St. James’ Cardington – Annual Financial Report for 2009

The accounts for the period January 1^st 2009 to December 31^st 2009, which have been audited by Brian Iverson were presented and accepted at the PCC meeting held on March 10^th 2009. The year end summary and signed letter from Brian are attached to this report.

The overall financial position worsened in 2009 from £41,972.32 to £40550.55. This represents a decrease of £1421.77. However we did have a major roof repair of over £2000 but on the other hand we had a major additional fund raiser in the Promise Auction yielding £3150.31 and also claimed back £1835.40 from the inland revenue, part of which related to donations given to the Flower Festival in 2008.

Income from collections and S.O.s has fallen back a little and in the current economic climate it is unlikely this will improve significantly, whilst our major outgoings of the Parish Share, Insurance and utility costs continue to rise. Even if we maintain the excellent outcomes from the Gardens Open and Fête it is obvious that we are very dependent on our fund raisers to meet our commitments and the Promise Auction filled that gap in 2009. Our planned Folk and Food evening in May will help but this is unlikely to yield as much as the Promise Auction, perhaps another fund raiser near Christmas is a good idea but I do not think we could repeat the Promise Auction for a few years.

We need to encourage all taxpayers who support St.James to use the gift aid scheme in order to donate efficiently either through setting up bank S.Os or by using the purple or yellow envelop schemes, our income from Gift Aided Giving amounted to £4,930.63 in 2009. I should like to thank Margaret for her help and support in the tedious job of recording the gift aided donations from services. Our claim for 2008-2009 was for 124 different donors each of which has to be listed and their total gift entered on a spreadsheet which accompanies the claim form.

We continued to support a range of charities, our largest commitment is to the SHCT £1277.11 through the Open Gardens and Ride and Stride events. We also donated £50 each to Mayfair, Shropshire Rural Support, the Church Housing Trust and SPCK and gave £100 to the DEC appeal in November. Donations from particular services included £85.62 to the Children’s Society from the Christingle Service and £224.70 to the Royal British legion from Remembrance Sunday.

There do seem to be misconceptions among the wider community about how the church is funded and what our income is spent on. I have displayed the pie chart showing our income and expenses in the church porch. Whilst our biggest outgoing is the Parish Share this does support the work of the church in our parishes and not least helps provide us with Jill. We are self supporting and have to meet our running costs but it is becoming increasingly difficult to do this without continually dipping into our reserves. I would like to thank everyone for their continued support.

Jackie Tonks PCC treasurer