A funder that failed to submit accounts for four years, showed a "blatant disregard" for its responsibilities then ignored an official warning from the regulator, is to face a statutory inquiry looking at its conduct.
The Macbeth Memorial Trust was first contacted by the Charity Commission in 2020 after failing to submit financial accounts for the previous two years.
Despite further reminders set to the grant maker’s trustees the charity continued to fail to provide its accounting information.
This resulted in an official warning in May last year, which the Commission said the Trust has failed to comply with.
The charity’s operation with just two trustees since August 2020, which is a breach of the charity’s governing document, is another concerned raised by the regulator.
According to the Commission the charity intends to close and has been provided with advice from the regulator on how to carry this out.
“However, the Commission saw no evidence that any meaningful steps were taken to wind up the charity by the deadline given,” said the Commission.
The inquiry will look at the extent to which trustees are complying with their legal duties, their plans for the charity’s future and viability and whether the “failings and weaknesses identified” were due to misconduct of mismanagement.
We’ve opened an inquiry into The Macbeth Memorial Trust following regulatory concerns, including the charity’s repeated failure to submit its accounting information.
— Charity Commission (@ChtyCommission) January 10, 2023
The charity also failed to comply with an official warning.
Read more: https://t.co/Au6vxGqvfd pic.twitter.com/Em0qj7ih6q
Its financial accounts are currently overdue by 1,168 days, according to the Charity Register.
The grant-maker’s trustees had “shown a blatant disregard for their legal duties and responsibilities” according to the Commission’s assistant director of casework Tracy Howarth when the Trust was handed an official warning last year.
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