THE TALKING TRUST

Registered charity 307021 · accounts filings on the Charity Commission register · also known as ST MARY'S SCHOOL, ST MARY'S WRESTWOOD CHILDREN'S TRUST, ST MARYS COLLEGE

St Mary?s provides day and residential education, therapy and care for children and young adults from ages 7 to 25 with speech, language and communication difficulties and other complex needs. These needs may include disability and illness including learning difficulties, health issues, mental health issues and physical disabilities.

Causes: Education/training · The Advancement Of Health Or Saving Of Lives · Disability · website · Get email alerts

Financial health, per its FY2025 accounts

The accounts state that the charity reported a net surplus of £4,092,368 for the year ended 31 August 2025, resulting in total unrestricted reserves of £5,659,286. Per the trustees' report, these free reserves are significantly above the stated policy target of £2,684,000, which represents six months of unrestricted expenditure. The charity holds substantial cash reserves of £9,693,562 and has no pension scheme deficit at the year end.

Automated summary of the FY2025 accounts; the evidenced findings below carry the verbatim passages.

What the accounts disclose

Accounts audited by Cooper Parry Group Limited. Discloses 4 of 6 completeness components.

Leadership, per the charity’s website

• Natalie Edwards — Principal / CEO (source)
• Marion Booth — Consultant Director of Finance, Resources and Operational Strategy (source)

Listed on the charity’s own website when we last crawled it; roles may have changed. Pay-band disclosures above are anonymous statutory disclosures and are not attributed to any named individual.

Property (HM Land Registry)

1 registered title in England and Wales held by the charity’s company or corporate body (1 freehold). All charity-held property. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright, OGL v3.0.

Structured financials (annual return, FY ending 31/08/2025)

Reported reserves equal ~21.7 months of spending — in the top quarter for charities its size (median 4.8 months; benchmarks).

Per its annual return, largest income source: Charitable activities (93% of income) — components as reported reconcile to the return’s total income; not from the accounts narrative.

Per its annual return, cost of raising funds: 0.0% of total income — below the median for charities its size (5.2%) (benchmarks).

Trustees · trustee networks

• Jean Haighchair
• Jacqueline Gregory
• Matthew Smith
• Tracy Lynn Mander

Trustee list from the Charity Commission register (current, not historical).

Operates in: East Sussex

Income and spending

Common questions

Known funders

Grants to this charity found in funders’ own accounts filings.

Government & lottery funding

Grants to this charity published as open data by government and lottery funders (360Giving).

Funders of similar charities

Funders whose accounts show grants to charities similar to this one (and no recorded grant to this charity) — a starting list for fundraisers.

Charities like this

Semantically similar by activities and financial character, from our analysed corpus. Compare with ST CATHERINE'S - SPEECH AND LANGUAGE.

• ST CATHERINE'S - SPEECH AND LANGUAGE income £6.4m
• BISHOPS STORTFORD MENCAP income £1.2m
• ST MARY'S EDUCATIONAL AND CHARITABLE TRUST income £214k
• ST MARY'S PRE-SCHOOL PLAYGROUP income £178k
• ST MARY'S UNDER FIVES, MARLBOROUGH income £130k
• Let's Talk Well income £3.4m

Side by side with its peers

Each row is that charity’s latest analysed filing; every value is quote-backed on its own page.