Pulse.Assent

The charity watchdog has today published a report of its statutory inquiry into Deen Team – this sets out the regulatory action it has taken including that it has disqualified an individual from being a trustee for 4 years.

The Commission opened an inquiry into Deen Team in June 2016. The charity had previously been identified for a proactive visit, in 2014, as it was a newly registered charity operating in Syria, a high-risk area. Following that visit the Commission had a number of concerns about the charity regarding poor governance and financial controls and issued the trustees with regulatory advice and guidance. The Commission attempted to re-engage with the trustees in 2015, but following poor cooperation from the trustees it subsequently opened an inquiry to investigate these further.

Throughout the inquiry the Commission attempted to obtain evidence from the trustees to show how the charity’s funds had been applied. The trustees were unable to provide complete records and therefore failed to meet their legal duty to account for how they had used all the charity’s funds.

The inquiry also found that:

• the individual disqualified by the Commission had paid themselves £2,000 from the charity’s funds and was unable to provide records to support their claim that this was to cover charity fundraising and administration costs
• all decision-making was deferred to the disqualified individual; two other individuals who became trustees after the Commission initially engaged with the charity were unaware of their legal duties
• a former trustee of the charity continued to use a property that the charity rented at a nominal rate of £1 for their own purposes without the consent of the charity’s trustees. The charity’s existing trustees did not appreciate and acknowledge the asset’s value to the charity and failed to protect it from the conduct of the former trustee

Throughout the inquiry, the disqualified individual failed to comply and cooperate with the Commission or to respond to a number of legal directions and orders made by the Commission.

As a result of the misconduct and/or mismanagement identified in the inquiry, the Commission has used its power under section 181A of the Charities Act 2011 to disqualify the individual from being a charity trustee or holding a senior management position within a charity for four years. Further details can be found in the report.

The Commission has removed the charity from the register as based on information provided by the trustees and obtained during the inquiry it considers that the charity has ceased to operate.

Michelle Russell, Director of Investigations, Monitoring and Enforcement at the Charity Commission said:

Trustees are collectively responsible for how their charity is run and all trustees should be aware of their basic duties and take them seriously. Trustees can delegate certain responsibilities to staff members or individual trustees but they must always retain sufficient oversight and not allow one person to effectively take over control of the charity. Having multiple trustees is essential so that trustees can challenge each other and hold each other to account where necessary, ensuring that decisions are made only in the best interests of the charity.

Charity trustees must keep detailed accounting records to allow them to show exactly how they have used their charity’s money, and how what they have spent it on furthers the charity’s purposes. This is essential to charities being accountable and transparent to donors, the public and the regulator. In this case, the trustees of Deen Team were not able to do this and we have therefore exercised our regulatory powers.

The Commission’s full report of its inquiry into Deen Team is available on GOV.UK.

Ends

PR 82/17

Notes to editors

1. The Charity Commission is the independent regulator of charities in England and Wales. To find out more about our work, see the about us page on GOV.UK.
2. Search for charities on our check charity tool.
3. The new discretionary disqualification power in section 181A of the Charities Act 2011 brought in by the Charites Act 2016 allows the regulator to disqualify a person it considers unfit from being a trustee, for a maximum period of 15 years.

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has announced new measures to cut out unfair and abusive practices within the leasehold system, including a ban on leaseholds for almost all new build houses.

This comes as part of government action to deliver a fairer, more transparent system for homeowners to help fix the broken housing market and build a Britain fit for the future.

Changes will also be made so that ground rents on new long leases – for both houses and flats – are set to zero.

The government will also make it cheaper and easier for existing leaseholders to buy-out their freehold and there will be better information available about redress for those consumers who face the most onerous terms.

These measures follow a recent consultation where there was an overwhelming response in favour of government plans to tackle the unfair practices in the leasehold sector.

With 1.4 million leasehold houses across England and the number of leasehold sales rapidly growing, the government is taking crucial action to make the leasehold market fairer.

Leasehold generally applies to flats with shared spaces, making multiple ownership more straightforward, but developers have been increasingly selling houses on these terms – adding further costs to over-stretched house buyers.

