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← Hartwood Community Development Group

2024-12-31-accounts

Hartwood Community Development Group Trustees, Annual Report From 26.02.23 - 26.02.24

Charity contact information

Hartwood Community Development Group

Scottish Charity Number: SC050371

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Website: Hartwoodcdg.org

Twitter / Facebook / Social Media profile name: Hartwood Community Development Group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/165932434532450

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Charity Trustees

Name all of your charity trustees for the period, and the date they left if they were not in post for the whole year

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Objectives and activities

History and Purposes

Hartwood is a small village of around 300 persons in the postal area of Shotts in North Lanarkshire. It sits within a semi-rural location and is surrounded by small farms and fields. There are no shops or other facilities in the village but it does have its own railway station.

Since the closure of Hartwood Hospital in 1998, the village was somewhat neglected by NHS Lanarkshire, who owned the majority of the land in this area. The land within the old hospital grounds has been purchased by a private developer. In an effort to address the potential within the village, a group was set up to seek ideas and funding and was a constituted group set up in February 2020, to apply for funding from the Blacklaw Windfarm for the purposes of refurbishing the local playpark, in collaboration with the local authority, North Lanarkshire Council. This application was successful and the funds for this project remain with NLC until completion.

The transition to a SCIO was to attract other types of funding for the village and this was granted on 13[th] August 2020.

Lockdown restrictions affected timing and execution of most of our initial plans, and this remains the case with our NHS Property Services and North Lanarkshire Council due to procurement and case backlogs. We remain optimistic.

Collaborations

Previous collaboration with Allanton and Hartwood Community Council has come to an end with the dissolution of the council. As a result, the charity has taken over the purchasing of the Remembrance Day poppy wreaths, and the village Christmas tree. We are considering applying for funding to purchase and site a community shed, originally part of the Community Council’s remit – unfortunately their funding was returned when the council dissolved. The charity is mindful of the usefulness of a community shed as a group base and learning facility and the

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provision of an inclusive space to allow villagers to access educational opportunities in the interest of social welfare, recreation or leisure.

We were in contact with a local primary school to collaborate on gardening activities, linking with their Royal Horticultural Society Gardening Award Scheme – unfortunately this has not come to fruition with the schools extended Covid-19 restrictions. We will revisit this at a later date as we continue to look for collaborations with other areas, mainly as we are a small village, but also to further our experiences in line with our governing documents.

The acquisition of the village land from NHS Lanarkshire Property Services remains ongoing. The village swing park licence to remains unresolved between NHS and North Lanarkshire Council, nevertheless, we remain committed to seeing this project through to fruition, and regularly contact both parties for updates, with little response. Presently, the children living, and visiting the village have no fully useable safe play areas.

Mutual discussion and support continue with NLC with their Community Matters team in relation to the play park, and positive steps have been made in securing an agreement between NLC and NHS to maintain the park area for grass cutting and maintenance. The final papers are presently with the legal teams of both parties.

Activity to date

T he charity has been able to continue with maintaining the planting within the village, actively purchasing resources for this purpose.

This remains:

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The Scotrail Adoption scheme has been positive and we were able to purchase and site a defibrillator within the station for community use. This remains maintained.

We secured funding from NLC and were able to purchase and site village signs with permission from the local authority.

Citizenship

We continue to include the village residents in our activities but are seeing less involvement via volunteering, nevertheless, those able have maintained their efforts and workload to ensure all activities are carried out each season – and maintained. This has been difficult at times as access to some areas, namely platform two of the station as there is no direct route for resources to be carried there. The Christmas Light Sponsorship was less of a success last time around so we did not do this again this year.

The Facebook page has been utilized to provide advice and information and is visited and populated by a steady flow of contributors. We now have a dedicated website, allowing for further information dissemination.

Funding Activities

We have not applied for any further external funding this account period.

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This has proven to be another challenging year for the charity due to membership issues and the workload of activities around the village. We continue to discuss ideas for the village such as the need for an honesty/exchange box. This has been a slow year for the charity, mainly due to waiting on other organisations completing plans for the village swing park refurbishment, nevertheless, we have remained focussed and continued to seek information and resources. Online information sessions have remained on our agenda and information from these distributed to the appropriate persons as a means of upskilling.

