East Kent Area Quaker Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
Annual report for the year ended 31stDecember 2016
Charity name: East Kent Area Quaker Meeting (the Area Meeting)
Registration number: None. The Area Meeting is an excepted charity.
Principal Office: Friends Meeting House 6 The Friars Canterbury
CT1 2AS
Trustees (appointed for maximum terms of six years)
Kay Schlapp (clerk of trustees) January 2012 to December 2017
Ursula Fuller (January 2015 to January 2018), Hugh Miall, (September 2015 to July 2018), Aldyth Rowe and Janet Taylor(term of reappointment January 2017 to December 2019)
Key officers
Clerk of Area Meeting: Eleanor Brooks
Assistant Clerk: Rosemary Kirk
Treasurer: Ursula Fuller
Bankers: Lloyds Bank Ltd, PO Box 1000, Andover, BX1 1LT
Triodos Bank: Deanery Road, Bristol, BS1 5AS
Barclays Bank Ltd, Leicester, LE87 2BB
COIF Charities Investment Fund.
Independent Examiner: Philip Wyard, 202 The Street, Boughton under Blean, Faversham, ME13 9AL
Nominee owner of property:
Friends Trusts Limited Friends House, 173 Euston Road, London
NW1 2BJ (Company Number 188362, Registered Charity Number 237698)
Structure, governance and management
Governing Document
A Governing Document was adopted on 17 November 2007 by Minute 4 of East Kent Area Quaker Meeting.
Policies: Reserves policy adopted in 2010
Recruitment and appointment of trustees
Trustees are appointed by Area Meeting following nomination by East Kent Area Meeting Nominations Committee. The Trustees nominate one of their number to be Clerk to Trustees and the appointment is made by Area Meeting.The Area Meeting Treasurer is appointed by Area Meeting following nomination by East Kent Area Meeting Nominations Committee. The Area Meeting Treasurer is appointed a trustee ex-officio.
Objectives and activities
The objects of the Area Meeting are the furtherance of the religious and charitable purposes of theReligious Society of Friends(the Society), which are amplified and explained more fully in a document called ‘Our faith in the Future’ which was approved by Quakers in Britain in September 2015.
The document sets out six aims which the Area Meeting and its constituent local meetings will work towards.
The aims are for the Area Meeting to be part of a future for Quakers in Britain where:
- Meeting for Worship is the bedrock of living as a Quaker
- Quaker Communities are loving, inclusive and all - age
- All Friends understand and live by Quaker discipline
- Quaker values are active in the world
- Quakers work collaboratively
- Quakers are well known and widely understood.
In 2016 the Area Meeting and its Local Meetings have worked to meet these aims as illustrated below.
1. Meeting for Worship is the bedrock of living as a Quaker
The activities of the Area Meeting and each local Meeting include the right holding of regular public Meetings for Worship and Meetings for Worship for Business to administer church affairs. Anyone is welcome to attend meetings for worship which form a key part of the area meeting’s role in providing a public benefit.
In 2016, meetings for worship were held as follows:
Ashford Meeting: Meeting for Worship every Sunday at 10.15
Broadstairs Meeting: Meeting for Worship every Sunday at 10.30; additional Meetingsfor Worship held in Drapers Homes Chapel 3 times a year;
Experiment with Light group met on the 4th Saturday at 2pm
Canterbury Meeting: Meeting for Worship every Sunday at 10.45; midweek Meeting forWorship every Thursday at 1.10 –1.30.
Children’sMeeting every 4th Sunday of the month at 10.45 (children are provided with care and activities if they attend Meeting for Worship on other Sundays)
Deal Meeting: Meeting for Worship every 4th Sunday of the month at 10.30 (supported by BroadstairsMeeting)
Faversham Meeting: Meeting for Worship every 2nd Sunday of the month at 10.15 (supported by Canterbury Meeting)
Folkestone Meeting: Meeting for Worship every 1st, 3rd and 5th Sundays at 10.30
At December 2016 there were 128 members and 81 attenders of whom
8 were children. (Tabular Statement)
Those in membership living abroad were 11 and there were still
27 inactive members.
2. Quaker communities are loving, inclusive and all-age.
Each Local Meetingworks to build a sense of inclusive community by holding social events such as shared lunches together, and discussion groups in each other’s homes.
Children are welcome to attend Broadstairs Meeting if they wish to do so and appropriate arrangements have been made to look after them.
At Canterbury, the Children’s meeting has been active although only 3 children attend on a regular basis. The Meeting arranged all age worship twice during the year on the importance of worms and on light. A Japanese tea ceremony, a river trip and a beach hut picnic brought children and families together.
A small group have learned some basic British Sign Language to support communication with a deaf attender.
A number of social events have contributed to the sense of friendship and community in the Meeting including tea parties, walks, carol singing and monthly shared lunches after the business meeting.
Folkestone’s year has been dominated by its move to their new Meeting for Worship Premises in St Paul’s Church Hall in Sandgate in July. They have been happy to welcome new attenders. Monthly house-groups and Saturday morning social gatherings at the Clifton Hotel continued.
3. All Friends understand and live by Quaker discipline.
Each Local Meeting normally holds its own study group or Meeting forLearning once a month
During 2016:
Broadstairs held 13 study group sessions on Sundays after Meeting for Worship, including speakers on the East Kent campaign against the Arms Trade and from Quaker Peace and Social Witness on Objections to War. Other sessions discussed readings from Quaker Faith and Practice.
Canterbury currently has more members and attenders than it has had in living memory. Extracts from Advices and Queries or Quaker faith and practice are read each fortnight in Meeting for Worship.
