Overview

2025 has been both a busy and exciting year. LATH has strengthened and broadened its Board of Trustees and seen a welcome increase in volunteers.  It has established a coherent Vision, Mission and Values statement from which to anchor its future strategy. The charity has taken positive steps to improve its communications and links with external agencies and the community.  Grants and donations to the charity have continued to grow, support for its social events remains strong and LATH has seen green shoots emerge with regard to raising awareness with local businesses and fundraising activities.

LATH continues to be positively received by those who come into contact with the work of the charity and its amazing volunteers.  Bernard Potter, founder and President of LATH was nominated for volunteer of the year by the Mayor of Crewe and the work of LATH in the town was recognised by the Mayor in her Civic Service speech. Formed in 2009, Bernard set up LATH to address homelessness in Crewe and help those in need. Today, LATH continues to follow that ethos.

However, the year has not been without its challenges. A changing and challenging landscape saw a significant increase in clients using the drop-in services at the Caritas Centre in Crewe. This necessitated LATH to pivot swiftly to react to new emerging needs from refugees and asylum seekers, impacting on clothing distribution and the workload of volunteers managing the increasingly busy weekly drop-in sessions.

1. Trustees and Volunteers

Four new Trustees were added to the Board in 2025. This decision was taken to ensure a consistent quorate for meetings, improve decision making and inject new external experience within the Board of Trustees. An extraordinary AGM was held to change the constitution to increase the number of Trustees from six to a maximum of twelve. The new Trustees brought the number of active Trustees, including the Chairman, to nine. However as the year progressed there have been two resignations including Bernard Potter who resigned due to ill health, but remains as honorary President.  A search for replacement Trustees will take place in 2026.

A key piece of work developed by the Trustees in the summer of 2025 was to establish and agree a Vision, Mission and set of Values for the charity, to guide its future strategic direction. The vision statement, ‘helping to make lives better’ has started to be used in communications and will be developed further in 2026. The full Vision, Mission, Values statement is attached (appendix 1).

Trustees of LATH are:

Mick Tobin (Chairman), Barbara Francis (Secretary), Joan Walton, John McManus,

Fr Nick Kern, Becky Hurst and Andrew Hendrie.

2. Weekly Drop-in Service

The twice weekly drop-in sessions at the Caritas Centre on Tuesdays and Thursdays has seen a 21% increase in clients – 3941 compared to 3127 in 2024. In the main this rise has been due to asylum seekers and refugees seeking help, support and advice. Recorded visits were:

·       Visits by UK nationals: 3271 vs 3127 in 2024. A rise of 4.6%

·       Visits by asylum seekers and refugees: 670 vs 0 in 2024. The recorded number is probably under representative of actual numbers.

This rise has seen a consequential increase in clothing, tents and sleeping bags issued through the year:

·       Items of clothing issued: 1790 vs 766 in 2024 (+234%). This in part reflects the poor quality of clothing given to refugees and asylum seekers entering the UK, typically a pair of flip flops and prison apparel.

·       Tents issued: 32 vs 6 in 2024 (+533%)

·       Sleeping bags issued: 51 vs 27 in 2024 (+190%)

The change in client composition in 2025 meant our amazing volunteers needed to quickly acquire new skills and knowledge to support asylum seekers and refugees, particularly with regard to housing, understanding home office requests/messages and engaging with Cheshire East and Migrant Help. They have adapted superbly and in some cases have gone over and above to help those most distressed and in need, whilst maintaining service standards to our regular client base. Two new volunteers who joined LATH in the summer, have been instrumental in supporting asylum seekers and refugees and ensuring that support from LATH is effective. They have brought with them a wealth of experience in this field and have shared this with other volunteers. Some of the asylum seekers themselves, have started to assist others with translation and actively help our volunteers with setting up and clearing tables, general cleaning and clothing distribution.

During December and early January 2026 we have funded 9 hotel rooms to provide emergency shelter to get rough sleepers out of freezing temperatures and provide them with warmth, shelter and safety. St Mary’s Catholic church also provided assistance and support to help rough sleepers have a safe place to stay during December and into January 2026.

The drop-in sessions every Tuesday and Thursday continue to provide much needed help and support in a warm and safe environment, and provide hot nutritious meals made by our great kitchen volunteer team. Steady food supplies from Greggs and Aldi have supplemented our meal preparation and allow clients to take much appreciated food items home with them. Thanks to the willingness of our volunteers, we are extremely proud to have opened the drop-in sessions on both Christmas Day and New Years Day, providing not only hot food and warmth but also festive cheer and companionship on two days of the year when everything else is closed.

Lastly, in the summer due to volunteer holidays we took the decision to suspend the drop-in service for two weeks in July.  However, we did ensure that food continued to be available by preparing a takeaway bag of Greggs items, distributed in the car park.  Thanks to the volunteers we were able to maintain a limited service, which worked well, and ensured that no client was hungry because of the closure.

