Trustee report
2023 AGM

Trustee Report for the 2023 AGM

Space 4, Fonthill Road, N4 on 21 November 2023 at 7.30pm

Bethany Anderson and Tom Graham - Co-chairs
 
Over the year, trustees:

Ecology work:
•    Ran Rewilding Sessions with, on average, about 15-20 volunteers attending monthly sessions; here are over 40 people on the mailing list.
•    Over 200 trees, 400 heading plants and 500 bulbs were planted, areas of the park were hand weeded and a wildflower meadow was created.
•    Completed Wildlife and Plant Species Surveys.
•    Successfully encouraged Haringey Council (the owners of Finsbury Park) to carry out less mowing during April until August.
•    Fed into Haringey Council’s Parks and Green Spaces Strategy.
•    Submitted evidence to Parliament on the importance of Urban Green Spaces and the problems they face.
•    Met with MPs to ask that they raise the need for Statutory Funding for Parks and Green Spaces. J eremy Corbyn MP raised a parliamentary adjournment debate on park funding in the House of Commons in October 2023, specifically mentioning Finsbury Park.
•    We are currently submitting surveys and advice to the SINC report for the Park.

Safety matters:
•    Campaigned for better safety in the Park, and been Community Leads for Safety Walks with local Police Teams and MPs.
•    After a five-year campaign, lights have finally been erected in the Park.
•    Worked with the Metropolitan Police to design out crime by removing shrubs in areas blighted by anti-social behaviour, to be replaced by low and densely-planted herb beds.

Skatepark:
•    Successfully raised nearly £50,000 in 2021/22 towards the cost of improving and extending this.
•    Meetings on design and delivery have been held with users and Haringey Council.
•    Two design options have been drawn up for consultation to choose.
•    The delivery for this is now aimed at Spring 2024.
•    Continued work will be undertaken to improve and extend this skatepark and measure any impact of vehicle parking nearby due to mega-events.

Impact of major events- work on our concerns about their impact:
•    Organised well-attended (over 80 people) community meetings in April and September 2023, as well as attending local and Haringey Council meetings.
•    Input into press coverage on the impact of major events on the Park, for example: the Tough Mudder event and Wireless.
•    Provided information for press articles etc in order to raise awareness of issues facing public parks.
•    Made official complaints about Tough Mudder and the damage it did to the Park. We did press and radio coverage and this helped lead to Haringey Council announcing that Tough Mudder and “mud” events would no longer be held in Finsbury Park.

•    Made an official complaint about the Council’s “Myth” Campaign, and filed complaints against multi-year deals for events in the Park.

Building stronger relationships with other park stakeholders:
•    Attended Haringey Council’s Park Stakeholder meetings and asked that they be more democratic with more genuine stakeholder participation.
•    Our postal address, and registered office, is still Manor House Lodge and we welcome the new Museum of Homelessness now based there.
•    We hope to build stronger relationships with other park stakeholders in the future.



Matters relating to running The Friends of Finsbury Park

Updating our constitution:

•    Our existing constitution was agreed in 2001, as a Limited Company and as a Charity. Following other Friends groups, we are recommending becoming a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) instead. This is a relatively new structure set up in order for groups to be able to report to one organisation- the Charities Commission.
•    The CIO constitution agreed by the Trustees was uploaded onto our website, with notice of this AGM. three weeks ago and any feedback was requested.
•    We recommend the adoption of this constitution which then needs to be approved by the Charity Commission for registration with them. There may be slight changes needed and we ask that these are approved, and that we will record any such changes for information to the next Community Meeting.

Membership:

•    The CIO constitution will enable us to set up new membership schemes more easily, and we will be writing to supporters soon on this. We do hope that you will all want to be members!

Finances:

We are recommending for approval the two reports as put onto the website with the notice of this AGM:

•    Trustee Annual Report for the Charity Commission from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023
•    Small Company Report for Companies House for 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023


And finally we thank you for being here, and wanting to protect and improve our precious Finsbury Park.





Friends of Finsbury Park: Registered Office- Manor House Lodge, Seven Sisters Road, London. N4 2DE; Company No: 04343874; Charity No: 1104450.