees many years ago, was that normal trading should cover the day to day running costs of the facilities: all our fundraising would be ring fenced towards maintenance and refurbishment of the Community assets. As Trustees we might be custodians of the assets but the Community own them: it is our job to maintain them for future generations. To this end, the fundraising amount of £6,000 last year has been transferred to our deposit account: this now totals £57,000. We also have money from a Charity Commission Recoupment scheme that can only be spent on the building assets. This leaves us with about £5000 sum in the current account to manage our trading income and expenditure.
Over the past three years we have, installed LED lighting in the Park, refurbished the toilets, and now replaced playground equipment – in total c£90,000. We will always seek grants to support this work and have been successful getting grants for all these cases: If we had not received grants, our reserves would be virtually gone. We are not always successful in our Grant applications, last year alone we had rejections from LNER, Postcode Places Trust, and VCSE Energy Efficiency Scheme: we currently have an approved grant from Tesco. The VCSE rejection was unfortunate due to our Chance to Share Scheme with the Academy impacting our eligibility. We know the heating system is 50 years old and will need replacing soon and it is unlikely we will be able to attract grant funding for it.
Next, I want to touch on our volunteers. All our Trustees are volunteers. Other than the Booking Clerk, not one Trustee receives as much as a penny. The normal processes of attending meetings, secretarial work, treasurer work etc, are understood and accepted as ‘what we signed up for.’ Beyond that though there are many hours put in by volunteers – both Trustees and non-Trustees. This will cover such things as repairing playground equipment, fixing park benches, project management, as well as fund raising.
My own personal estimate is that anywhere between 350 and 400 voluntary hours a year are expended: some of these are skilful jobs: conservatively averaging the rates one could expect to pay for these skills, an average could easily be in the region of £20 an hour: equating to c£7000 per annum. Given the £5700 excess cost of the Park and Playground: the parishes could be argued to benefit c£13000 a year from having the playground and field maintained by LPRG&CA. In most villages the cost of maintaining the facilities would be the responsibility of the Parish Council and on behalf of the parishioners: your continued support through precept, is vital to us in this respect.
Finally, at our AGM last week, we had one member of the public, and she was there to jointly receive the Lawrance Park Cup, alongside Lisa. We know people love the wonderful facility that we have, but we struggle to attract new, younger blood. Hopefully, we hear we might have someone joining us this coming year who fits that bill, and has the passion for Lawrance Park that we all have.
Thank you.
Report Colin Murrant
Thurlby PC AGM
7 May 2025
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Independent Examiner's Report for The Trustees of Lawrance Park Recreation Ground & Community Association — Charity No.502887
| report on the accounts for the year ended 31% March 2025 which are attached.
Respective Responsibilities of trustees and examiner: The Charity's Trustees are responsible for the preparation of the accounts. The charity's trustees consider that an audit is not required for this year under section 144(2) of the Charities Act 2011 (the 2011 Act) and that an independent examination is needed. It is my responsibility to -examine the accounts under section 145 of the 2011 Act; — follow the procedures laid down in the general directives given by the Charities Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the 2011 Act: and -state whether particular matters have come to my attention.
Basis of Independent Examiner's Report My examination was carried out in accordance with the general directions given by the Charities Commission. An examination includes a review of the accounting records kept by the Charity and a comparison of the accounts presented with those records. It also includes consideration of any unusual items or disclosures in the accounts and seeking explanations from you as trustees concerning any such matters. The procedures undertaken do not provide all the evidence that would be required in an audit and consequently no opinion is given as to whether the accounts present a "true and fair view" and the report is limited to those matters set out in the statement below.
Independent Examiner's Statement In connection with my examination, no matter has come to my attention:
- Which gives me reasonable cause to believe that in any material respect the requirements: a. To keep accounting records in accordance with section 130 of the 2011 Act: and b. To prepare accounts which accord with the accounting requirements of the 2011Act have not been met; or 2. To which, in my opinion, attention should be drawn, in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.
Signed:
“~~ Date: seal gn a4 o a
Colin York
The Green Thurlby Lincolnshire