Neet Feet owes Action for Children nearly £100,000

18 Nov 2016 News

The statement of affairs for now defunct street fundraising agency Neet Feet show that it owed Action for Children nearly £100,000 at the time it went into liquidation. 

According to Neet Feet’s statement of affairs, originally filed with Companies House on 24 August but publicly published recently, the fundraising agency owed Action for Children £99,059 at the time of its liquidation. 

The agency went into liquidation in late July, two weeks after it appeared in an article by the Sun. The article made a number of serious accusations of poor fundraising practice against certain members of the agency’s staff, including using aggressive tactics; deliberately targeting vulnerable people and drug-taking while at work. 

Martin Gavin, head of media at Action for Children, said he couldn’t comment on whether or not the charity was likely to receive the money it was owed, but insisted that the organisation believed the figure was the correct one. 

“We believe the £99,000 figure found in the statement of affairs to be the correct one, which takes into account the variables that have come up in the process”. 

He also said that the charity had been in contact with Alexander Lawson Jacobs, the insolvency firm handling the liquidation of Neet Feet. 

The statement of affairs also lists Samaritans, Scope and the National Deaf Children’s Society as being unsecured creditors of the now defunct agency. Neet Feet reportedly owed Scope £10,800, NDCS £5,000 and Samaritans £4,000 at the time of its closure. 

The document, produced by Yiannis Koumettou from Alexander Lawson Jacobs, estimates that the total available assets for preferential creditors will be just £10,000. This is likely to go to the agency’s former employees, who were owed over £20,000 in wage arrears and holiday pay at the time of its closure.

The document also showed that Neet Feet owed Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance Ltd £186,078 and HM Revenue & Customs a total of £94,381. 

There are a total of 89 creditors listed in the document, totalling over £500,000 in money owed. 

A spokesman for the now defunct agency has been contacted for a comment.  

 

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