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Review of the
Year 2010-11: Financial
Summary and Aims for the Future
Financial
Summary
The bureau’s
unrestricted General Fund realised a deficit of £2,138 for the year, and we set
aside an additional £1,749 from that fund to cover IT equipment costs, making a
total reduction of £3,887. .
The bureau's
General Fund now has a
balance carried forward of £70,572 in addition to which there are funds of
£9,000 which are designated for IT equipment replacement. Net assets at 31st
March 2011 total £127,218, of which £47,646 represents
restricted funds. The bureau did not have any borrowings from any
providers or other sources at 31st March 2011.
As was stated in our Annual Review last year, while the bureau has
remained on an even keel in 2010-11 thanks to its main funders together with
kind donations from a variety of sources, this masks the true position which we will see in the
next few years where we need to spend substantially more than we receive in order
to maintain the level of service.
Optimistically
the overspend will be about £10,000 a year but with the government continuing
to promise hard times we will rely even more on the continuing generous support
of Epsom and Ewell Borough Council.
We will need to address this
projected overspend in the near future but with staff costs (salaries and
social security costs) at over 75% and office costs (rent, rates, heat and
light) at over 13% that will be a challenge without changing the service at the
point of delivery. And if we are to succeed in our plans to expand our service
to the community (below) the challenge becomes even greater.
Aims for the Future
Against this financial backdrop, our minimum aim is to maintain
the same level of service to the community as at present. To do this, we need
to generate sufficient funds and maintain sufficient staffing resource to
·
keep the same level of ‘drop-in’ hours,
telephone hours and number of appointments offered in the main bureau as
currently
·
continue to operate our current projects -
Specialist Debt Advice (including Outreach), Mental Health Outreach and Court
Desk (joint with
In the present funding
environment, this will be a considerable achievement.
However, we would like to develop our services still further and
we have adopted an ambitious long term strategic target of a significant increase in the
number of clients that we assist over a 3 to 4 year time horizon.
To achieve this we believe it is necessary to substantially
increase our training/supervision specifically by recruiting a full-time
Guidance Tutor/Casework Supervisor. This will enable us over a 3 to 4 year time
horizon to take our adviser complement to around 60 (including trainees and
gateway assessors), a 50% increase on the present level.
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Impact
of the CAB in Epsom & Ewell in 2010-11 |
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