TRUSTEES REPORT FOR 2024
In accordance with our Constitution, the Trustees Report for 2024 is set out below.
It was another busy year for the club with 14 ’Guest’ and 2 major fund-raising events but sadly no monthly club suppers other than the AGM and even here we struggled to get a quorum of members. Nevertheless, a growing band of Puddenecks helpers has enabled our main activity of ‘Help for Older People’ to thrive.
Income for 2024 amounted to £36,125 (gross) while expenditure totalled £38,243 resulting in a deficit for the year of £2,118. Income benefited from a very successful Golf Day; fund-raising dinner, raffles organised by ‘Ye Olde Monk’ and at ‘Guest’ events; subscriptions; Gift Aid; and the ‘200’ Club. In addition, the Club is indebted to Totteridge Millhillians Cricket Club (TMCC) for all their support and to four ‘gentlemen’ who again donated £1,500 from their annual Charity Golf day to help fund our ‘Guests’ Christmas party. The Club also received numerous donations including from the Westleigh Group (New Southgate Crematorium), and the Seabrook Arms.
The 2023 audited accounts were circulated in March 2024 together with the Trustee, Chairman’s and Treasurer’s reports. The AGM was held in April 2024 and approved these three documents. A new committee was selected; in accordance with the Constitution any member is entitled to stand for office. Veronica McGowan stood down as she was moving back to Ireland and as no new members volunteered their services the existing seven committee members agreed to stay, retaining their respective roles. In July, a former committee member rejoined to ensure we remained a quorate while in September a new, younger, member Neil Hill joined, taking the committee to eight in total by the year end.
The committee met six times during the year and had a 70% attendance record. Full notes of the meetings, covering all aspects of the Club’s activities were recorded and distributed to committee members with action points clearly labelled. In addition, a summary of these meetings was recorded in the newsletter (four editions and 2 newssheet) which were distributed to members and helpers. The newsletter contains important information about the Club, photos of our activities and relevant dates, so everyone was fully aware of what is happening. Steph Harrison (a helper) very kindly continued to update the Club’s WEB page. Members were also kept up to date with a year’s calendar which clearly marks out the important events of the year for the Club. With our newest committee member, a computer buff, all committee members have been given a puddenecksclub.com email addresses and there is general Puddenecks email address for public contact He also organised for the club to be able to accept electronic payments with a card reader. The Club moves forward into new technology.
To conform with statutory rules which seem to grow regularly, all Club policies were reviewed in February 2024 and changes recommended were presented to members at the 2024 AGM and then added to the Club ‘Rules and Operating Instructions booklet’. Of particular note was the change to allow for the Club to appoint Hon Members. In accordance with Charity Commission advice, risk management, continues to be taken very seriously and all necessary forms were completed ahead of all the events organised. All risk procedures are clearly laid out in the Rules booklet and are managed accordingly by the committee and ‘risk management’ is a standing item on the Committee agenda. During the year one of our members, with detailed knowledge of Risk Assessments, read our relevant policy and while happy with the bulk of its content suggested a few minor additions, the most important being lanyards be given to all drivers as a way of identifying themselves to ‘Guests’ and providing Club information should it be required during transportation of ‘Guests’ to and from events.
The Club met for supper on two occasions, the AGM and a fund-raising supper. In April the AGM passed all relevant items unopposed. While there was again a very disappointing turnout of members, we did have some guests, and the meeting concluded with an interesting talk by Louise Broadbent on the role of Citizens Advice, in Barnet. In November the Club organised for Lucy Lewis, the UK’s first female army bomb disposal officer to come and talk to us about her ‘day job’ and with 92 present it was a very successful evening, thoroughly enjoyed by everybody and raised over £1,100.
At the start of 2024, the Club had 47 paid up and 5 Honorary members. During the year we gained 1 new member but sadly lost a long-standing active supporter/Honorary member, Ged Crotty (39 years membership) while 6 members decided not to renew so we ended the year with 42 paid up members and 4 Honorary members. The average membership age was 73.3 years, ranging from 35 to 105 years. Yes, 105 years is correct. The average length of membership was around 11.6 years with our longest serving member serving over 44 years and shortest at less than 2 months. Excluding Honorary membership, the average age declined to 71.4 years and average membership length reduced to 9.8 years. We had 7 female members, representing around 17% of our membership. The current Trustees (9 members) average age is 72 years with 3 in their eighties and it is the lack of the next generation stepping forward to lead the club which concerns the committee and has dominated current committee meeting thoughts.
In June the committee, in conjunction with members of Totteridge Millhillians Cricket Club (TMCC) organised a BBQ at the Cricket Club for our newer members and helpers as a ‘thank you’. While not too many newer members attended, we had a good number of helpers present with about 40 people in total attending and it was well received.
Our thanks must go to TMCC and their members for all their support given in lending us their pavilion for the ‘Guest’ summer BBQ’s and the Christmas lunch, providing the catering facilities and volunteers to cook the meals. Also, to those who helped serve, entertain and ensured the safe running of the events and we cannot forget the helper drivers as getting 90 ‘Guests’ to an event is not an easy task. In particular this year organising the two Christmas lunches on the same day was a bold decision to undertake and made for a very long day, but it proved a very successful and rewarding event loved by the ‘Guests’.
The incident record book was used only once in the year, in April and the ‘Guest’s’ problem which occurred at Old Fold Manor Golf Club was attended to by the St John members present and the lady concerned was able to be taken home. The Club is grateful to St John Ambulance, (Barnet Division) who attend all our ‘Guest’ events and dealt with any medical concerns that occurred. We still have no-one directly responsible for the Almoner’s role, but it was recorded that three members had been in hospital during the year, one now fully recovered, one making good progress and the third sadly still unwell.
