A DISABILITY charity has reported a loss of more than £4.2million in its most recent accounts.

The Enham Trust reported in the financial year up to March 31, 2017 it suffered “another challenging year”.

In its annual report, published by the Charity Commission, it announced a deficit of £4,212,000 compared to the previous year’s loss of over £1.5million.

Whilst the charity’s income was just over £12.4million, it was spending over £16.6million, with much of its outgoings on the running of its buildings and offices.

The Charity Commission said the accounts were only received in May this year, 105 days late.

For the deficit, the organisation blamed operational losses and breach of lender’s covenants - a condition on a loan - which forced it to pause the first phase of the Cedar Park development at Enham Alamein.

As previously reported in the Advertiser, the build of the £3 million 14 bed neurological rehabilitation unit was stopped in February 2017 due to a shortfall in funding.

And trust chairman Professor Khalid Aziz, in the annual report, admitted whilst “the board are satisfied it was the right decision to pause the development, a consequence has been that the trust has had to review the carrying value of the works undertaken to date.”

The delay has caused the charity a loss of £2.8million on the value of works, but chief executive Heath Gunn said that the development and other new projects “still sit within the long-term strategy of Enham”.

However, the charity stated it does not expect work to start again until it makes a surplus, admitting that from the outset it knew the Cedar Park development would cost more than the income generated from future beneficiaries.

In a bid to improve its finances, the charity has ended a number of loss-making contracts and has reduced its overheads.

As for staff, the trust carried out a restructuring since January 2017 in both its corporate and operational departments, with the number of people employed full-time dropping from 387 to 245.

Mr Gunn said this was in a “measured effort to right-size and ensure the financial viability of the trust”.

He added: “This has been through a combination of staff moving to new employers as we have exited nine loss-making contracts across a variety of delivery models; and some redundancies.

“We have consolidated the organisation around its founding principles of delivering housing, care and employment for disabled and disadvantaged people and will seek to grow our core services organically from a more stable platform, striving to do what we are good at and providing vital services for our beneficiaries.”

The trust has also worked on a budget and with changes made it is hoped it will be able to make an operating surplus and be covenant compliant by March 31, 2019.

“We have been undertaking significant amounts of work to ensure the trust corrects its financial position, and we are pleased to have made a substantial improvement that will be evident in our 2017/18 accounts,” Mr Gunn added.