Canterbury has held regular Meetings for Learning after Meeting for Worship on the third Sunday of most months. About twelve Friends have been taking part in discussions around the Woodbrooke ‘Becoming Friends’ materials. There is a group reading Quaker faith and practice in the light of its possible future revision and others attend a Bible Study group
Faversham Meeting hasheld occasional house discussion evenings to deepen the understanding of the common ground and differences between them.
Folkestone Meeting holds monthly house groups which have been following the yearly meeting-wide programme of considering a schedule of chapters of Quaker faith and practice.
4. Quaker values are active in the world
Individual Local Meetings have had Quaker stalls at community events, have offered the use of their Meeting Houses to community groups, opened the Meeting Houses for ‘Ride and Stride’, and also hosted open Meeting House days in Quaker Week.
Canterbury Meeting is seeking to pursue initiatives to help asylum seekers and refugees in Kent and is bringing proposals to Area Meeting as a concern covering the whole East Kent Area.
Ashford Meeting supports a nursery school which caters in part for deprived and disadvantaged children by allowing it to use the Meeting House during its weekday opening times at a lower than market rent. The Meeting has also provided the nursery with a large wooden storage shed. One of our Trustees also acts as Secretary to the Trustees of the nursery.
5. Quakers work collaboratively
Local Meetings have supported events in their own localities, such as joining with other denominations in Churches Together, interfaith forums, and local concerns. Individuals are involved in the community in many charities such as Amnesty, working with refugees, Citizens Advice Bureaux, in mediation and peace initiatives.
6. Quakers are well known and widely understood
All meeting houses have posters and have a visible presence in the community. In the Autumn Folkestone Friends had a stall at the Sandgate Farmers’ Market to publicise their presence with a new locally designed leaflet.
Ashford Meeting held four Quaker Quest meetings in the Autumn where members spoke on Quaker approaches to four topics, which were Social Action, God, Worship and Peace. Ashford hopes to repeat this exercise in the future with improved publicity.
As set out in this statement the Area and local meetings are working to makesure that they are well known and widely understood through their worship and their work.
Financial review for 2016
During 2016, the unrestricted receipts of the Area Meeting as a whole were £84,685, with unrestricted payments totalling £92,323. Payments included £23,830, partly from accumulated area meeting reserves, on improvements to our meeting houses to reduce their carbon footprint in line with Britain Yearly Meeting’s commitment to becoming a low-carbon community. These improvements included solar panels on Canterbury meeting house and double glazing for the Broadstairs meeting house.
Accumulated income from the Philcott endowment was spent by Canterbury meeting in accordance with the terms of Richard Philcott’s bequest to provide for the “public benefit of my Friends in Canterbury”.
Part of the original capital of the Philcott trust was a lock-up shop at 10 New Rents, Ashford. This was valued at £60,000 subject to the existing lease in September 2015 and was in need of considerable work on the fabric, so the trustees accepted an offer from a developer for the premises in July 2016 with net sale proceeds of £86,492. Trustees are in the process of appointing an investment manager to invest whole of the Philcott capital on our behalf.
The accounts are included below.
Reserves policy
Minute 9 of EKAM trustees meeting held 7.12.2010 records:
We agree the following reserves policy based on a template provided in the December 2010 Treasurers’ News.
1. Trustees are expected to be prudent in the care of resources and to have sensible amounts in reserve especially when there are premises to care for. On the other hand, they should not be hoarding money if there is no particular purpose in view. Funds are there for the work of the charity.
2. EKAM trustees regard the equivalent of 12 months’ expenditure as the most that we need to hold in reserve for the AM’s general purposes. In addition, we agree to have a designated fund maintained at a level sufficient to meet the routine and predictable expenditure incurred in the maintenance of property. We also agree to designate an emergency or disaster-recovery fund to cover unforeseen liabilities on our properties.
2. EKAM trustees consider that legacies (unless very large) should be used within about five years of being received, following the principle that using the money should enable us to do what we could not easily do otherwise but which enhance our Quaker life and witness. In every case our decision will be guided by the specific terms of the bequest.
3. Some decisions on the use of the development, legacies and other designated funds can be made at the time the AM budget is prepared and agreed; other decisions may need to be made at the end of the year in the light of actual expenditure incurred. Either way we will avoid the use of reserve funds to meet deficits on the AM’s basic expenses.
4. Income from all the reserves forms part of the AM’s income. We will not set money aside purely to generate income unless we have explicit authority to do so.
5. The levels of the reserve funds will be reviewed at regular intervals and adjustments made as necessary, for instance to cope with inflation.
6. Local meetings manage their own funds and need their own reserves policies. Trustees expect these to follow similar principles to the AM central policy, i.e. a general fund reserve equivalent to up to 12 months’ expenditure plus a designated fund for those aspects of meeting house upkeep and furnishing that are the responsibility of the LM. A legacy being disbursed on particular purposes may also reside in a designated fund. Amounts held in excess of these requirements may be deployed for the purposes of the charity, e.g. by transfer to the AM, BYM or Quaker charities.
Minute 9 EKAM trustees meeting held 17.01.2013 added that Canterbury meeting should include a provision for redundancy costs for its warden in its reserves calculation.
The area meeting reserves are currently excessive, mainly as a result of the sale of Dover meeting house for £169,000 in 2012. Area meeting is currently reducing this surplus by doing work on its meeting houses to reduce their carbon footprint. They have also agreed in principle a loan to West Kent Area Meeting of approximately £75,000 towards the redevelopment of Tunbridge Wells meeting house.
Public benefit statement
The charity trustees have complied with their duty to havedue regard to the guidance on public benefit published by the Charity Commission in exercising their powers or duties as set out in Charity Commission documents PB1, PB2 and PB3.
The Trustees declare that they approve this report.
Signed on behalf of Trustees
Date
Kay Schlapp, Clerk to Trustees