Alex Doran, the overall Club manager has continued the excellent relationship The Puddenecks has always had with the Golf Club, and this has filtered down to Lindsey Paul, the Clubhouse catering Manager and of course the ever-helpful Brendan Roche and his team behind the bar.
A new subcommittee was formed to look at ways of increasing the service we provide to ’Guests’ and came up with several suggestions some of which were immediately been put into action while others have required further thoughts, including costing implications and looking for the manpower to organise. In addition, we made ‘One off’ donations to other local similar type organisations, giving a further £1,000 to Barnet Citizens Advice Bureau, to support their hardship funds which assists ‘Older people’ in Barnet. We also gave £500 to Wesley Hall to help fund a defibrillator.
Our two major fund-raising events were again successes, the Golf Day, raising over £12,600, while the supper/speaker evening raised over £1,100. Both events were thoroughly enjoyed by those attending.
The Club ran eight evening themed ‘Guest’ events each for between 65/70 ‘Guests’, held two summer BBQs (just under 100 ‘Guests’ attending), and a Christmas lunch with two sittings, one of 50 and the other 40 ‘Guests’ present. In addition, Grimsdell school came to Old Fold, and we organised a trip to Belmont school for pupil concerts with ‘Guests’ (see below). The Tuesday Exercise class at Wesley Hall goes from strength to strength but our Thursday, Movement to Music class, which had been under the leadership of Jack Williams for many years, suffered when he was taken seriously ill in the summer. While we kept this class operating until the year end, with Jack now unlikely to return and the instructor having to retire to look after her elderly parents this class is likely to fold in early 2025. A similar fate has occurred with our Friday monthly coffee morning at Wesley Hall where due to a lack of volunteer help forced us in the autumn to cease operating. The club thanks our two Welfare committee members for all their hard work in ensuring each event is a success.
In July we gave mini fans to all our ‘Guests’ attending our USA themed evening and this proved very successful as hot weather soon arrived. We organised for twenty ‘Guests’ to attend the local pantomime at The Bull theatre while in June we paid for ten ‘Guests’ to attend ‘Jazz on the Green’ at Hadley Common. We also took a promotion stall to the Jazz day and while it was a very enjoyable event, and several people wanted to know more about the Club we did not gain any new members which was one of the objectives in attending.
The Club continued to send out birthday and Christmas cards to all ‘Guests’ and, as mentioned distributed fish and chips to some ‘Guests’ who cannot now get out of their homes to attend our events. The Club is grateful to all members, helpers and friends who help, organise, and attended these events to make them successful for our ‘Guests’. We even delivered a meal on Christmas day to someone who appeared to get left off the local Social Services radar screen. In March we took ‘Guests’ to Belmont school where in conjunction with Grimsdell school the pupils put on a wide-ranging concert, while in November Grimsdell School came to Old Fold over the lunchtime period and around fifty Year one/two, pupils sang and entertained some thirty ‘Guests’. Both events were a great success for the school choirs and orchestra and our ‘Guests’ thoroughly enjoyed attending.
The Club regalia and clothing stock has now been taken over by Mark and Cassie Buttle and if any member requires logo tee shirts or sweaters, they need to contact Mark or Cassie who will be delighted to assist their purchase.
The Club’s accounts have again been efficiently managed by the Treasurer and the 2024 accounts received a clean bill of health by the auditors, Brennan Pearson & Co. I have already talked above about income accrued and expenditure incurred. The ‘200 Club’ continues to attract new members and at the year-end 159 tickets had been allocated. Administration and one-off expenses remain low at about 1.5% of total income and of this percentage, Public Liability and Trustee Insurance was 1.2% and maintenance of our Website, 0.3%. The Club’s reserves at the year-end amounted to £24,381 (£26,473 in 2023).
This level of reserves exceeds the Club reserves policy of around six months expenditure together with an additional £2,000 as a contingency fund for unforeseen liabilities. However, the committee remains concerns that as over 60% of our net income came from just two events which are attendance/weather dependent this makes the reserve policy seem harsh. By having more flexibility, the Club has been able to continue all its good works throughout 2024 with no cash flow worries, unlike many other Charities. Also, with generous donations still appearing it does mean the Club can continue its commitments of help without financial concerns although fully aware that the current economic climate will impact on our income (negatively) and expenses (increasing) over the coming year. The Trustees continue to monitor the reserves level at committee regularly and will take any appropriate action as thought necessary.
The committee has worked well under an inspired Chairman to ensure the Club’s objective of helping ‘Older People’ in the Barnet area has been maintained. He has been helped by a very active President and a hardworking enthusiastic but sadly aging committee which has ensured both income flowed, and events happened.
2025 will be another challenging year for The Puddenecks but with 42 members and over 50 helpers the Club can look forward with confidence to another hopefully successful year of helping ‘Older People of Barnet’. As always, thanks go to all members (particularly the active brigade), helpers, who we could not survive without, and to all friends who support our events and give us money. The major challenge for the current year is to further strengthen the club with newer, younger members and hopefully this will then filter into new committee members appearing, which is the lifeline to the Club’s survival. If we can achieve this aim, and with our ongoing commitments we can ensure the continued success of the Club, as we approach our Seventieth anniversary in three years’ time.
Signed on behalf of the Trustees
Roger Moore MBE Hon Secretary Date: February 2025