A local council has admitted accepting over £15,000 worth of donations for a charity it failed to set up.

The town’s former mayor, Gerry Jerome, planned to set up a charity called Sutton Work Start to help young people get into employment, but failed to do so before leaving his post in 2012, Your Local Guardian reported.

But councillors went ahead and organised "fundraising events, dinner parties and published press releases”, in 2011 and 2012, to bring in donations and raise awareness of the charity, according to the newspaper.

A spokesman for Sutton Council told Civil Society News he could not confirm the funds were held in an account until they could be put to use elsewhere.

“When Cllr Jerome was Mayor he intended to set up a local charity to support youth employment in the borough,” the spokesman said. “Under the rules of the Mayoral office this charity would have had to be formally established and approved by the Charity Commission.

“However, as the charity was never fully realised, the £15,007.06 raised by the Mayor was held by the council in the Mayoral Account.

According to Your Local Guardian, the money sat in the council’s bank for four years untouched. It was donated to a sports and dance charity, the Change Foundation, earlier this year, and announced by subsequent former Sutton mayor, Cllr Muhammad Sadiq, as a fresh donation from a “former colleague and a friend”.

The spokesman for Sutton Council said the transfer of money was agreed by the two former mayors: “During the year of Cllr Sadiq's time in office as mayor it was agreed between him and the previous mayor that this money could be released to support the charities for Cllr Sadiq's year as Mayor," he said.

The Change Foundation was approached for comment but did not respond by the time of going to press.