The trustees, who are also directors of the charity for the purposes of the Companies Act 2006, present their report with the financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31 March 2024. The trustees have adopted the provisions of Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2015).
The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the accounting policies set out in note 1 to the financial statements and comply with the charity's governing document, the Companies Act 2006, FRS 102 "The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland" and the Charities SORP "Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102)".
The Oxford Kilburn Youth Trust (known as The OK Club) works with young people, their families and the wider community in South Kilburn, North-West London. We work with them to build character and capabilities, as they grow into active and engaged adults and where appropriate to enable them to explore the Christian faith. From that perspective we provide opportunities for young people to explore their spirituality and their place in the world, and build positive relationships they can rely on.
The objectives of the charity are the promotion and encouragement of the Christian faith by applying the capital and income of the company without distinction for or towards all or any of the following purposes:
Maintaining activities for children and young people in Kilburn
Establishing and maintaining activities for children and young people there or in other places
Providing office and residential accommodation for the wardens, club leaders and other workers for the said activities whether full time or part time workers; and
Training and instructing persons in the leadership of such activities as aforesaid
The charity achieves the above objectives through the operation of the OK Club.
SOUTH KILBURN - OUR HOME FOR 60+ YEARS
The South Kilburn estate, our home for over 60 years now, is a fantastic mix of people from around the world. It’s vibrant and diverse and full of beautiful people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds. However, it continues to be an area which is high in deprivation. The area has suffered from a range of issues which include violence, drugs, disaffection, and low educational attainment. Our young people are at risk of being engaged in anti-social behaviour and crime. We continue to experience violence and anti-social behaviour on our streets.
The area also continues to change. Brent Council are partway through a multiyear regeneration project and the Club has been next door to a building site for the past 5 years now. With more of the 1960’s tower blocks to be demolished and rebuilt in the coming years, this won’t change anytime soon. With this physical change, also comes a change to make up and character of the neighbourhood. As an organisation physically at the heart of the estate, we want to make sure we are supporting and helping people to be connected as good neighbours - both old and new.
Our activities can be divided into three main areas:
Youth & Children’s Programme
Community Animation
Building maintenance, development and use
Youth & Children’s Programme
The OK Club remains open and busy with a weekly programme of children's and youth activities. We have maintained activities from Monday to Friday in the afternoon/evening and try to cater for a range of ages and activity interests. Our team is led by our part time Youth Work Development Officer (0.4 fte), Debbie, who is assisted by a youth worker (0.2 fte), Raquel and children’s play leader, Sam (0.4 fte). We also have 4 gap year participants with us each year (2x ft, 1x 0.5 fte and 1x 0.2 fte). This team continues to be supplemented by volunteers from the residents of Christian Holt House and other local neighbours.
Over the past 12 months we have improved our consistency in delivering sessions. Having additional volunteers has enabled us to cope with sickness better. As well as continuing with our Play Leader funding for children’s work (from Children in Need and the National Lottery Community Fund), we have also secured funding to run Cooking sessions with children. Using portable hot plates in our Activity space, young people learn basic cooking skills and get to eat their own creations. We are thankful to Granville Community Kitchen in their support of this, before Sam took over running it. Alongside this, we continued our programme of drop-in sessions, sports activities, school holiday activities and trips. We have continued to run the Jack Petchey Achievement Award scheme (for teenageers), and our in-house Kate Herbert Award (for primary aged children).
We have partnered with a number of organisations over the last 12 months and are grateful to Brent Centre for Young People, Granville Community Kitchen, Lin Kam Arts, the South Kilburn Trust, and Connect Stars.
During the year we worked with 152 different children and young people. We ran 226 sessions and had 1,720 attendances on the register during that time. This represents an increase of approximately 15% on last year.
Community Animation Programme
Our Community Animator, Niki, continues to work alongside people in the community to build on our connections with our neighbours and to help people to share and develop their skills and confidence. We completed 97 outreach sessions this year, including talking with residents in the street and door to door. This led to 305 conversations with local people and 98 more people joined our community WhatsApp group.
We held several successful large community events that brought the local community together- the summer CarniVale in partnership with LinKam Arts, the South Kilburn Trust and others, our Winter Fair was a huge success and attended by over 300 people, and our first ever Community Iftar, attended over 100 people, which local women approached us to host. We also attended Queen's Park festival, where we shared information about the Ok Club with visitors and local residents.
This year, we supported local people to deliver these weekly activities:
Shukla established a Homework Club for 10-12 children with English as a second language.
Ntely now runs two exercise sessions each week, attracting up to 23 women.
Granville Community Kitchen’s women's exercise group also continues to flourish.
Youcef started an over 40s football session, our first activity for men, with around 12 players each Sunday. A key aim is for people to get to know each other.