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Structure, governance, and management

Type of governing document

The Hartwood Community Development Group is a constituted SCIO, with the common purposes of promoting the benefit of the inhabitants of Hartwood and its environs without distinctions of sex, sexuality, political, religious or other options by associating the local statutory authorities, voluntary organisations and inhabitants in a common effort to advance education. to provide facilities or to assist in the provision of facilities, in the interest of social welfare for recreation and other leisure time occupation so that their condition of life may be improved by the advancement of citizenship or community development. We have evidenced this by acquiring/managing land via Asset Transfer; Land Participation, to advance and secure opportunities to provide appropriate amenities for the inhabitants of Hartwood.

Trustee recruitment and appointment

Hartwood Community Development Group is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) and, presently, the Trustees of the SCIO comprise of the previous board of the original constituted group, recruited from the Hartwood Area. Recruitment is taken from inhabitants of Hartwood and voted in by members. Our current Principal Trustee has moved out of the area and will resign as soon as other arrangements can be made. It would be beneficial to expand the diversity of the board in the future.

The Trustees bring a range of skills and knowledge to the charity, namely, but not limited to:

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Although we recognise that going forward the charity should recruit from out with the village and local area and that posts will be externally advertised with references and interview selections carried out to secure the appropriate person. This has yet to be utilised, mainly due to the costs of advertising. We have a vacancy for a Trustee which requires to be filled as we need 3 Trustees to carry on.

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Achievements and performance

The largest success to date remains the aesthetics on the village in terms of planting and maintenance, with our Facebook page remaining a key feature for discussions. We were delighted to see the newly refurbished children’s play park opened this year. We are now struggling with our membership involvement and volunteering hours, and this is greatly impacting on our volunteering hours with a small cohort of six willing to give up their time.

To aid meeting our outcomes, we still maintain a steady conversation with the village residents via the Facebook and chat pages.

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Financial review

The financial reserves we presently hold are from donations and fundraising. All other funds are time and activity restricted.

Details of any deficit

We presently have no fund deficits.

Donated facilities and services

To date, we have no donated services or facilities within this accounting period.

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Future plans

The station work will continue with the station adoption funding from Scotrail to add and populate planters to platform two. This funding does not form part of our accounts and is a direct spend and receipt to Scotrail.

Additional information

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Declaration

Signed on behalf of the trustees

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Print Name

Designation

Principal Trustee

Date

05.09.24

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YEAR END 23-24 DATE 27.03.23 27.03.23 27.03.23 28.03.23 31.03.23 03.04.23 03.04.23 03.04.23 20.04.23 21.04.23 24.04.23 24.04.23 24.04.23 04.05.23 05.05.23 19.05.23 24.05.23 24.05.23 06.06.23 30.06.23 22.09.23 06.10.23 20.11.23 04.12.23 29.01.24 TOTALS TOTALS PROFIT LOSS CLOSING BALANCE 4842.12 £7,0(K).(M) £6,0￿.[￿) £5.0(K).(K) £4,OIKI.(M) £3,0￿.[￿) £2.0(M).(K) £I.0￿.(￿j £O.(Kl

INCOME £6,287.25 £0.00 EXPENSES COMMENTS £0.00 OPENING BALANCE £105.18 Plants £30.56 Plants £0.00 £82.80 B&Q Painting planters £0.00 £211.85 REIMBURSEMENT £0.00 £49.45 Amazon - ordered in error £0.00 £146.38 Amazon £0.00 Amazon rafund £0.00 £55.00 Website £0.00 £157.00 Zurich Insurance £0.00 £127.18 Bins £0.00 £26.40 Postcr8te Receipt no 22 £0.00 23 2+3 £49.45 £5.67 £0.00 Amazon Smile Donation £68.44 Amazon £0.00 io £127.18 £0.00 Bin shop credit note £O.l)O Amazon Smile Donation £19.76 Amazon water containers £85.98 Silverbirch plants £84.59 Amazon £0.00 Reimbursed from Scotrail - plants £14.49 Amazon £68.40 Wreaths £72.45 Xmas Tree Decorations li £28.48 £0.00 £0.00 £0.00 12 13 14 15+16 £60.00 15+16 £0.00 17 18 19 £0.00 £210.00 Xmas Tree Jami8 Storrie 20 £100.00 Web page £6,558.03 £1,715.91 £4,842.12 21 INCOME EXPENSES

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