St Peter's Church Parish News

Parish Priest
The Reverend Tim Marwood   
           

The Vicarage
Bute Avenue
Petersham 
TW10 7AX

Charitable Giving: Give As You Earn

Many pensioners do not know that the government’s Give As You Earn (GAYE) scheme applies to pensions as well as salaries and wages. GAYE falls within PAYE so if your pension is taxed before you get it the provider can operate a GAYE scheme and probably does. The advantage of GAYE is that your monthly contributions are deducted from your pension before any Income Tax is calculated and so they are allowed at the highest rate paid.

The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) operates a Charity Account for personal donors with a minimum monthly contribution of £10. For every £10 credited to your account the cost to you is £7.80 if your highest rate is 22% or £6 if your highest tax rate is 40%. Put another way, after CAF’s administration fee of 4% you have £12.30 to give to charity for every net £10 you contribute if your top rate is 22% and £16 if you pay tax at the higher rate.

With your CAF account you get a cheque book for one-off donations with a debit card; you can set up standing orders for regular contributions; and you get a quarterly statement of account from CAF setting out the transactions on your account with a current list of future standing orders. One point of interest is that a CAF cheque is more secure than a bank cheque as if it should be intercepted it can be banked only by a charity.

For more information go to www.cafonline.org or write to CAF (Charities Aid Foundation), 25 Kings Hill Avenue, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent ME19 4TA or telephone  01732 520 000

Charitable Giving: Local Charities

Most of us receive plenty of reminders of the needs of national charities but there are local charities, too, whose needs are also great but with fundraising budgets that don’t run to mail shots. They look to local supporters and deserve our consideration.

Here are a few charities connected with Petersham or nearby that deserve to be supported with brief details of each charity’s formal interest. After each name is the Charity Commission Registered Number. You can look up greater detail of the charitable interest and a summary of recent income and expenditure of each charity (if they are above the minimum reporting level of £10,000) on the Charity Commission website www.charity-commission.gov.uk.

• Petersham United Charities (which includes Petersham Relief in Need Charity and Petersham Educational Charity) (200433)
  Supporting financially residents who are in need, hardship or distress.
  Promoting the education of young residents who are in need of financial assistance.
• Petersham Trust (1077284)
  The preservation of Petersham Meadows.
• The Petersham and Ham Sea Scouts (303819)
  Promoting the development of young people in achieving their full physical, intellectual, social and spiritual potentials.
• Ham and Petersham District Girl Guides (292536)
  The instruction of girls in the principles of discipline, loyalty and good citizenship.
• The Friends of St Peter’s Petersham (271555)
  Maintaining and promoting appreciation of St Peter’s Church.
• The Richmond Society (285805)
  Promoting high standards of planning and architecture and securing the preserva tion of features of beauty or historic interest in Richmond, Kew, Petersham and Ham.

In addition, there is SPEAR www.spearlondon.org which, despite its name operates mainly in Richmond. Their mission is “To enable homeless people to access accommodation, and those at risk of homelessness to maintain their accommodation.  To support all our service users to the point that they no longer need us.” Donations to SPEAR are treated as charitable for tax purposes.

Spare a thought for these charities and give a donation to help them in their good work! Best of all, write a standing order !