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Annual Report
1 August 2024 - 31 July 2025
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The Trustees have pleasure in presenting the annual report and accounts of Gullane Community Children’s Hub for the period from 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025.
Reference & Administrative Information
Charity Name Gullane Community Children’s Hub Charity No SC048602 Care Inspectorate No CS2018370882 Address The Old Primary School East Links Road Gullane EH31 2AF
Trustees during the period:
Steve Weatherley (Chair) Katie Hay (Secretary) Kirsty Logan (Treasurer) Robert Norman Committee Support: Oliver Molyneux Contact Address: Gullane Community Children’s Hub, Old Primary School, Gullane, EH31 2AF
Structure Governance & Management
Gullane Community Children’s Hub (“The Hub”) was granted Charitable status from OSCR on 3 August 2018. The Hub is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation. It is governed by its constitution which was adopted on 3 August 2018.
The structure of the organisation consists of the Members who have the right to attend Members’ meetings (including any annual general meeting) and have important powers under the constitution. In particular, the Members appoint Trustees to serve on the Board and take decisions on changes to the constitution itself. The Board holds regular meetings (approximately every 2 months) and generally controls the activities of the organisation. For example, the Board is responsible for monitoring and controlling the financial position of the organisation.
Membership is open to all parents, guardians and carers of children attending the Hub, as well as any other person who has expertise that would be of assistance to the Board or organisation, or that represents outside bodies with which the organisation has close contact.
Appointment of Trustees
Trustees are elected at the Annual General Meeting, which was last held on 16 June 2024. All existing Trustees were re-elected.
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Trustees and Management
The Trustees are unpaid volunteers and are responsible for the strategic direction and governance of the Hub, with the day to day running being undertaken by the Manager and her team, who are paid members of staff. The Trustees meet approximately every 2 months.
Objectives and Activities
- Charitable purposes
To provide social and educational care facilities for children from the age of 2 years old through to primary school age in Gullane, Aberlady and Dirleton and surrounding communities through the provision of a Playgroup, After School Club, Breakfast Club, Holiday Club and other activities as appropriate.
Chair’s Report
The primary focus of the Hub is on making sure the children have a caring and fun environment in which to play and start their learning journeys. We believe we have a truly excellent staff team, led by Judy Park, and this has been independently verified by the Care Inspectorate who reviewed our services and organisation in October 2022 and gave us a ‘Very Good’ rating across all 4 of their evaluation criteria, namely: How good is our care, play and learning?; How good is our setting?; How good is our leadership?; How good is our staff team? This reflects the constant hard work put in by Judy and her team to create a well-run Hub and a wonderful culture.
It’s vitally important that we’re able to retain our staff because, when they leave, we can suffer disruption and gaps which can seriously affect our ability to operate and, even more importantly, our staff build strong bonds with the children and their parents, which are invaluable. To ensure that we retain our well-motivated staff and sustain our high standards, we are committed to providing our employees with fair and competitive wages. During the year, we increased wage rates in line with our aim to ensure that as many of our staff as possible earn at least the real living wage. That did mean we had to increase our fees during the year.
In addition to our primary focus on the quality of our educational and childcare services, we have continued to work on making the Hub as resilient and sustainable as possible. In the past, our organisation was too reliant on the knowledge of a few volunteer individuals. That placed a huge burden on those individuals and made it difficult for them to hand over to successors, even if they could find someone else willing to take on the workload. Specialist inputs that were previously provided by volunteers have now been outsourced to professional advisers, such as book-keeping, human resources and payroll support.
These positive steps have ensured that our unpaid volunteer Trustees are now truly non-executive and can focus on governance and oversight rather than getting involved in management of the Hub. Our intention going forward is for each Trustee to serve for no more than 2-3 years and then rotate off the Board. This should ensure that we do not revert back to a situation where our organisation is over-dependent on individuals. Now that we can confidently say that Trustees will only be asked to commit to about 6 meetings a year, with just an hour or so for each meeting, we hope that more parents will be willing to take a turn on the Board.
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I believe that the Hub is in a good, healthy position and will continue to deliver its excellent services for the children of Gullane and nearby villages.
Steve Weatherley, Chair
Hub Manager’s Report
The last year has flown past as busy life at the Hub continues. There is an every-growing demand for childcare and all services remain full with waiting lists.