Communities Secretary, Sajid Javid said:

It’s unacceptable for home buyers to be exploited through unnecessary leaseholds, unjustifiable charges and onerous ground rent terms.

It’s clear from the overwhelming response from the public that real action is needed to end these feudal practices. That’s why the measures this Government is now putting in place will help create a system that actually works for consumers.

Measures to be introduced include:

• legislating to prevent the sale of new build leasehold houses except where necessary such as shared ownership
• making certain that ground rents on new long leases – for both houses and flats – are set at zero
• working with the Law Commission to support existing leaseholders and make the process of purchasing a freehold or extending a lease much easier, faster and cheaper
• providing leaseholders with clear support on the various routes to redress available to them
• a wider internal review of the support and advice to leaseholders to make sure it is fit for purpose in this new legislative and regulatory environment
• making sure freeholders have equivalent rights to leaseholders to challenge unfair service charges

These latest measures follow the government setting out plans in the Housing White Paper to fix the broken housing market, including making sure councils release more land for housing, building the right homes in the right places and improving affordability and protections for renters and home purchasers.

Further information

These measures relate to England only.

Over 6,000 responses were submitted to the recent government consultation on leasehold practices. The vast majority of responses expressed their concerns about the buying experience and living in a leasehold property. This highlights how the current system is clearly not working in the best interest of those living in or purchasing a leasehold home.

The proposed prohibiting of future houses being sold as leasehold will apply to all houses apart from a few exceptional circumstances where leasehold is still needed – such as houses that have shared services or built on land with specific restrictions.

We will also be continuing to discuss the case for limited exemptions with industry.

Communities Secretary will be writing to all developers to strongly discourage the use of Help to Buy Equity loans for the purchase of leasehold houses in advance of legislation and to ask those who have customers with onerous ground rent terms to provide necessary redress.

Department for Communities and Local Government statistics estimate there were 4.2 million residential leasehold dwellings in England in the private sector in 2015 to 2016 and of these 1.4 million were leasehold houses. This was a rise on the previous year when in 2014 to 2015, there were 1.2 million leasehold houses.

The Prime Minister will travel to Warsaw today for an annual summit designed to strengthen the relationship between the UK and Poland as Britain prepares to leave the EU.

The UK-Poland bilateral summit will bring together both Prime Ministers along with a number of senior Cabinet ministers, including the Chancellor, Foreign Secretary, Defence Secretary, Home Secretary and Business Secretary.

As an integral part of the summit, the Prime Minister is expected to announce a new joint UK-Poland Treaty on Defence and Security Co-operation. The only other European Union country we have such a treaty with is France.

It will provide a framework for defence cooperation on areas such as training, exercises, information sharing, defence industry cooperation and capability development, building on the deployment of British troops to Poland under Enhanced Forward Presence following the last UK-Poland summit held in London in November 2016.

The Prime Minister is also set to agree improved UK-Poland cooperation to counter Russian disinformation in the region, including through new joint strategic communications projects. The UK will provide £5 million for the projects, with Poland expected to contribute a similar amount. The projects will aim to build both of our capacities to detect and counter Russian information operations, and deliver valuable support to Belsat, a Polish-funded TV channel providing unbiased, free and frank reporting for Belarussians.

And she will announce that we will enhance our cyber security cooperation with Poland, including by hosting a Polish cyber delegation at our National Cyber Security Centre in March next year to share the UK’s world-leading expertise and best practice in this area.

Speaking ahead of the summit, the Prime Minister said:

Poland matters greatly to the UK: our partnership is broad, vibrant and diverse and we both share a steadfast commitment to Europe’s security and defence.

I am determined that Brexit will not weaken our relationship with Poland. Rather, it will serve as a catalyst to strengthen it.

And that is why I am in Warsaw today, to ensure that we can work even more closely together to ensure the security and prosperity of our nations in the years ahead.

Although the UK is leaving the European Union, we are not leaving Europe. And I will reaffirm to Prime Minister Morawiecki that we want to work with Poland and the other member states in the future to protect our shared values, people and interests.

We are building a strategic partnership from a base of shared history and deep ties of friendship that will continue to flourish long after our departure from the EU.

The bilateral defence treaty we are signing today is a powerful symbol of our continued close cooperation.