Comment
reply, Why is just the council on the charities?
Written
for the Blog by a Preston resident.
I really don’t know why there are just
councillors on the charities. The charities were set up for the benefit of the
residents of Preston, so I understand and I would therefore have thought it
logical for residents to be represented as Trustees.
There are councillors currently sitting on
the council that during 2010 and early 2011 asked the council that same
question, we received the usual reply from the Council Chairman. ‘It would be illegal for the council to
discuss the issue’ so were unable to comment at any time, this was obviously not the truth because the question was always
asked during ‘Public Participation’. During that particular section of any council
meeting there has to be a ‘suspension of standing orders’ that is to say, the
council during that period is not officially sitting until after public
participation when standing orders are re-instated and the council is once
again in session.
We are looking at this with the benefit of
hindsight because at the time we didn’t really understand all this council
jargon or what it meant. Of course we do know now and with that hindsight we
also know that we were mislead, because the council wasn’t in session during
that period the council could have discussed any matter during public
participation, that’s the purpose of it.
The council was consistently dishonest with us and refused to discuss
the charity or the community hall. The then Chairman gave an assurance that
during the charity AGM all questions would be answered, the council reneged on
that promise at the very start of the AGM they again refused to discuss the
community hall, at the community hall AGM, amazing!
The council have always quoted some
mysterious legal provision that prevented them from talking to residents but
have never been prepared to identify those provisions so we have never been
able to confirm them. A recent post dealt with this item, I requested the
council identify those provisions under a Freedom of Information request in
October 2010, to date they have never responded!
I believe under charity law residents are
able to play their part as trustees but are not allowed to outnumber managing
trustees, councillors. Therefore there is no reason for residents not to have
positions as trustees, it is simply that councillors prefer to keep all
activity away from residents and operate in secrecy, what other reason can
there be?
That secrecy is possibly because the
council now have ‘Special dispensation’, to allocate public funds to the
charity. Remember the Preston Community Hall Charity is a private organisation
set up and operated by councillors, they are quite happy to use our money to
set the charity up and again quite happy to use our money to keep it afloat and
operating so they don’t suffer any financial loss themselves, but we’re not
allowed to know anything about it. If that makes good sense to you that’s fine
but to me it’s complete hogwash and to this day councillors are still lying to
us!
Hope that answers your comment and thanks
for reading.
This is a complicated area, but I need to take issue about charity law. Charity trustees have a responsibility in law to put the interests of the charity first, which can cause a conflict of interests if the trustee also holds a public position, e.g. as a councillor. The Charity Commission advises trustees to avoid such conflicts of interest. The Community Hall charity does have resident trustees in responsible positions who are not parish councillors. I cannot speak for the current position, but there has in the past been confusion of roles when councillors are also charity trustees.
ReplyDelete