Our staffing team remains consistent with only small changes and we have welcomed a new bank staff member and new breakfast club practitioner this year, in addition to having a North Berwick high school pupil join us to help out at ASC once a week. We have also promoted a member of staff to a Deputy Manager position. All staff also received a pay rise this year to reflect their important roles and ensure we pay at least the new Living Wage.
We have made very good progress with our Hub Improvement Plan, which this year focussed on staff development and the new Scottish Social Services Council requirements, supporting learners at Playgroup and clearly recording their progress and development and finally a review of our snack and lunch provision.
Staff have engaged with a variety of different learning modules as well as attending refresher training for First Aid, child protection and food hygiene. Playgroup children’s folders have been further developed to ensure clear tracking and identification of next steps, and playgroup lunches have been a big hit (now that we are required to provide lunch for funded children). The children have enjoyed growing some of their own food and helping to prepare snacks and lunches - often suggesting new ideas that we can take on board.
There has been a change in safeguarding legislation, brought in on 1.4.25, and the Hub processes for conducting disclosure checks/ensuring PVG membership for all staff and committee complies with the new requirements.
In order to continue to keep our premises in good condition, improvements have been made this year to the toilet areas which have been refreshed and decorated with children’s artwork. Much of this work was undertaken by Hub staff during one of their in-service days. We are also investing in replacing the overhead lighting in the main hall.
As this report is written we are looking forward to the summer term, with much of our time hopefully being spent outside. We have already planted our potatoes, onions and beetroot and have tomato and cucumber plants thriving on a sunny window sill. We will end the term with a family Summer Picnic/Garden Day in conjunction with our AGM.
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Financial Report
During the financial year 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025, the Hub has had a total income of £168,731.
Fees comprised the main source of our income (£151,119, 90%), with additional sources of income from hall hire, grants and fundraising totalling £16,994.
The total expenditure incurred by the Hub in the period was £175,839. Salaries and pension payments comprised the main spending (£147,282, 84%). The main additional expenditure items were utilities (£4,380, 2.5%), snacks for children (£2,955, 1.7%), crafting/outdoor materials (£1,550, 0.9%), registrations and subscriptions (£2,642, 1.5%), payroll and accounting (£3,169, 1.8%), building maintenance and improvements (£3,288, 1.9%), cleaning costs (£5,882, 3.3%) and insurance (£816, 0.5%). A full breakdown of the Hub’s expenditure is detailed in the Accounts section below.
Overall, the Hub made a deficit of £7,108 for the year and had a current bank balance of £26,433 as of 31 July 2025.
Statement of Reserves
We aim to ensure we have cash reserves in our bank accounts to cover approximately 3 months of operating costs. Our average monthly operating costs during the period were around £14,700 a month and our bank balance at the end of the period was approximately £26,400. This was below the target cash reserves and the Board implemented significant fee increases, averaging approx. +10%, at the start of 2025 in order to bring our cash reserves back towards the target level.
Approved by the Board and signed on its behalf by:
[ste4DD316420DE3442... by: Steve Weatherley, Chair
23-02-2026 | 13:07 GMT Date:
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Gullane Community Children's Hub Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation Registered Scottish Charity No: SC048602
Receipts and Payments Accounts for the year ending 31st July 2025
| Receipts Fees Hall Hire Fundraising Grants Refunds/Compensation/Payments in error Bank Interest Other income Donations Total Income Payments Salary Payroll and Accounting Insurance Utilities Cleaning costs Maintenance and Improvements Snacks Crafting/outdoor materials Registration and Subscriptions Misc. Fundraising Costs Bad Debts HR Support Staff Training Bank Fees Total payments Surplus/(Deficit) for year |