Sewing workshops were popular, but unfortunately had to pause due to funding running out. We are looking to charge £3-5 in future for some classes so they can be sustainable beyond the funding cycle.
Other shorter term projects we hosted included:
Healing Choir voice workshops.
Drama workshops in partnership with Salusbury World for refugee mothers.
A Recovery College stress management session and several health wellbeing sessions with Brent Health Matters.
Outreach training, for our volunteers, residents and organisations.
Looking ahead,we are excited that two residents are ready to launch an art group and a vintage film club.
Building Maintenance, Development and Use
The building is a gift of our heritage, and we continued to be blessed with the use of these facilities. However, it remains a challenge to maintain them. Wear and tear has an impact and many spaces are now in need of renovation. Our part time Building Manager, Raquel, works diligently to ensure the building is maintained so that we can keep using it. We have also been grateful for the services of a handyman, Jesse, who has helped us to deal with some of the more technical jobs that fall between general maintenance and contractor sized jobs.
We were pleased to arrange a volunteering day for our local Developers Vistry Countryside. A team of 15 of their staff joined our team to revamp part of our garden.
We have begun addressing some of the larger issues with the building and were very excited in October 2025 to learn that we have been successful in our bid to Brent Council’s Youth Capital Fund for a Sports Hall renovation. Works will hopefully start in 2027 and will involve complete renovation of our Sports Hall, addition of new toilets and re-purposing of our stage area.
As well as utilising the building for our own activities, we wish to maximise the usefulness of the building to the South Kilburn neighbourhood by allowing others to use it when we aren’t. This also provides additional income to help fund the maintenance of the building and our Youth, Children’s and Community Programmes. The upper floors of our main building are licensed/let to various groups for office and activity space, while the Activity Room and Sports Hall are used by a variety of external groups during the week. We continue to increase this use, particularly during the daytime and at weekends.
Alongside all of this maintenance and regular use, the trustees continue to explore the possibility of a much larger redevelopment of the site. In the past year, the Trustees have agreed on a general design brief and have held conversations with Brent Council as well as various developers to look at the possibilities. We wish to continue this direction of travel.
Partners and Supporters
We are grateful for our relationship with the Christian Holt Housing Association (CHHA) which is a Christian missional community which provides a source of volunteers and funding. CHHA residents consist of full-time volunteers and other residents who have their own jobs but who spend part of their leisure time helping run the Club activities. Following the fire in December 2024, Christian Holt House was fully renovated and reopened in May 2025. We are grateful for the cooperation of our insurers in helping to remedy the situation, and particularly to John, Cheryl, and Andrew three of our trustees who gave an inordinate amount of time and energy to coordinating the claim and repairs.
We have ongoing links with the Berlin Mission and the International Cultural Youth Exchange who introduce the gap year interns to us. Their partnership with us is invaluable.
Our link with St. Luke’s Church continues to be very important to us. Several trustees are members there, and they are always supportive of our activities. Katy, the current curate, acts as chaplain to the residents of CHHA and her support is invaluable. We have also been pleased to build on our link with West Kilburn Baptist Church.
The work of the Club would not be possible without the support donors and funders, to whom we are incredibly grateful. There are people who have been supporting the OK Club financially and with prayer for decades now which is humbling to know.
In 2025 we decided to end our strategic relationship with Worth Unlimited (The Worth Foundation, charity no. 3451215). The support of Worth Unlimited’s senior leadership team was greatly appreciated but the trustees felt that changes in the leadership structure of Worth Unlimited and our own capacity made the arrangement no longer worthwhile.
Outcomes and Impact
Our youth and children’s programme utilises a system to monitor the progress of each young person and after every session the team endeavours to identify the progress or otherwise of each young person. This is all recorded on our CRM system, Lamplight. The information gathered helps us in our reflection and planning processes. Our community work is also evaluated on a regular basis with reports from both areas of work regularly received by the trustees.
Equipping the Team
As part of our ongoing commitment to staff development and training we have continued to train and support our staff and volunteers to help them improve their youth and children's work practice. The programme is led by Debbie Garden and includes mandatory training in Safeguarding and First Aid as well as wider youth work development concepts.
Plans for the Future
Our strategic plans going forward are:
To continually improve the quality of our provision
To ensure the financial sustainability of the organisation
To employ a full time CEO to lead the organisation forward
To improve the facilities to ensure continuing use is possible
To continue exploring the possibility of future redevelopment
In the year to 31 March 2026 the Trust recorded a surplus of £770 (2025 – deficit £50,211). However, we recorded a deficit in unrestricted funds, using a significant portion of our reserves. The trustees recognise that this situation is not sustainable and have taken steps to address our fundraising capacity. The net assets of the charity amounted to £618,716 at the end of the year of which cash and bank deposits amounted to £96,451 (2025 - £77,521).
The Trustees conducted a funding review of the organisation during the year. Income for the year was £148,931 which is up from the previous year, but included a significant grant received in the last month of the year. Expenditure was £148,161 which is a slight decrease on the previous year.
The fundraising environment continues to be extremely challenging for organisations like ours, but our trustees have committed to additional voluntary time in fundraising, which we believe will be further enhanced by the recruitment of a CEO. In March 2026 we were delighted to hear that our application to John Lyon charity was successful which specifically enables us to move forward with the recruitment of a CEO. We expect this person to be in post by September/October 2026.
With our ambitious future plans we need to raise additional income to be able to build the capacity we have for sustainability. Our goals continue to be:
Further increase income from premises hire
Strengthen relationships with existing funders
Increase the amount of funding secured through grants
Build relationships with new funders
Reserves Policy
It is the policy of the charity where feasible to maintain unrestricted funds which are the free reserves of the charity, at a level which equates to approximately three months' staffing costs. This provides sufficient funds to cover management and administration and support costs. Unrestricted funds at the end of the year were £14,864 (2 months) which is insufficient for this purpose at year end. As noted above, we are taking steps to rectify this situation and to rebuild the reserve to required levels.
Public Benefit
The trustees have referred to the Charity Commission's general guidance on public benefit when reviewing the Charity's aims and objectives and in planning its future activities. In particular the trustees consider how planned activities will contribute to the aims and objectives of the Charity.
The charity is governed by the memorandum and articles of association.
The trustees, who are also directors of the charity for the purposes of the Companies Act 2006, present their report with the financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31 March 2024. The trustees have adopted the provisions of Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2015).
In March 2026 the trustees accepted the resignations of John & Diana Kinder. As founders of the charity we are immensely grateful for their recent contributions as trustees, particularly John as Chair. They stepped into the role at a time when the future of the charity was uncertain and led with humility and graciousness. They will be missed and we wish them well in their second “retirement”. We are grateful, however, that Geoff Biggs has been willing to join the Trustees and has stepped into the role of Chair. This has provided a smooth transition. Geoff has worked as a children, youth and community worker in Brent and Westminster for over 40 years and has been the CEO of Westbourne Park Family Centre since it started in 2003. He also serves as an Elder at Westbourne Park Baptist Church.
The trustees, who are also the directors for the purpose of company law, and who served during the year and up to the date of signature of the financial statements were:
Trustees are appointed and removed by the existing board of trustees.
The Chair is responsible for the induction of new trustees.
The trustees report was approved by the Board of Trustees.
I report to the trustees on my examination of the financial statements of Oxford Kilburn Youth Trust (the charity) for the year ended 31 March 2026.
Having satisfied myself that the financial statements of the charity are not required to be audited under Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006 and are eligible for independent examination, I report in respect of my examination of the charity’s financial statements carried out under section 145 of the Charities Act 2011. In carrying out my examination I have followed the Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Charities Act 2011.
I have completed my examination. I confirm that no matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe that in any material respect:
accounting records were not kept in respect of the charity as required by section 386 of the Companies Act 2006.
the financial statements do not accord with those records; or
the financial statements do not comply with the accounting requirements of section 396 of the Companies Act 2006 other than any requirement that the financial statements give a true and fair view, which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination; or
the financial statements have not been prepared in accordance with the methods and principles of the Statement of Recommended Practice for accounting and reporting by charities applicable to charities preparing their financial statements in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102).
I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the financial statements to be reached.
The statement of financial activities includes all gains and losses recognised in the year. All income and expenditure derive from continuing activities.
Oxford Kilburn Youth Trust is a private company limited by guarantee incorporated in England and Wales. The registered office is Christian Holt House, 45 Denmark Road, Kilburn, London, NW6 5BP.
The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the charity's memorandum and articles of association, the Companies Act 2006 and "Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2019)". The charity is a Public Benefit Entity as defined by FRS 102.
The charity has taken advantage of the provisions in the SORP for charities applying FRS 102 Update Bulletin 1 not to prepare a Statement of Cash Flows.
The financial statements are prepared in sterling, which is the functional currency of the charity. Monetary amounts in these financial statements are rounded to the nearest £.
The financial statements have been prepared under the historical cost convention. The principal accounting policies adopted are set out below.
At the time of approving the financial statements, the trustees have a reasonable expectation that the charity has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future. Thus the trustees continue to adopt the going concern basis of accounting in preparing the financial statements.
Unrestricted funds are available for use at the discretion of the trustees in furtherance of their charitable objectives.
