The Charity Tribunal has dismissed an appeal against the Charity Commission’s decisions in relation to an allotment charity.
Appeals against the Commission’s decision to make a scheme enabling the Hughenden Community Support Trust to take responsibility for land and against its decision to keep the charity on the register of charities were made in October 2015 by Pauline Densham.
A hearing relating to both appeals took place in June 2017 and the decision was published last week.
According to the decision, Densham had argued that the Hughenden Community Support Trust, previously known as the Allotments for the Labouring Poor, should not have been considered as a charity, were in fact the property of the parish council. She claimed this meant that the Commission should not have been able to make the scheme.
The Commission made the scheme in 2015 because “at some point in the past, using the land in question to provide allotment gardens had ceased to be a suitable and effective means of relieving poverty in Hughenden”, and there was “justification for making a scheme to change the objects of the charity by reason of a cy-près occasion, and to update the trustees’ powers of management”, according to the decision.
The Charity Tribunal has now concluded that charitable trusts had been established and that it is “satisfied that the Commission has power to make the scheme”.
It also backed the Commission’s refusal to remove the charity from the register and said “we conclude that the Commission was right to refuse to remove the charity from the register”.
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