This year the accounts are not good reading. Income is lower than budgeted and this is on top of expenditure being higher than budgeted. Our total assets have decreased by £8118 in 2018 with lower balances in the charity account, main bank account, hall account, flower fund and the toddler group.
Our investment value has decreased in value by £392 and was valued at £25584 at the end of December.
The main bank account held at HSBC had a balance of £10732 at the end of December. We also have money in the UTB account of £40703 and a reserve buffer account to ensure we are able to manage our cash flow of £7519 (We did not have to use this during 2018). We also have an account specifically for Legacies and at the end of December we had a balance of £838.
We received £10724 back from HMRC so thank you to everyone who is a UK tax payer and have signed a gift aid form. This was however £500 less than 2017. If you would like to gift aid your donations and have not signed a form David Cavey will be happy to help with this. Both myself, David, Colin and Malcolm cannot stress how much easier giving is using the parish giving scheme. Not only does it reduce the amount of admin, but it is far safer than carrying cash through Waterlooville precinct every week. If you do not give by this method, please consider it, as we get the tax back straight away rather than having to wait 3 months, and you still have control over how much you are giving. You can do this even if you are not a tax payer, again David Cavey will be happy to help with any queries you may have.
The donation figure is lower than last year by £1692. This comes from donations made to the church and also collections from baptisms, which we receive half of, and the other half goes to the charity of the month. Green envelopes, gift aided pink envelopes and loose plate collections are lower than last year by £661 and was £793 lower than the budget. This was in line with our predictions when setting the budget in October 2017. Standing orders are £2161 lower than budgeted and £2749 less than 2017.
Our gift day raised £585 but this was £415 less than budgeted and £870 less than 2017. We will be holding another gift day later in the year, so please watch out for information in the bulletin.
The fundraising figure exceptional again this year amounting to £18890 and takes into account the money taken by the shop (£5995 before gift aid), and money received from Bonus ball (£400), Friday coffee morning (£1400) and 100 club (£544) to mention just a few. We also received donations from the social committee and Wednesday coffee morning. A big thank you to everyone who has organised fundraising events during the year and also to all of you who have supported them.
We have received dividends from our investment and these have come out slightly higher this year at £873.
During the year we discovered that major work had to be completed on the hall roof. Without the funds to do this, we had to look for other options to fund the work. We received loans from some members of the congregation in order to raise the funds desperately needed to repair the hall roof and this amounted to £11000. The loans will have to be paid back over the next couple of years except for the £1000 which was loaned from the Toddler Group who use the hall on a Tuesday morning, and have said they do not want it repaid. A big thank you to those of you who have loaned the money.
Moving to expenditure we managed to pay our full parish share again this year. In general the expenses remained within budget. Church & grounds maintenance, magazine, bookstall & bulletin, piano and organ tuning, administration, photocopier costs, fees paid out and fundraising costs were all over budget. Although we made savings in clergy expenses, additional costs were incurred for the extra work required by our administrator in the absence of a priest for most of the year.
I have again depreciated the church hall by 2% as in previous years and this came to £2616 leaving a balance of the value of the hall as £127,566.
We have set the budget making as many savings as possible, however if we carry on as we are, our reserves are going to run out and we will not be able to pay for our basic needs. The budget we have set still has a shortfall of £13597. If we carry on with this trend it will only be 4 years before we run out of money assuming we do not make any further savings or increase our income in some way.
2018 was again a challenging year and unfortunately from a finance point of view 2019 does not seem to be going to be any better. A big thanks goes to George’s Men who work tirelessly on the upkeep of the church and in doing so, saving us money. We have just had our latest Quinquennial inspection and they will be trying to complete as many outstanding points as possible, however there are some larger jobs that have been identified that we will have to use outside contractors. Fortunately nothing is as bad as the repairs to the tower the year I became Treasurer.
Once again I would like to say a big thank you to the PCC and in particular the Fabric and Finance committee for all their support over the last year. I would also like to say thank you to Colin Monk, Malcolm Brewer and David Cavey (and helpers) for taking on the role of counting and banking the money each week. Without their continued help it would be very difficult for me to continue to be Treasurer, but I am happy to say that I will be remaining in this role for another year.
Dawn Trimby
