Treasurer's Report
HONOURARY TREASURER’S REPORT ST GEORGE’S CHURCH FINANCIAL YEAR 2020 Before I make comments on the Accounts I would like to thank those other people who play an active and important part in managing the finance of this church. A very loyal, but small group of people meet to open planned giving envelopes, reconcile loose cash, record monies against income categories and take these monies to the bank. I know that this group works diligently and unseen but make my task that much easier. I would like to thank the Planned Giving team who keep the records on planned giving and deal with all the Inland Revenue returns. Others I would like to mention are Father Adrian whom I pester regularly on financial matters ,William Burgess the Honorary Auditor whose support and help is much appreciated and Brian McNally who patiently checks and countersigns all the cheques I place before him. Overall Surplus/Deficit Receipts exceeded Payments by £12516 but this ‘surplus’ hides the fact that due to Covid-19 2020 was a challenging year. Receipts: Our principal receipts were Planned Giving £43782 Gift Aid tax refund £21703 Misc receipts £11003 Church Maintenance £7068 Legacies £6000 Restricted Donations £5146 Income from Planned giving was down from previous years but this may be explained by the lockdown late in the year and the income from some weekly envelopes not being banked by financial year end. Gift Aid tax refund of £21703 included arrears of £11321 which HMRC owed us from a previous year. Having paid us these arrears they then incorrectly credited our bank account with a further £9321 at a later date. We made them aware of this but by financial year end HMRC had not yet requested repayment. This overpayment is included in the Misc Receipts figure above. The church maintenance figure of £7068 includes an anonymous donation of £3000. The Friends of St Georges loaned us £5146 to pay for Architects fees.As the loan was for a specific purpose it has been treated as a Restricted donation for accounting purposes. As expected income from collections,hall rent,fayres , concerts,wedding /funerals ,coffee fund were significantly down. Here are some comparisons; 2019 2020 Collections 12326 2556 Voluntary Income 6309 2761 Hall Rent 2236 400 Wedding/funeral fees 10831 4775 Our Director of Music Andrew Reid spent various times in 2020 furloughed and we claimed £1790 through the Job Retention grant scheme. To put into some context. In 2020 gross receipts were £112804. But of this £14467 were the overpayment from HMRC and the loan from the Friends. These will need to be repaid. In addition £17690 was from grants,legacies and one off donations . So approx. £32100 of gross receipts were from ‘non-recurring’ sources. Receipts from ‘recurring ‘ sources were therefore approx. £80700. By comparison 2019 receipts from recurring sources were approx. £94000. Payments: Our principal payments were Parish share £50500 Insurance £10358 Services £6823 General maintenance £5604 Restricted donations £5192 We had pledged to pay £50500 Parish share in 2020 and we achieved this though it did require us to use some of our Reserves. In the light of this and due to the continuing uncertasinty around income we have made a pledge to pay £40000 Parish share in 2021. General maintenance of £5604 was on the Clerestory repairs and the bulk of the Restricted donations payments were the Architects fees. Our contributions towards charities has continued. Half of the collections raised from weddings, baptisms and funerals is given to a charity nominated by the families. Despite the Covid-19 restrictions £781 was donated with the money going to 9 different charities. End of Year Balances and Reserves At year end the General fund cash balance was £30078. However the fund had liabilities of £14467 ( the money owing to HMRC and the loan from the Friends ). The net General fund balance of £15611 equates to approx. 9 weeks normal unrestricted payments. I would like to express my thanks to everyone for their support throughout the year. A J PINKETT Treasurer March 2021 |