Total Total Unrestricted Restricted 2025 2024 £ £ £ £ 151,119 £ 151,119 £ 151,999 £ 1,170 £ 1,170 £ 1,470 £ 6 £ 6 £ 469 £ 15,818 £ 15,818 £ 12,978 £ - £ - £ 56 £ 286 £ 286 £ 304 £ 300 £ 300 £ 165 £ 32 £ 32 £ 1,000 £ 168,731 £ - £ 168,731 £ 168,442 £ 147,282 £ 147,282 £ 134,570 £ 3,169 £ 3,169 £ 3,039 £ 816 £ 816 £ 900 £ 4,380 £ 4,380 £ 3,417 £ 5,882 £ 5,882 £ 3,920 £ 3,288 £ 3,288 £ 1,807 £ 2,955 £ 2,955 £ 2,639 £ 1,550 £ 1,550 £ 1,258 £ 2,642 £ 2,642 £ 2,747 £ 2,036 £ 2,036 £ 1,818 £ - £ - £ 302 £ - £ - £ 1,626 £ 716 £ 716 £ 3,104 £ 614 £ 614 £ 513 £ 510 £ 510 £ 527 £ 175,839 £ - £ 175,839 £ 162,187 £ 7,108 -£ - £ 7,108 -£ 6,254 £ |
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Gullane Community Children's Hub Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation Registered Scottish Charity No: SC048602
Statement of Balances for the year ending 31st July 2025
| Total | Total | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrestricted | Restricted | 2025 | 2024 | ||||||
| £ | £ | £ | £ | ||||||
| Funds reconciliation | |||||||||
| Opening cash at bank and in hand | £ | 33,541 | £ | - | £ | 33,541 | £ | 27,287 | |
| Surplus/(deficit) for year | -£ | 7,108 | £ | - | -£ | 7,108 | £ | 6,254 | |
| Closing cash at bank and in hand | £ | 26,433 | £ | - | £ | 26,433 | £ | 33,541 | |
| Bank and cash in hand | |||||||||
| Bank Current Account | £ | 5,842 | £ | 5,842 | £ | 4,835 | |||
| Playgroup No 2 Account | £ | 20,591 | £ | 20,591 | £ | 28,304 | |||
| Cash In Hand | £ | - | £ | - | - | £ | 401 | ||
| Total Bank/Cash | £ | 26,433 | £ | - | £ | 26,433 | £ | 33,541 | |
| Assets | £ | - | £ | - | |||||
| Liabilities | |||||||||
| Independent Examination fee | £ | 696 | £ | 672 | |||||
| £ | 672 | £ | 642 |
23-02-2026 | 13:07 GMT Approved by the Trustees on .......................... and signed on their behalf
Kirsty Logan Treasurer
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Gullane Community Children's Hub Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation Registered Scottish Charity No: SC048602
Notes to the Accounts
for the year ending 31st July 2025
1. Basis of accounting
These accounts have been prepared on the Receipts and Payments basis in accordance with the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 and the Charities accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (as amended).
2. Nature and purpose of funds
Unrestricted funds are of a general nature and have no conditions attached. Unrestricted funds and may be used at the discretion of the trustees in furtherance of the objects of the charity.
3 Related part transactions
There were no trustee's renumeration of other benefits for the year ended 31 July 2025 nor for the year ended 31 July 2024.
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Gullane Community Children's Hub Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation Registered Scottish Charity No: SC048602
Independent Examiner's Report for the year ending 31st July 2025
I report on the accounts of the charity for the year ended 31 July 2025.
Respective responsibilities of Trustees and examiner
The charity’s trustees are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the terms of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) 2005 Act and the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006. The charity trustees consider that the audit requirement of Regulation 10(1) (d) of the Accounts Regulations does not apply. It is my responsibility to examine the accounts as required under section 44(1) (c) of the Act and to state whether particular matters have come to my attention.
Basis of independent examiner's statement
My examination is carried out in accordance with Regulation 11 of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006. 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 seeks explanations from the trustees concerning any such matters. The procedures undertaken do not provide all the evidence that would be required in an audit and, consequently, I do not express an audit opinion on the view given by the accounts.
Independent examiner's statement
In the course of my examination, no matter has come to my attention other than disclosed below
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which gives me reasonable cause to believe that in any material respect the requirements:
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to keep accounting records in accordance with Section 44 (1) (a) of the 2005 Act and Regulation 4 of the
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2006 Accounts Regulations, and
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to prepare accounts which accord with the accounting records and comply with Regulation 9 of the 2006
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Accounts Regulations have not been met, or
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to which, in my opinion, attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.
Sheryl Macaulay FCCA EQ Accountants Ltd Chartered Accountants 47-49 The Square Kelso Roxburghshire TD5 7HW 09-03-2026 | 15:47 GMT
Dated: