LION Culture Initiative CIC is a veteran-led community organisation based in Crosby, Merseyside. We deliver structured personal development and behaviour-change programmes to people at difficult turning points in their lives: men and women in and leaving custody, young adults who are not in education, employment or training, people leaving the Armed Forces, and women and men in our local communities who want to change direction. Our method is drawn from the founder's 27 years of British Army service, from Private Soldier to Regimental Sergeant Major and then commissioned officer, and rests on four principles: listening and self-development, understanding your own motivators and demotivators, ownership and responsibility, and building a network that supports rather than damages you. In the year to 30 June 2026 we delivered across four strands of work. The LION Programme, our core personal development and community offer for men, worked with more than 100 men over the year through courses, weekend sessions, community walks, mentoring and an active peer support group. The programme is free at the point of use and open to men from across Merseyside. The Lioness Programme supported 60 women through physical activity, personal development and wellbeing sessions, delivered with support from the Liverpool Airport Community Fund and Sport England's Movement Fund. The programme was designed to reach women who would not typically access mainstream sport or personal development provision. LION Futures, delivered under the Liverpool City Region Youth Guarantee Trailblazer and funded through the VOLA Consortium, enrolled 36 young people aged 18 to 21 who were not in education, employment or training. We retained 100% of participants once enrolled and filed 93 complete participant records. Participants included care-experienced young people, neurodivergent young people and young men connected to the criminal justice system. Progressions from the programme included entry into employment, and one graduate of the programme now works alongside us as a Co-Facilitator and Ambassador. Our custodial programme at HMP Liverpool has now worked with 32 men. HMP Liverpool is a Category B local prison receiving around 4,000 men a year and releasing roughly 150 every month, most of them back into Merseyside. We deliver an intensive four-day personal development programme inside the prison, combining classroom work with a personal workbook, a physical and team-building day run jointly with the prison PE staff, and a breathwork and self-regulation session delivered by an accredited instructor. Entry is based on willingness to engage rather than on risk category, sentence length or prior educational attainment, which means we reach men on short sentences who are routinely screened out of other provision. During the year we commissioned an independent academic evaluation of the custodial programme rather than relying on our own reporting. Dr Angus Ryrie of Liverpool John Moores University published a case-study evaluation in July 2026, using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale, a bespoke sixteen-measure outcome questionnaire, in-situ observation, participants' own workbook material and follow-up interviews. Subjective wellbeing rose significantly across the cohort, from a mean of 45.9 before the programme to 58.1 afterwards. Fifteen of our sixteen outcome measures improved significantly, including emotional regulation, decision awareness, conflict response, risk awareness and personal responsibility. The evaluation concluded that the programme is a valid and effective personal development intervention that delivers tangible benefits to both prisoners and the prison system, and recommended exploring how it could be formally integrated into the prison education offer and linked to sustained mentoring after release. The community benefit we exist to deliver is this: people at a point of transition, who are at high risk of poor outcomes for themselves and of cost to public services, gaining the self-knowledge, self-regulation and relationships they need to take a different path. That benefit accrues to the individuals themselves, to their families, and to the communities across Merseyside they return to. Our programmes are delivered free to participants and are funded through grants, sponsorship and commissioned delivery. No part of our work is restricted to people who can pay for it. We work through partnership rather than in isolation. Over the year we worked with HMP Liverpool, probation services, Sefton@Work, the Sefton Care Experienced Team, Bootle Jobcentre Plus, The Learning Foundry, Inside Connections, The City of Liverpool College, local Army Reserve units, Altcar Training Camp, ThinkTree Education as our quality assurance partner, Liverpool John Moores University, and a network of local community interest companies, community gyms and veterans' organisations across Merseyside. The company generated total income of £72,824 in the year (2025: £2,340) and incurred total expenditure of £46,254 (2025: £4,335). Funding was received from Sport England's Movement Fund, The National Lottery Community Fund, the VOLA Consortium under the Liverpool City Region Youth Guarantee Trailblazer, and the Liverpool Airport Community Fund, together with commercial sponsorship from local businesses. £18,943 of grant funding was held at the year end for the delivery of committed programmes in the following year. All surpluses are retained within the company and applied to the delivery of its community purpose.

Our stakeholders are the people who take part in our programmes and their families; the delivery partners and referral agencies we work with, including HMP Liverpool, probation services, Sefton@Work, the Sefton Care Experienced Team and Bootle Jobcentre Plus; our funders; our volunteers, mentors and facilitators; and the communities across Merseyside in which we deliver. Participants are consulted continuously and formally. Every participant completes a baseline and end-line self-assessment, and produces their own workbook material, personal values statement, performance profile and goal map. Participants are asked for feedback after every session and at the end of every programme. Participants who have left our programmes are followed up at four weeks and thirteen weeks. During the year we also commissioned an independent evaluation by Liverpool John Moores University, which included in-situ observation of two full programmes and confidential one-to-one interviews with participants conducted by the researcher rather than by us, so that participants could speak freely about the programme without us in the room. Delivery and referral partners are consulted through regular review meetings, and our quality assurance partner ThinkTree Education reviews outcome data and delivery observations after each cycle. Consultation changed what we do. Participants told us that a rigid, fixed-cohort course structure did not fit their circumstances, so we have moved to individual intake assessments, individual learning plans and rolling monthly intake, allowing people to start when they are ready and progress at a pace that reflects their lives. Participants and the independent evaluation both told us the opening day of the custodial programme was too theory-heavy, so we are reducing the theoretical content and building prison-specific scenarios generated with participants rather than written for them. The evaluation identified that our breathwork session surfaced significant emotional material for some men, so we now brief prison staff to check in with participants later the same day and are writing that safeguard formally into the programme design. Participants asked repeatedly for support that continued beyond the course itself, so our free community offer of weekend sessions, community walks and a peer support group has been extended and is now the standard route on from every programme rather than an optional extra. Our first year of youth delivery showed that marketing generated enquiries but not attendance, so we rebuilt recruitment around trusted referral partners. Peer feedback also led us to recruit a programme graduate as a paid Co-Facilitator and Ambassador, so that new participants meet someone with direct experience of the programme before they meet anyone else.

No director received a salary or other remuneration directly from the company during the financial year to which this report relates. During the year the company paid £16,729 to LION Ltd, a company connected to director Joseph Fleming, for coaching, facilitation, mentoring, programme management and administration services delivered under the company's funded programmes. Mr Fleming declared his interest in that company and took no part in the decision to engage it. The services were delivered in full and charged at rates agreed in advance, and the arrangement was disclosed to the funders of the programmes concerned. A director's loan of £1,400 owed to Mr J Fleming was repaid during the year. The balance outstanding at the year end is due to be repaid in full during the following financial year.

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration