CEO Report 7

Contents Page Vision and Mission 3 Chairman’s Report 4 Acknowledgements 6 CEO Report 7 Community Development 10 Business Bank 13 Community Accounts 14 Volunteer Centre and Timebank 16 Transport and Shopmobility 21 Highlights of the Year 24 Treasurer Report 26 Presidents and Trustees 30 Staff 31 Volunteers 32 Membership 33 Future 35 Contents Page Contents Vision and Mission “Thriving local communities” CCVS will enable affective communities and voluntary action by empowering and inspiring our local society through our five core values – Support, Development, Liaison, Representation and Strategic Partnership Working. 3 Chairman Report Dear Colleague before, the need just keeps growing as compliance becomes ever complicated. It is with great pride that I offer you the The rise of the need for an audit has end of year Annual Report for 2015. risen to £1M, which means we have more scope to support medium to larger This is my seventh and final Report as size groups further. Chairman of CCVS, as I intend to hand this role over to a very capable With the increase in the volume of work successor at this year’s Annual General and staff, Trustees embarked on a Meeting – Cate Hammett. building renewal and refurbishment programme at Winsley’s House, which is As in previous years, I would like to thank now complete, and celebrated its official our growing number of volunteers and opening on September 10th 2015. supporters. We are moving Shopmobility back within Some very special thanks need to be Winsley's House and Community given to Tracy Rudling, our very hard- Transport has re-located out of the town working CEO, and her team, who have centre due to the planned move. supported me over some twenty three years. During the year three new Trustees have come on to the CCVS Board, namely Les I would also like to thank the Board of Davis, Graham Lewis and Les Nicoll. Trustees for their continued support Samantha Hale and Clayton Beckwith during the past twelve months, offering both resigned from the Board during the their time and skills and supporting the year and I would like to thank them for staff and volunteers. their contribution. With the economic climate being very A full merger between Chariots and our tough during the past twelve months, we Transport Scheme has now concluded, have found ourselves working very and we need to mention the long closely with all of our funding bodies. historical commitment that the Trustees Along with money for projects, we are of Chariots gave to the Charity for so increasingly working with commissioners very long, we all thank them. to find and assist our “hard to reach” members of the community. This can be The Government have been taking a demonstrated by some of our great interest in the Voluntary Sector programmes of work, for example My during the past twelve months, as a Social Prescription, Community Builders result of which our CEO was asked to and Time Bank and Volunteer Family speak at a Parliamentary event on Mentoring. transformational change. This followed a visit of national panel members who had With our Finance Department covering seen what voluntary action looked like on Essex, we are now working with many the ground in Colchester, and were more groups and individuals than ever 4 Chairman Report hugely impressed by some of the groups and volunteers that attended on the day. Her presentation was very well received by the 200+ ministers and VIP’s that attended the event. Again this year we have hosted another Crime Prevention Conference at Weston Homes Community Stadium, on behalf of the Police and Crime Commissioner Nick Alston, with more than 250 delegates attending. CCVS have already been asked to organise the January 2016 event, so watch this space. I have enjoyed my tenure as Chair of CCVS over the past 7 years, and know that I leave it in expert hands moving forward. David T. Evans Chairman Board of Trustees 5 Acknowledgements 6 CEO Connect – Collaborate – Co-ordinate We currently support in excess of 250 (3 C’s) groups in Colchester alone, with Community Accounts supporting the I suspect by the time you read my 2015 whole of Essex, and this is expanding as report, many of you will know the above further need is identified. Is this a bad scenario which forms the beginning, thing? Well, not necessarily, it means middle and end of many of my more people are stepping up to find preachings according to the Rudling solutions to local problems and working psalm. towards taking responsibility for their own In Essex alone there are approximately health and wellbeing and creating mechanisms for this approach and 10,000 groups in the region asking us to support their ideas. 60% have no paid staff 43% have annual incomes of less than £10,000. So, I have decided we now need 4 C’s as we need to add Communicate, which is ever improving, but has a way to go, so partners brace yourselves, as I will now have only 4 things to say in my strategic meetings – you wish! Our Community/Our Sector: 4,000 military personnel 8,000 students 80% green space We focus on assets and strengths not Areas in 10% most deprived in the just need, and have embraced some country national good practice and projects that Largest population of adults with deliver our desired outcomes, but co- learning disabilities produce the delivery to meet the need of Largest population of adults with the locality, in partnership with the dependencies locality. We don’t parachute our ideas in High perception of crime and expect it to be embraced and work High rates of homelessness straight away – we act as a lead provider and devolve our expertise, knowledge and money, whilst accepting that communities are at different levels of need, skills, and abilities to react and lead. Challenges moving forward The voluntary sector in Colchester, in common with the sector nationally, has had to develop and adjust to challenging fast pace changes in funding and income 7 CEO Report levels while meeting increased demand sometimes we just need to allow time for for services. things to bed in with longer term certainty Although we have been instrumental with to maximise the outcomes and record several successful programmes of cashable benefits. support, for many organisations, Local pooling of budgets with long engaging with public service contracting term opportunities. Money should be an remains a challenge. For many smaller enabler with local joint pots, creating organisations, even the concept of more opportunity for joined up contracting is alien. These issues point approaches around the needs in the to the need and value of their local CVS local community and we are facilitating to lead conglomerate approaches – this approach. partnerships, consortia, and mergers – Longer term strategies. Our funding is such as Care Closer 2 Home, Essex year to year……and we are a strong Healthy Lifestyles, Essential living Fund, leadership organisation, that partners Family Innovation Fund, to ensure that expect us to be leading on the strategic small providers can work with larger direction – this stifles innovation and VCOs with contracting capability to help strategic partnerships. maintain valued local services. Let’s be transformational not Moreover, these changes, when transactional leaders, truly move away combined with an increase in demand from existing culture, policies, and from the clients of the sector, have procedures. We have the best created additional challenges to all VCS opportunity to provoke change in a way organisations. However, as stated in the that is charismatic, inspiring, and NCVO Financial Sustainability Review of motivating, but we have to join it up the Voluntary sector, charity together, and eradicate the scatter gun organisations have shown a significant approach. amount of innovation through CCVS to allow real co-design to move into true Overall, the third sector is set to become neighborhood co-production, co-location, a more significant part of the way social co-operation and co-existence which and public services are delivered in should reduce duplication of effort. Essex. Information Sharing It’s not ours, yours, its all of ours, so we have to share it better - break down parochialism and entrenched habits. Through Essex Connects we have established a web based self-referral toolkit “connect to wellbeing” and are proud to be launching this in Colchester for use at a national level. Innovation – new is not always good – and sometimes existing isn’t bad – 8 CEO Report CCVS awarded a “Beacon of change” Why Change As one of the biggest CVS’s in Essex, We need to be leaner, meaner and more Colchester CVS is frequently the lead technologically savvy. We need to act as contractor for joint bids both from other a lever bringing in new resources to the CVS’s, but also from frontline groups. sector, including social investment, Aware of the changes in the crowd funding and pro bono support. commissioning climate, CCVS is keen We need to be the enabler of voice and that smaller groups are able to the advocate of community action. We participate in delivery, and positions itself need to collaborate and share more as a broker for small groups to access costs effectively. We need to promote the marketplace. and develop the ‘time economy’, coproduction and good volunteering CCVS is recognised as having a lead practices. Above all, we need to help the role in representing the sector, sitting on sector with foresight and managing 20-30 steering committees and change, because the pace of change is partnerships including the North-East not going to slow.

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