By the Trustees
Between the second week of November 2025 and the second week of February 2026 the Trustees authorised five small grants from the Brethren in Need fund to help with the winter cost of heating. The total paid out was £155. This piece is a plain account of those five grants — anonymised to the level the Trustees have always observed, but otherwise told as it happened. We are publishing it because we believe the people who help keep this fund alive deserve to know how the money is spent, and because the dispatches are too short a form for the whole of it.
The five grants, in order
The first grant — £25, in mid-November. A Brother of the Lodge, a man in his late sixties living alone in Bookham, had been laid off from a part-time job he had taken on to cover the rising cost of his gas bill. His next pay had been due in October; it did not arrive. The Lodge Almoner heard of it within the week and rang both Trustees. We agreed to a £25 envelope by the following Tuesday. The Brother in question rang the Almoner on the Wednesday morning to say he had paid the November instalment in full.
The second grant — £30, the second week of December. A widow on the Almoner's list in Ashtead — she has been on the list since 2014, when her husband died — had taken in her grand-daughter and great-grandson temporarily, after her own daughter's marriage broke down. The heating in the cottage had been on more hours than usual. The £30 was for a top-up of the electricity-only meter she keeps in the side cupboard. The Almoner delivered it by hand on the Saturday afternoon and was given a cup of tea.
The third grant — £40, the week before Christmas. A former Brother who left the Lodge five years ago after moving to Cobham wrote to the Almoner in mid-December. He had not asked us for help in the past. His situation had changed; he and his wife had moved into a smaller flat with night-storage heating, and the November bill had taken them by surprise. The Trustees considered whether to make the grant — Cobham is outside the four parishes — and agreed to do so on a one-off basis, given his long history with the Lodge. We have written to remind him that future requests would, with regret, fall outside the trust deed.
"We made one grant outside our usual geography this winter — to a former Brother who had moved away — and we wrote to him to say it could not be repeated. He understood, and was kind in his reply."— Minute of the Trustees, January 2026
The fourth grant — £35, the second week of January. A request came via the Vicar of St Giles Ashtead — not a Brother, but a parishioner whose elderly neighbour, also not a Brother, was struggling with her oil tank. The Vicar had heard of our small fund and asked whether we might consider a one-off contribution. The Trustees considered whether the request fell within our scope — strictly, we exist to help Brethren and their families first — and decided to refer the case to the Surrey Hills Hospice winter outreach fund, who run a small grant scheme for exactly this kind of need. We did however make a £35 contribution to the Vicar's parish hardship fund, which was the part of the Vicar's request that was clearly within our remit.
The fifth grant — £25, the second week of February. A Brother of the Lodge, in his early seventies, had a particularly cold spell in late January and used considerably more oil than usual. The Lodge Almoner caught up with him at the February Lodge meeting. The Trustees agreed to a £25 envelope, posted the following morning.
What it adds up to
Five envelopes, £155 in total, mostly for £25 or £30 at a time. Two went to Brethren of the Lodge, one to a widow, one to a former Brother now outside the parish, and one to a parish hardship fund in Ashtead. The most rapid was paid four days after the Almoner first heard of the difficulty. The slowest — the Cobham grant — took three weeks, because we needed to discuss carefully whether the trust deed allowed it.
That £155 represents almost half of last year's total expenditure, paid out in three months. It is the largest concentration of grants we have made in any winter since 2010, when the Trustees of the day made seven small grants between November and February. We expect, all being well, to make perhaps two further grants between now and the end of the financial year, and to spend the rest of 2026 on the spring foodbank cheque, the summer's coffee morning costs, and the autumn's preparations for the Christmas envelopes.
What we learned
Three small things, written down as we have written them down each year since 2018:
- Speed matters more in winter. The Brother whose pay had not arrived in November was helped on the Tuesday. He told the Almoner the next day that, had the envelope come a week later, he would have given up on the bill altogether and let it lapse to court costs. We had thought we were quick; we now know we need to be quicker.
- Trust deeds are useful boundaries. The Cobham grant tested the deed in a way it has not been tested for some years. The Trustees were unanimous in their kindness and unanimous in their conclusion that a one-off was right, and a precedent would have been wrong. We have written that judgement into the Almoner's notes for future Trustees.
- A larger source is often the right answer. The Vicar's request reminded us that we are sometimes the wrong fund for a difficulty. The Surrey Hills Hospice winter outreach took up the case within a day. Knowing the names of larger funds is part of our job too.
If you would like to help with next winter
The £155 we spent this winter came from a reserve of £629 we held at the start of November. The reserve has come down accordingly. Donations to the Brethren in Need fund are particularly welcome between June and October, when the Almoner has time to write thank-you notes and when the winter ledger is still open.
If you would like to support the Brethren in Need fund directly, please make a small gift — every gift goes back out again in the same year. Reg. Charity 218915.