A group of families is attempting to take over a charity-run residential care home, as the organisation faces a winding-up petition from HMRC.
Earlier this month, the Charity Commission said that it was aware of potential governance concerns at William Blake House and had opened a regulatory compliance case into the charity.
This came after the charity recorded a debt of £1.54m in unpaid taxes and payments to a firm linked to its chair, Bushra Hamid.
The residents’ families had called for an inquiry into the charity, saying the wellbeing of the 22 residents and public money were at risk and that they no longer trusted the charity’s trustees.
A representative from the family group has now told Civil Society that they are in the process of establishing a not-for-profit company to take over the service.
“William Blake House is a home for life and our loved ones deserve stability. Our proposed not-for-profit organisation is intended to secure exactly that,” they said in a statement.
“We want to stabilise the service and ensure that all public money is used solely for the benefit of residents. We want to protect staff employment and rebuild a transparent culture with a clear ethos.”
The families intend to appoint “a fully independent, appropriately qualified board and put robust oversight in place so this can never be repeated”, the representative said.
‘This should never have been allowed to happen’
According to its accounts, William Blake House and Hamid’s firm Van Kruger Consulting agreed on a 10-year project in 2017 to develop seminars and digital educational materials, which have not yet gone live.
Associated costs related to this project amounted to over £649,000 as of September 2024, the accounts show.
The family group’s representative said they were also concerned about the charity selling all four of its residential properties under sale-and-leaseback agreements in recent months.
They said the problems at the charity were not the making of staff, but that “decisions taken at board level have placed their jobs and their livelihoods at serious risk”.
“This should never have been allowed to happen,” the representative said.
The families are committed to working “openly and constructively with West Northamptonshire Council, placing local authorities and the Charity Commission to secure a sustainable and properly governed future for William Blake House”.
William Blake House told the Guardian it had passed the families’ proposal to its solicitors and would respond to their takeover bid this week.
Civil Society contacted William Blake House for comment.
