The BeatBullying Group has delayed appointing an administrator as trustees are in discussions with organisations interested in buying part of the charity’s operations.
The BeatBullying and MindFull mentoring services have been offline for more than a week, and the charity announced last Monday that it was in financial difficulty and would call in administrators. The charity filed a notice to appoint administrators with the High Court on 13 October.
The notice of intention to appoint administrators gives directors ten working days to appoint administrators and prevents creditors from taking legal action.
But on 24 October trustees said they had filed a second notice of intention to appoint administrators to give them more time, as they expect negotiations with potential buyers to conclude “over the next few days”.
In an updated statement on the charity’s website trustees said: “With the support of our legal and financial advisers, we are currently engaged in intensive discussion and negotiation with a number of third parties, so that we can find the best way forward for BBG, all those who rely upon the services, its staff team and, importantly, the creditors to whom we have commitments.”
“We do have some serious interest from other larger organisations who have expressed a desire to purchase part of BBG as a going concern,” it added.
"We particularly understand the frustration felt by people who have not been able to find out more about BBG's current circumstances. Our focus has been firmly on trying to find a solution to the problems we face, and we have been restricted in what we can and cannot say in public while we try and find a solution. It is our hope that we will be able to update you more frequently with progress in the very near future," the statement added.
BeatBullying met Social Action Fund targets
In January 2012 the Cabinet Office awarded BeatBullying a £1.3m grant from the Social Action Fund to scale up the charity’s projects and develop the Cosmo online counselling platform so that it could be sold to other organisations. It has since confirmed that it met all but one of these targets.
A government spokesman said: “BeatBullying provided regular monitoring reports to the Cabinet Office. Their final report showed that they over-delivered on the vast majority of their targets.”
BeatBullying’s accounts for the year ending 31 January 2012 showed it ended the year with a deficit of £302,000. It said this was partly due to an overspend on the project funded through the Social Action Fund.
We Are Cosmo, the community interest company set up using the funding to develop and sell the platform behind the charity’s mentoring sites, is almost a year late filing its first set of accounts.
