The trustees of Fleet Pond Society consider that an Independent Examination of its accounts is good practice, although this is not required by the Charities Commission because of the level of our activities. Our Annual Report and Accounts are always independently examined.
For details of the main achievements in previous years and/or copies of our annual reports and accounts, please contact our secretary on secretary@fleetpond.org.uk.
Our annual accounts for 2023/2024 have been formally examined and signed off by the Executive Committee. You can download them here, annual report and accounts 23-24
The Society has continued the voluntary management activity at Fleet Pond, including habitat management and repair and upgrade of paths and protective fencing. The Island Management team also continued to tackle the scrub growth on the new islands that were created by the dredging a few years back. Care has been taken that maintenance of islands, reedbeds, marshland and heathland does not impede access or obstruct visitors’ views. In fact, the work has continued to open up new vistas across the open areas to the Pond, attracting positive responses from the public. We did a massive amount of work to remove over 4000 saplings and trees in one of our reedbeds. We commissioned a new group of volunteers to study the moth populations on the reserve. We funded new equipment to do this, and very interesting results have been noted and reported to the County Moth Recorder.
We spent a significant amount of funds on purchasing materials as well as new types of tools and replacements to allow us to be more efficient in our conservation work. We employed contractors to build a new path down a particularly awkward slope to improve accessibility. We paid for this with the bequest of £20,000 from the estate of Patsy Welford and the path was opened at the end of March 2023.
We received a good number of donations this year from our public supporters as well as Southern Co-ops. We had a major single bequest of £5000. The amount of these donations we received totalled roughly £7100.