Annual returns, going back eight years.
Every return we have filed with the Charity Commission since 2018, in plain English and Cymraeg. Income, expenditure, number of grants, the closing balance — and our reasons, where they were not obvious.
Our annual reports are short — four to eight pages each, including the formal SORP-light balance sheet. We do not produce a glossy annual review and we have no plans to start. The Charity Commission also publishes our full statutory returns at their register; this page is a more readable summary, year by year.
A short visualisation of eight years.
Total expenditure each year, in pounds — the height of each bar is to scale, but our largest year (2020, the pandemic year) is shown clipped at the top of the chart to keep the rest of the years readable.
Year by year.
Annual return · 2025.
Income £3,104 · Expenditure £3,104 · 9 grants across the four programmes. Reporting on time. Largest grant £450; smallest £40.
Annual return · 2024.
Income £2,910 · Expenditure £2,910 · 8 grants. Notable: the Memorial Hall door grant (£160).
Annual return · 2023.
Income £2,690 · Expenditure £2,690 · 7 grants. First year of the bilingual application form.
Annual return · 2022.
Income £2,360 · Expenditure £2,360 · 6 grants. Year of the declined funeral application; honest paragraph in the report.
Annual return · 2021.
Income £2,180 · Expenditure £2,180 · 7 grants. Recovery year after the pandemic; resumption of all four programmes.
Annual return · 2020.
Income £2,840 · Expenditure £2,840 · 14 grants, all under Llaw i’r Aelwyd. Pandemic year.
Annual return · 2019.
Income £2,060 · Expenditure £2,060 · 6 grants. Last pre-pandemic year.
Annual return · 2018.
Income £1,820 · Expenditure £1,820 · 5 grants. First year we were asked to file online to the Commission.
Returns from 1980 to 2017 are held at the Charity Commission and available on request from the Caernarfon district archive at Gwynedd Archives.
Inside the treasurer’s notebook.
The 2025 return on the Charity Commission system is, in the end, drawn from four physical documents that live in Gwyn’s house in Penisarwaun and the Memorial Hall cabinet. The four images below show those documents.
The treasurer’s ledger.
The small hand-ruled ledger, kept by Gwyn since 2009. One page per quarter; one column per programme.
The cheque-book stubs.
Every grant cheque has a stub initialled by two trustees. We reconcile against the bank statement quarterly.
The bank statement.
Statements arrive monthly by post. We are still on a paper statement; the trustees have, by majority, declined to move online.
The annual report.
Printed at the village stationer in Llanberis, run of 80 copies, one for each village household that requests one.
A few notes on this year’s figures.
The 2025 closing balance is £412.18, identical to the 2024 closing balance to the penny — this is the trust’s small operating reserve, kept to cover postage, photocopying, and an emergency reserve grant. Income of £3,104.04 was a small increase on the £2,910 of 2024, largely from a £180 legacy gift from the estate of a former village resident in Cardiff (now recorded in our small legacy register). Expenditure matched income because, by the Scheme, we do not retain new income above the operating reserve. We are not audited (we are below the threshold); we are independently examined each spring by the volunteer book-keeper of the Memorial Hall committee, who has done it gratis since 2014.
The eight-year arc.
The bar chart above reads, year by year, as a slow rise — from £1,820 in 2018 to £3,104 in 2025. Inflation accounts for most of it; a small rise in regular giving by standing order accounts for the rest. The pandemic year, 2020, sits above the trend because of a one-off legacy gift that we, by trustee decision, allocated entirely to Llaw i’r Aelwyd over fourteen grants. The 2021 dip reflects a quiet year for legacies; the recovery in 2023 and 2024 is roughly trend.
A trust this size is judged by whether its numbers reconcile, not by whether they grow. From the November 2024 AGM treasurer’s report