Chairman's Message 2002-2003

Your Hospice, over the past year, has seen expenditure continue to rise as it has further improved the services it offers. During the past twelve months we have completed development of the medical wing by creating three new single rooms for patients, and installed piped oxygen to all inpatient rooms. Our medical, nursing and therapist teams have all grown, thus giving both greater flexibility and care for our patients.

I am delighted to report that some 82% of our expenditure is still directly linked to patient care, with the remainder representing shop and fundraising costs. This is a commendable effort, which few charities could match. Fortunately, our income has also increased due to the hard work of all our teams and the generosity of so many, for which we are eternally grateful.

We continue to “do battle” with the NHS through the Guildford and Waverley Primary Care Trust, to obtain what we feel should be a fair contribution for our services to our community. We have had some success increasing our income from that source to 15.6% of expenditure, although in real terms the contribution is far from equitable. The Government’s imposition of an additional 1% increase in employers’ NI contributions will cost the Hospice an additional £20,000 this year, and we are likely to see increased employer pension contributions implemented by the NHS in 2004.

The future of every charitable organisation is in the hands of its supporters, and we are no exception. As our costs rise so must our income and in order to achieve our goals we must continue to invest in resources. The current financial climate that impacts on all of us, through greater taxes, worries about pensions or investments, affects people’s level of giving, and I believe we will find it harder in the coming years to raise ever greater funds.

That said, we are patient driven, and we have set out in our Strategic Plan our desire to expand our Day Care services from four to five days a week, and to expand our therapy and training facilities. In Chris Tuckwell’s address, he touches upon our considerable achievement in being awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Award for Volunteers and I would like to add my congratulations and thanks to all our volunteers for all their hard work and commitment without which we would not be the Hospice we are today. I am always amazed and greatly appreciative of the staff of the Hospice who turn out for so many functions and fundraising events. They too are part of our volunteer culture.

On behalf of the Board I would like to thank our Chief Executive, Kim Archer, our Directors, Carey Morris, Clodagh Sowton and David Maskell, and all our dedicated staff for providing such wonderful and caring service to our patients over the past year.

Both Chris Tuckwell and I are about to stand down as Trustees at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting, and I would like to thank Chris for all his hard work and commitment over the past 25 years. He will remain President and I know will continue with his unstinting loyalty to work for the benefit of the Hospice. For my part it has been a pleasure and privilege to be involved in such a wonderful organisation.

Finally, I started with “time”, so let me finish on the same theme.

If your bank deposited in your account £86,400 each morning for you to spend and took away each evening any remaining funds, I’m sure you would soon learn to spend it all each day in anticipation of the same amount being deposited the following morning. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, every day, for you to spend – don’t waste them, they won’t be there forever.

Allan T Smith
Chairman

top of page

back to Reports