The Charity Commission has frozen the bank accounts of an animal charity Action Aid for Animals while it opens a statutory inquiry to examine the financial controls.

Action Aid for Animals has not submitted accounts since 2013 and the Commission says it has been engaging with the charity on its governance since 2012. The charity was issued with an action plan in November 2015, which included filing its overdue accounts.

Its objectives are to rehome abused animals in England, Croatia, Hungary and Romania. It has two trustees listed on the Commission’s website, Kendra Pinder and Katie Thomas, and the regulator said it is concerned that the charity might be inquorate. 

The Commission has frozen the charity’s bank accounts and has issued orders to restrict trustees from “entering into certain transactions relating to the charity’s operations overseas”.

Latest available accounts

Its accounts for the year ending July 2013 show an income of £191,000 and expenditure of £189,000.  

The accounts also included a statement relating to its previously late accounts. 

“We are a very open and honest charity, we prefer that our supporters and donors are award of any problems we have faced, or even mistakes we have made.

“In reference to our accounts continually being late for submittance, this basically boils down to us being a small charity having to do a large charity’s job… So in all honesty, though we know the importance of maintaining records and submitting our accounts for independent examination, because of lack of manpower and commitment much of the time it has been a choice between saving animals' lives or sitting down to gather paperwork.

“Possibly we were wrong to so but we focused on saving animals' lives.” 

It added that it was active online so that its supporters could see how money was being spent and said that an ex-volunteer had been responsible for clearing out a storage container and had spilled liquids over the receipts.

Charity criticises regulator’s announcement

Pinder told Civil Society News that the vagueness of the Commission’s announcement could damage the charity. 

She said: “Unfortunately it is a general statement” which “leaves much to open interpretation and in this day and age of gossip mongering and social media we have no doubt there will be many preferring to believe the worst rather than preferring all the facts”.

She said that the charity had no reserves and that trustees had been covering shortfall in the charity’s income. 

“For various projects we have not been able to raise the funds needed to cover them,” she said. “The trustees, including myself have put in our own money to cover the shortfall, for example 2014-2015 I myself covered many charity bills and projects, veterinary bills, charity projects such as the rescue of 40 dogs from an horrific kill station in Romania. This left me £42,000 out of pocket.”

She said she planned to file accounts for two years by the end of this week.

“On one hand we have let our supporters down through lack of organisation on the administration front for this we truly are sorry. 

“However what we have continued to do and will continue to do is ensure that the animals that need us will always take precedent and that all funds raised go towards helping the animals in need but will be taking into account any advice the Charity Commission will give us to enable a reserve fund to be built but also better administration procedures in place.”