The Charity Commission has written to Ealing Council along with all local authorities in England and Wales with a list of actions they need to take in order to comply with charity law when they act as trustees.
Following the letter which was sent on 9 August 2024, the Friends of Victoria Hall said it “reads like a blow-by-blow account of Ealing’s shortcomings over the Victoria Hall”.
Roger Green, chair of the Friends of the Victoria Hall (FoVH) said: “The letter from Charity Commission CEO David Holdsworth reads like a blow-by-blow account of Ealing’s shortcomings over the Victoria Hall.”
Mr Holdsworth said: “We recognise the administrative demands that being a trustee may place upon councils, which is why we have produced this guidance. I have written to all councils across England and Wales on what they can do to avoid costly mistakes, asking them to mark charitable assets on their register and for their employees and councillors to read our updated guidance.”
Mr Green said: “I have written to the Ealing Council chief executive to ask him what action he will be taking in response to the letter from Mr Holdsworth and in the light of new guidance for local authorities that the Commission published earlier this month.”
Issues highlighted in the letter include “not keeping separate accounts by the charity and unknowingly using charity land for its own Council purposes.” However even more telling is “disposing of charity land without managing conflicts of interest that can arise between its role as Trustee and statutory authority.”
The Charity Commission said in the last three years, its casework teams have dealt with 38 separate cases involving local authorities and charitable land.
Mr Green added: “Clearly Ealing Council is one of these Commission cases. Ealing residents attended a Charity Tribunal in May 2022. We objected to a ‘Scheme’ proposed by the Council and the Commission which would have destroyed part of the Victoria Hall and severely restricted community use of it.”
