Charities Commission Appoints Interim Manager
Gordon Reid will oversee management of Putney & Wimbledon Commons alongside the existing trustees
Putney Common - Andrew Wilson
@andrewpics
The commission has today confirmed that it has appointed lawyer Gordon Reid, a partner at the firm of solicitors Barlow Robbins to oversee the management of the Wimbledon and Putney Commons alongside the existing trustees. A spokesperson for the commssion told PutneySW15.com: “We can confirm that we have appointed Gordon Reid of Barlow Robbins Solicitors to act as Interim Manager alongside the trustees of the Wimbledon and Putney Commons Conservators. The IM has been appointed to fulfil specific functions, including to consider the trustees’ decision not to take action to recover a loss suffered by the charity when it granted an easement for access rights over charity lands at a significant undervalue. The IM will assess whether the trustees’ decision was taken properly and was in the best interests of the charity. In the meantime, the trustees remain responsible for the running of the charity”.
The Charities Commission opened a statutory inquiry into the charity in August 2016 because it was concerned that the organisation might have lost out on £1.5m after trustees failed to follow charity law when selling access rights to land that it owned for the development of the old Putney Hospital to a new primary school which opened October 2016.
A spokesperson for local pressure group Friends of Putney Common told this website: "Friends of Putney Common (FofPC) welcomes the appointment of an interim manager at WPCC. The Conservators have kept the second valuation they received back in November 2016 secret, and failed to justify their brief statement in February that they had "completed" the Commission's plan. It is now plain that the loss incurred by granting an easement at Putney Hospital is at least £1,000,000 and probably a great deal more.
The mismanagement and maladministration at the charity funded by a levy on local Council Tax payers needs to be brought to an end. FofPC believes that the problems at WPCC go much deeper than the narrow focus on the appalling state of affairs at Putney Hospital indicates, and calls on the Commission to investigate. Meanwhile it is imperative that John Cameron, a locally elected Conservator who has been excluded from all board meetings since November 2016 and frozen out of seeing all documents, be immediately reinstated. Chairman Prue Whyte and Simon Lee the Chief Executive should resign now for having led the charity into this parlous situation."
We have contacted Wimbledon & Putney Common Charity and await a response.