Like many other charities, the Vulcan Restoration Trust has been severely affected, and continues to be severely affected, by the COVID-19 pandemic.

To help us recover, we need to raise £20,000 in 2021 to help towards our increased running costs.

We are proud to maintain, display and operate Vulcan XL426 at London Southend Airport. We are a wholly voluntary organisation and nearly all our income comes from the visitors and supporters who attend our events.

Our 2020 programme was severely curtailed by COVID-19 lockdowns and the social distancing restrictions put in place outside the lockdown periods. Whilst we managed to run a few events, we lost most and our event income fell by over 65%.

We benefited from a modest Local Restrictions Support Grant, but were excluded from other local and national business support schemes set up to help organisations get through the crisis. This was due to the rateable value of our leased hangar being over threshold set by the schemes. Unfortunately, someone, somewhere assumed that just because you occupy a big property, you must be a big business! In our instance, that isn't the case.

Also, we could not benefit from the Heritage Emergency Fund set up by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). Sadly, the HLF decided to make the Fund available only to organisations it had funded in the past, so once again we were excluded from getting help.

To survive, we had to cut costs and dip into our modest reserves.

As we go into 2021, we are now faced with increased running costs, many of which are a legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the cost of the insurance we must have to run XL426s engines and maintain her as a live, ground running aircraft has more than doubled. It is now our single biggest annual cost. This is a result of the contraction of the aviation industry and comes on top of what was already a three-fold increase last year.

We have a full programme of events planned for 2021, but the numbers who can attend in the first part of the year will be restricted. So inevitably our income will once again be reduced.

We will continue to look for grant funding to help us, but success can never be guaranteed. We are, therefore, appealing to our members and supporters to help us raise £20,000 towards our running costs in 2021.