Use your financial skills to help guide a charity supplying good quality well-managed housing for rent to households of working age, providing them with the stability and reassurance necessary as the foundation for productive living.
What will you be doing?
We are looking for a Treasurer who will enjoy using financial skills to improve the life chances of low-income families in the Newbury area.
We are a small volunteer Board, currently 7 Directors, with a wide range of skills and experience, so we look to all Directors to pitch in as required. Living in or near Newbury is important so you can visit the site, meet residents and contractors and so on. We are supported by a part-time Clerk but there is much to do – dealing with resident issues, filling vacancies, arranging repairs and servicing. We employ local trades for maintenance and repair work, gardening and window cleaning. We do not provide support beyond housing but can direct residents to Council services and other local organisations that can help.
The Board meets formally every 6 weeks or so, in person. Every Director also sits on at least one of the three Board Committees covering residents, property and finance, which meet infrequently as needed, often using Zoom. We may also set up smaller temporary groups: one such has just finished reviewing our website, shortly to be re-launched.
You will use your professional and technical skills to construct the annual budget and to present quarterly management accounts to the Board; and to develop draft statutory annual accounts for presentation to our Independent Examiner. We employ a Clerk for 10 hours per week, dealing with administration and day-to-day bookkeeping, using Quickbooks.
You would need to have the necessary accounting expertise to oversee all finance matters and dealings with banks – we have a substantial mortgage and significant funds on deposit – and insurances. The Treasurer is the Board lead on GDPR.
Our reserves of cash are vital. We have developed a planned maintenance schedule for the years ahead – covering kitchen appliance and boiler replacement, re-decoration and longer-term issues like roof replacement – and need to ensure we are putting enough by and making the most of our reserve funds.
What are we looking for?
You will need accounting experience, of course, but the Charity’s accounts are basic: total annual income is around £140k with a single income source (Weekly Maintenance Charges, the almshouse term for rent), and costs before mortgage interest of about half that.
Some experience of the charitable or social housing sectors would be advantageous. The accounts are similar to those of any small housing rental company but we operate in a tightly-regulated environment as a Registered Provider in receipt of substantial public grant funding during the 2017/18 re-development of our estate.
Our part-time Clerk uses Quickbooks, so producing a draft set of management accounts is straightforward; you will probably want to develop report formats. The Clerk has a debit card for the Charity’s current account, so is able to pay suppliers herself after authorisation from the Chair and subject to our financial delegations schedule.
Experience of developing budgets is important, though ours are pretty straightforward. When the Charity re-opened in 2018 after the re-development, its financial position was strong but the recent increases in base rate, set to continue, have led to hefty rises in mortgage interest (our loan balance at Charity Bank is currently £1.1 million) and have tightened our finances considerably. You will be key to ensuring accurate and prudent budgets; that we keep spending under control; and that the Bank is kept on-side.
We also need to make the most of our cash reserves, currently on deposit.
You will deal with arrears and other payment issues arising: several households are on Universal Credit and the make-up of their Weekly Maintenance Charge payments may vary between UC and their own earnings. The Treasurer also deals with the Charity’s insurances and will be Board lead on GDPR compliance.
Our Board has a reasonable mix of gender and age but lacks ethnic diversity, which we are keen to improve. One director is disabled. Our Treasurer stood down at the end of 2022 to focus on her young family so we would particularly welcome female and non-white applicants so that the Board composition better reflects the characteristics of our residents, several of whom are from ethnic minority communities or are single parents.
Board experience, particularly with a charity or non-profit, would be an advantage, though certainly not essential.
What difference will you make?
Every organisation needs to balance its books and put something by for the future. A board needs to be confident that whatever its activities and plans, it will have enough in the bank to carry them through.
As Treasurer, your expertise would be key to our financial survival and our ability to continue to provide these much-needed homes to Newbury households in need of good quality housing. And we need to keep Weekly Maintenance Charges as low as possible.
As for many in the UK at present, life is increasingly challenging for the households in Mabel Luke Place. We have permanently employed, intermittently employed, self-employed and unemployed households, many accessing Universal Credit or other benefits, some with fluctuating incomes. We don’t directly provide support beyond the provision of good quality housing but we can help by directing residents to local organisations that can provide support.
Inevitably, some households fall into arrears from time to time. We manage this pro-actively. Residents are not helped by us allowing arrears to run up to levels that become unsustainable for them. So the finance role is key here too – spotting problems early on and collaborating with other directors to help residents through.
The bottom line is: we need to make sure our housing is managed and maintained to a high standard. That gives our residents one less important thing to worry about.
Before you apply
Please email our Chair, John Gatward, at the address below, in the first instance with your details, enclosing a CV and a covering letter setting out why you are interested in this position and what you consider you have to offer by way of experience. If all seems positive the Chair will arrange an initial informal meeting to discuss the role, the nature of the work and to elaborate details of the applicant’s experience. A second meeting with the Chair and another director will follow. If all goes well, the applicant will be invited to attend a Board meeting as an observer and after the applicant has left the Board will agree whether to offer the post of Treasurer. The Chair will take it from there.
Email: john.gatward@mabelluke.co.uk