Chief Executive Report As we reflect on the past year, I am proud to share the progress and achievements we have made as an organization. This year has been a testament to our resilience, innovation, and unwavering commitment to excellence. Our financial performance has been robust, despite a challenging funding landscape across our projects and services. Like others, we have faced rising costs but have focused on making decisions to improve our operational efficiency whilst maintaining high quality deliver to our beneficiaries.
The year has been dominated by a huge capital project, funded by a Youth Investment Fund grant, at our Cresset site. As well as a £4.974million project to address the building, mainly the roof, we’ve also received revenue funding to rapidly grow our youth work. It’s now a well-used, thriving project engaging young people locally. Elsewhere, Youth work has done well this year. Our AirPlay projects, based around RAF bases and supporting service people’s children have grown their numbers and offered new programmes. In Lowestoft, Shine is doing well. Its grown its allotment offer too! The team there have also maintained the hot meal service and the Community Fridge for local people that need it. Accommodation has worked hard to ensure we continue to serve different clients, whilst making sure they get the right support. We’ve added a great project in Wisbech, a 9-unit house converted into self-contained flats. Childcare continues to make progress. The funding picture is tough, as is recruitment of qualified staff, but all the settings are OFSTED rated as ‘Good’ and Providence setting as ‘Outstanding’. We celebrated the St Margaret’s settings 10 anniversary with a well-attended event. Our Mental Health team continue to deliver this much needed resource for young people and our partner schools. This is a much needed resource for young people and our partner schools. Demand for Mental Health support shows a growing trend amongst our clients. We know that professional support and working with people to build their coping tools and resilience is crucial. We also go from strength to strength in our Reparations Service and our specialist Family Respect project. In March we took the difficult decision to close our gyms in Cambridge and Peterborough. This has been part of our offer for 40 years, but massive competition has seen member numbers drop over a few years. At the Cresset we have undertaken a large strategic review which maps the way forward in the short, medium and long term. At the heart of this is focusing our theatre on music, comedy and events, within a thriving community hub. We have an action plan we are now making a reality. As always our good work is based on a talented, dedicated and hard-working staff team. My thanks to them. They join a team of volunteers, including our wonderful Trustees, that make such a difference to people across our patch.
I look forward to another year of growth, innovation, and success.
Jonathan Martin CEO
‘Inspiring communities, transforming young lives’
3
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease