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A charity watchdog has taken control of a learning disability care home in Northamptonshire that is under investigation after residents’ families raised concerns over its management, including payments of £1m to a trustee.
The Charity Commission has appointed an interim manager to run William Blake House, which faces potential insolvency in three weeks’ time if it cannot head off a winding-up order brought by the tax authorities over £1.6m in unpaid tax bills.
The move, which freezes out the current board of trustees, is a victory for an activist group of families whose adult children are residents at the home. They campaigned for change after discovering the parlous state of the charity’s finances last autumn.
They began to get political traction in February after the Guardian revealed the scale of the financial concerns. Earlier this month the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, accused a William Blake House trustee of “embezzlement” at prime minister’s question time in the House of Commons.
William Blake House in Northamptonshire is one of only a handful of specialist residential homes in England for adults with profound and complex learning disabilities. The residents are mostly non-verbal and require round-the-clock support.
The appointment of an interim manager over the heads of the existing board happens when the commission considers the consequences of not acting would be a major risk of harm to the charity’s finances, assets, services, beneficiaries or reputation.
Davey has convened a meeting between the families and HMRC next week to discuss the possibility of delaying the winding-up order until plans to bring in a new organisation to run the home for its 22 residents can be brought to fruition.
“We’re very relieved an independent manager has been appointed by the Charity Commission,” the families said in a statement. “Now we have to move quickly to secure the future for our loved ones. The meeting with HMRC will be critical to that.”
The families have proposed setting up a non-profit company to manage William Blake House. They are determined to ensure the survival of what they see as their loved-ones’ “home for life” and maintain its therapeutic approach based on the philosophical and spiritual teachings of Rudolf Steiner.
A cross-party letter from nine MPs, organised by the local Conservative MP Sarah Bool, has urged the commission to consider the families’ proposals. “We believe that a transition supported by the families offers the most sustainable path forward and provides the long-term viability the residents deserve,” it said.
The families raised the alarm after learning last year they had been kept in the dark about multiple court appearances by the charity over unpaid taxes, sales of property and payments totalling £1m to a company solely owned by its chair, Bushra Hamid, in recent years.
Hamid told the Guardian the two current trustees – himself and Paula Allen – would remain on the board “during the transition process”. He said the commission’s intervention was “ an excellent decision to progress matters in the best interests of the organisation and mission”.
The charity had blamed its financial challenges on high agency staff costs and below-inflation contract fees. It relies on £3m a year in council and NHS funding.