Restricted funds are subject to specific conditions by donors or grantors as to how they may be used. The purposes and uses of the restricted funds are set out in the notes to the financial statements.
Cash donations are recognised on receipt. Other donations are recognised once the charity has been notified of the donation, unless performance conditions require deferral of the amount. Income tax recoverable in relation to donations received under Gift Aid or deeds of covenant is recognised at the time of the donation.
Liabilities are recognised as expenditure as soon as there is a legal or constructive obligation committing the charity to that expenditure, it is probable that a transfer of economic benefits will be required in settlement and the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably. Expenditure is accounted for on an accruals basis and has been classified under headings that aggregate all cost related to the category. Where costs cannot be directly attributed to particular headings they have been allocated to activities on a basis consistent with the use of resources.
Tangible fixed assets are initially measured at cost and subsequently measured at cost or valuation, net of depreciation and any impairment losses.
Depreciation is recognised so as to write off the cost or valuation of assets less their residual values over their useful lives on the following bases:
The gain or loss arising on the disposal of an asset is determined as the difference between the sale proceeds and the carrying value of the asset, and is recognised in the statement of financial activities.
At each reporting end date, the charity reviews the carrying amounts of its tangible assets to determine whether there is any indication that those assets have suffered an impairment loss. If any such indication exists, the recoverable amount of the asset is estimated in order to determine the extent of the impairment loss (if any).
Cash and cash equivalents include cash in hand, deposits held at call with banks, other short-term liquid investments with original maturities of three months or less, and bank overdrafts. Bank overdrafts are shown within borrowings in current liabilities.
Basic financial assets, which include debtors and cash and bank balances, are initially measured at transaction price including transaction costs and are subsequently carried at amortised cost using the effective interest method unless the arrangement constitutes a financing transaction, where the transaction is measured at the present value of the future receipts discounted at a market rate of interest. Financial assets classified as receivable within one year are not amortised.
Basic financial liabilities, including creditors and bank loans are initially recognised at transaction price unless the arrangement constitutes a financing transaction, where the debt instrument is measured at the present value of the future payments discounted at a market rate of interest. Financial liabilities classified as payable within one year are not amortised.
Debt instruments are subsequently carried at amortised cost, using the effective interest rate method.
Trade creditors are obligations to pay for goods or services that have been acquired in the ordinary course of operations from suppliers. Amounts payable are classified as current liabilities if payment is due within one year or less. If not, they are presented as non-current liabilities. Trade creditors are recognised initially at transaction price and subsequently measured at amortised cost using the effective interest method.
Financial liabilities are derecognised when the charity’s contractual obligations expire or are discharged or cancelled.
The cost of any unused holiday entitlement is recognised in the period in which the employee’s services are received.
Termination benefits are recognised immediately as an expense when the charity is demonstrably committed to terminate the employment of an employee or to provide termination benefits.
Payments to defined contribution retirement benefit schemes are charged as an expense as they fall due.
In the application of the charity’s accounting policies, the trustees are required to make judgements, estimates and assumptions about the carrying amount of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. The estimates and associated assumptions are based on historical experience and other factors that are considered to be relevant. Actual results may differ from these estimates.
The estimates and underlying assumptions are reviewed on an ongoing basis. Revisions to accounting estimates are recognised in the period in which the estimate is revised where the revision affects only that period, or in the period of the revision and future periods where the revision affects both current and future periods.
Income from use of Club
Insurance
Premises expenses
Telephone
Postage and stationery
Computer expenses
General Club project costs
Staff travel and other costs
Subscriptions
Bank charges
Worth Unlimited
The average monthly number of employees during the year was:
The charity is exempt from taxation on its activities because all its income is applied for charitable purposes.
The charity operates a defined contribution pension scheme for all qualifying employees. The assets of the scheme are held separately from those of the charity in an independently administered fund.
The restricted funds of the charity comprise the unexpended balances of donations and grants held on trust subject to specific conditions by donors as to how they may be used.
Jack Petchey - Funding for the Jack Petchey Achievement Award scheme. Participants are nominated for an award on a quarterly basis and able to propose how to spend the award on activities or equipment.
Playwork (TLF) - For salary and activities for young people.
John Lyons Summer Holiday - Money from John Lyons for summer holiday activities.
John Lyons CEO - For new CEO of trust.
Countryside Community Chest - For community outreach through community animator.
Cooking Project - For the cooking project - equipment and ingredients.
Kate Herbert's Legacy - For salary and activities for children.
Acorn Fund - Building.
The unrestricted funds of the charity comprise the unexpended balances of donations and grants which are not subject to specific conditions by donors and grantors as to how they may be used. These include designated funds which have been set aside out of unrestricted funds by the trustees for specific purposes.
There were no disclosable related party transactions during the year (2025 - none).