Forty-two households in the Huddersfield area received support in 2025.

Every February the trustees sit down in a hired room — usually Holmfirth Civic Hall — and read the previous year out loud to one another. We do this with a sheet of unaudited management accounts in front of us and a list of the grants we made, one by one, ordered by date. It takes about an hour and a half. We have done it this way for as long as anyone can remember, and the format will not change in our lifetimes. The point is not to celebrate. The point is to look at each line and ask whether, given what we now know, we would have made the same decision again.

Our outflow in the year ended 31 December 2025 was £34,684, against income of £36,423. That left an unrestricted reserve of slightly more than one quarter’s commitments, which is where our trustees have agreed it should sit. Of the £34,684, just under £21,000 went out as direct grants to individuals and households, and the rest went to organisations, to Memorial care, and to a small budget line for governance and admin (an audit fee, three hall hires, postage on the quarterly dispatches, and our small public-liability insurance).

The Listening Fund · 23 households · £8,420

The largest line of our hardship spending last year went out through the Listening Fund — single grants for ex-service neighbours and their families, referred to us by the Royal British Legion (Huddersfield Branch), SSAFA West Yorkshire, and Combat Stress. The average grant was £366. The smallest was £80, towards a delayed energy bill. The largest was £600, an arrears settlement that kept a family in their rented home in Lindley. We replied to every application within seven working days, including those we could not fund.

The smallest grant we made all year was £80, towards a delayed energy bill. The largest was £600. The point of the work is not the size of the cheque.Amanda Mohr · Trustee

The Necessity Grants · 19 households · £4,820

Nineteen Necessity Grants went out in 2025, referred to us by the Welcome Centre, two Kirklees social workers, three parish ministers, and one school welfare officer. School uniforms; a fortnight’s shopping after a sudden bereavement; a single funeral contribution; a boiler engineer’s visit in February. Average grant: £254. Total: £4,820. We turned down nine Necessity applications last year — four because the applicant fell outside the twenty-mile radius from the Town Hall, three because the underlying problem was of a kind we cannot solve with a one-off grant, and two for reasons recorded in our internal minutes that we will not republish here.

The Convalescent Awards · five partners · £7,500

Our 2025 round of Convalescent Awards, agreed at the May trustees’ meeting, totalled £7,500 split across five partner organisations. Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice at Russell House received £1,500 towards the resurfacing of the play garden. The Welcome Centre received £1,500 for its winter clothing store. Holme Valley Memorial Hospital received £1,500 for patient comforts and garden equipment. The convalescent home in Brighouse received £1,500 for new dayroom chairs. The Mirfield care home received £1,500 for a portable hearing-loop. These five partners have all received an annual grant from the trust for more than a decade.

The Royal Infirmary Award · £4,200

Object I of our Declaration of Trust is the support of Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, and we honoured it last year with a grant of £4,200 to the hospital’s charity team. The 2025 award was directed, at the hospital’s request, to the chaplaincy garden at the rear of the chapel on Acre Street. The garden is a small courtyard with three benches and a fig tree planted in 1962. Our grant funded a path resurfacing and two wheelchair-accessible benches. The work was completed in November in time for the Remembrance week services held in the chapel.

Memorial Care · £7,344

The line of work that gave us our name. In 2025 the Memorial Care budget covered the annual October clean (£820), a small repointing job on the south-east plinth (£3,440), the purchase of a new pole-mounted soft-brush system shared with the Greenhead Park rangers (£284), and the deposit on the 2026 conservation survey (£2,800). The October clean was undertaken by twelve volunteers and our usual stonemason in two mornings, with tea provided by the Friends of Greenhead Park.

Remembrance Together · £1,940

Last year’s Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph was attended by around 1,400 people, similar to 2024. Our small budget line for the day covered the portable PA system (£640), accessibility provision and stewarding tabards (£420), the printed order of service (£280), the chalking-in of weathered names on the lower drum (£200), and £400 across miscellaneous costs including a small thank-you tea for the marshals at the bandstand afterwards.

Governance and admin · £460

One audit fee, three hall hires for trustees’ meetings, postage and printing on the four quarterly dispatches (which we always send by post to those who have asked for it), and our small charity-trustee liability insurance. Total: £460. We do not employ anyone. We do not rent an office.

What we would have done differently

Two things. First, we said no to a Necessity application in May that, in hindsight, we should have funded. The applicant had been referred by a partner we trust, the sum was within our range, and our reason for declining was a procedural one we have since revised. We wrote to the applicant in November to say so. Second, we left the Convalescent Awards decision until the May meeting, which meant our partner organisations did not know what they would receive until mid-May. From 2026 we will tell them in March.

If you would like to discuss any of the figures above, the trustees are happy to talk through them at our March open afternoon at Holmfirth Civic Hall, or by post and email at any time. The audited 2025 accounts will be filed with the Charity Commission later this year and will appear on our Reports page when they are available.