3. Community and Service Providers

We have developed new and nurtured existing partnerships with service providers and community groups. CGL (Change, Grow, Live) are frequent visitors to LATH as is the Outreach Worker from Cheshire East who sets up a regular consultation service at the drop-in sessions. We have improved links with a number of other service providers in our community, bringing much needed services to the doorstep of our clients.  In 2025 we have seen visits from Living Well, Emporia Training, National Career Service, Optician Phil Cooke, London One barbers, Crewe Lions as well as numerous visits from the NHS mobile health screening unit.  We have also just established a link with Alcoholics Anonymous who will make their first visit in January 2026. We continue to work closely with Hope Church with regard to supporting asylum seekers and refugees and have strengthened our link with St Paul’s food bank. LATH has also had great support from St Mary’s SVP (St Vincent de Paul) this year and we are building links with the SVP in both Nantwich and Alsager.

LATH has begun to raise its profile with local businesses in the Crewe and Nantwich area and this has seen beneficial results (see section 5). Crewe Alexandra have been extremely supportive this year to our charity.  They have provided winter coats, waterproofs, gilets, socks, tracksuit bottoms and tops. These items have been much needed and appreciated by our clients and is just one of the community partnerships we have established to help drive greater awareness and support for those most in need in our community.

4. Communications

2025 has seen the start of our strategy to improve communications.  There is more work to be done in this area but this year has seen the start of a stronger communications drive which will be amplified in 2026.  Firstly, we recognised that we needed to significantly improve our communication with our volunteers who are the lifeblood of our charity.  In February we launched the first of our quarterly volunteers meetings; a one-hour session with an agenda and minutes and has been well attended by volunteers.  This was followed by the introduction of the volunteers WhatsApp group.  This too has been successful and is not only a vital communication tool to get urgent messages/information to all volunteers, but it has also developed a social element with other messages being posted here too. Both elements are helping to keep our volunteer team connected and informed.

We wrote and submitted two articles for the No.9 magazine, July and December editions, which is circulated across the Catholic Churches in Crewe, Nantwich, Alsager and Sandbach areas, helping to raise awareness of the charity.  For the first time, we had adverts in the community pages of the Crewe, Nantwich and Village Link magazines given free of charge by the owners. We were also live on The Cat radio with an interview about LATH and the work the charity does to help overcome homelessness and poverty.  Finally, we continue to build positive relationships with our local MP Conor Naismith, the Mayor of Crewe Councillor Sally Graham and Councillor Hazel Faddes from Cheshire East who is a regular visitor to LATH.

5. Donations, Grants and Fundraising

Donations to LATH have continued to grow in 2025 from both individuals and businesses. We have maintained the flow of donations from the ‘Friends of LATH’ which are typically regular monthly donations by individuals and are much appreciated.  In addition, we have had a number of one-off donations including a large donation from David Wilson Homes.  Several organisations, eg Unite, and businesses, eg Beautonic Beauty, continue to maintain their support for LATH, donating either a one-off sum or on a regular monthly basis.

In September we came to the end of our National Lottery Grant. Through 2025 grants have proved to be increasingly difficult to attain, something being experienced by all charities, but towards the end of the year we have had a successful run of attracting 3 new grants from, The Julia Rausing Foundation, The Radius Foundation and the The People’s Lottery. We have continued to attract a number of local grants to support our work in the community, namely from Crewe Town Council, Churches Together and Nantwich Church Wardens. In 2026 we are placing greater emphasis on the writing, clarity and construction of grant applications to ensure we have the strongest chance of success.

Fundraising events during the year have continued to be popular and have attracted considerable support.  In 2025 we have staged two concerts, a bingo night, quiz night, a summer fair and Christmas tombola. In the second half of the year, we decided to place greater emphasis in attracting some local businesses to fundraise for us. We have tried several initiatives including a Souvlaki takeaway night, ‘£1 on the Bill’ at St Martha’s, Edward’s Wine Bar and The Red Cow, ‘Lift for LATH’ at The Fitness Boxx and ‘Days Labour Sacrifice’ at Martin Davies Osteopaths.  This new type of activity has had encouraging results in driving a new revenue stream for LATH as well as raising more awareness of the charity across the Crewe and Nantwich area.

Combined, grants, donations and fundraising are fundamental to the survival of LATH. Ensuring we have income from each of these areas requires a continuous effort and our future strategy and success is dependant on each of the three elements continuing to generate revenue.

In summary, 2025 has been a year of growth and change and lays foundations for an exciting future for the charity. None of the achievements this year would have been possible without the financial support from individuals, businesses and organisations through donations, grants and fundraising activities. Moreover, the consistent delivery of practical, social, emotional and informational support every week by our dedicated team of volunteers continues to make a positive difference to the lives of our clients. The hard work of our caring volunteers is why LATH makes a positive difference to  the lives of those most in need in our community.

Our 2025 Roll of Honour

YOU are 'helping to make lives better'. THANK-YOU!

Appendix 1

LATH Vision

Helping To Make Lives Better

LATH Mission

To support the homeless, vulnerable and those affected by poverty in the Crewe and Nantwich area both physically and emotionally.

We will do this by:-

· operating a twice weekly drop-in service (Tuesday and Thursday), to provide a welcoming, warm and safe space for the homeless, vulnerable and those affected by poverty.

· offering the basics of life such as food, drinks, clothes, toiletries, sleeping bags and tents. 

· delivering support to improve the lives of our clients longer term by helping them find accommodation, write CVs, access benefits, provide information on accessing health care and tests, and any other service required that we believe will benefit our clients.

·  providing positive emotional support with the aim of improving the self-worth of people impacted by homelessness or affected by poverty.

LATH Values

Humanity · Empathy · Support · Respect · Voluntary Service