An investigation was begun in 2019 to find out how the Parish Council managed to give the Allotment land on Church Road away and why the Charity Commission approved it. Many sources were called upon including minutes of the monthly council meetings of SPC and other councils covering many years, SDNPA correspondence and requests under the Freedom of Information Act. The startling results of the investigation formed the material evidence for an appeal against that approval to the 1st Tier Tribunal.
The basis for the appeal was a “round robin” email from the Commission dated the 15 June 2021 received by a number of residents who had sent complaints to the Charity Commission about the conduct of Steep Parish Council in respect of the Allotment land. Amongst other things, that email stated:
“Further submissions to the Commission on any matter dealt with in this statement (by anyone to whom it has been issued) will be evaluated but may not receive any further response or acknowledgement”.
One resident took the trouble to find out whether this was an “order” issued by the Charity Commission to which the answer given (after a number of phone calls) was that it was an “order”. Relying on that statement by the Charity Commission, two residents then appealed that order to the First Tier Tribunal. The Commission applied to strike out those two appeals on the basis that the statement from the email reply above was not an order. The Tribunal ruled in both cases that the above was not an order and accordingly the Tribunal did not have jurisdiction to deal with the substantive complaint of the conduct of the Charity Commission in connection with the Church Road allotments and Steep Parish Council’s part in the changing of the allotments into a development site for housing.
In the course of the appeal, the documents provided on the links below, which detail the behaviour of Steep Parish Council in this matter, were submitted to and read by the tribunal.
- Executive Summary
- Statement of Case
- Legal Submissions
- Labouring Poor before and after the 1919 Act and in practice
- Steep Parish Council Failures
- Steep Allotment Society presentation
- Inquiries of other Charities for the Labouring Poor (redacted)
- The Statutes
- Chronology of the effort to obtain documents and information relating to the allotments
Also:
Letter of Complaint to the Charity Commission dated 7 October 2020
Enclosures to the letter of complaint dated 7 October 2020
Letter to Parish Councillors 23 January 2022
Email to SDNPA CEO 29th November 2021
Letter to SDNPA 25 January 2022
Letter to SDNPA 27 February 2022
Letter to Steep Parish Councillors 4 March 2022
The Consequences of Steep parish Council intentionally running down the Allotments
(sent to SPC 4 March 2022)
Steep's Gate 