The Charity Commission has drafted in an interim manager to run a religious charity that has been divided in recent years by a dispute between two factions.

Last year a statutory inquiry was launched by the regulator into the running of Dudley Central Mosque and Muslim Community Centre amid “an ongoing dispute between two groups representing the charity” and after it failed to file its accounts for four years in a row.

The regulator has this week confirmed that it has escalated its action, with Virginia Henley of HCR Hewitsons appointed as interim manager.

Her priorities are to review and revise the charity’s governing document and appoint new trustees to its board.

“The Commission’s inquiry remains ongoing,” said the regulator about the charity, which was set up to provide religious, education and recreation facilities to Dudley’s Muslim community.

According to the charities register the last available accounts for the charity date back to the year ending March 2017. During this year its income was £172,229 and its spending was £123,424. At the time it benefited from £6,680 from government funding, had 7 trustees and 28 volunteers.

When the Charity Commission launched its inquiry last year it said that reporting failures by the charity were “symptomatic of wider administration and governance issues that persist at the charity, despite previous engagement from the regulator”.

The charity has also been subject to three regulatory compliance cases since 2018, which focused on issues arising between disputes between the charity’s two factions.

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