Wales-based charity Joshua’s Wish, which offered trips abroad to disadvantaged children, has been wound up, with over 60 young people losing their money – according to BBC News Wales.
Beneficiaries raised £3,000 each for a trip to Australia planned for two weeks time, and the children will allegedly now lose both the holiday and their contributions.
BBC News Wales reports the organisation’s founder Sarah Cornelius-Price saying she was “unable to comment on the closure of Joshua’s Wish”.
The Joshua’s Wish website has been taken down, and none of the listed trustees could be reached for comment. The charity’s contact on the Charity Commission website is now Burton Sweet Corporate Recovery, which did not get back to civilsociety.co.uk at time of going to press.
And the BBC quotes the insolvency firm’s Graham Down as saying: “We are trying to establish the position [regarding the Australia trip] but it is unlikely that it will go ahead.”
Down also told the same source that Joshua’s Wish has ceased operating because of its liabilities, and that the level of these had yet to be established.
Charity’s £400,000 HMRC debt
In January, civilsociety.co.uk reported that Joshua’s Wish owed HMRC £400,000 in gift aid. The HMRC debt had been on the accounts since circa 2003/04.
Sarah Cornelius-Price revealed at the time that this was caused by the charity mistakenly claiming gift aid on its overseas activities.
The organisation’s last recorded accounts are for September 2011, when its income stood at £428,000, with £369,762 worth of tangible assets. It had spent £419,709.
HMRC said back in January that it didn’t expect Joshua's Wish to pay back the full sum immediately, and agreed that none would come back through fundraising or donations, so the charity’s work was left unaffected.
At the time the Charity Commission said that the situation was of no regulatory concern to it, and that it found that the trustees “were taking steps to address the concerns”.
But today the Commission confirmed that the trustees had informed it they would be winding the charity up and appointing insolvency practitioners.
“The insolvency practitioner must deal with the charity’s assets,” a Commission spokeswoman said. “If any assets remain after the payment of debts and liabilities they must be applied for the charitable purposes appropriately.
“Once the insolvency practitioners have completed the winding up of the charity, the Commission must be informed and the charity will then be removed from the register.”
Twitter reveals charity’s demise
The saga of Joshua’s Wish’s collapse has been documented on Twitter.
On 3 June @Joshuas_Wish tweeted: “Monday morning and some more caravan requests..... Fantastic”.
But on 11 June the account posted: “It is with sadness that we announce that with immediate effect the charity is closing. The BBC story earlier has impacted us heavily”.
Its last two tweets, on the same day, confirmed that insolvency practitioners have been called in and that the Joshua’s Wish office was closed. The charity thanked all its supporters over the last 15 years.
