Westway Development Trust: charity chair and staff insist "there's no story here"

Before publication of Brian Deer's investigation into what is now known as the Westway Development Trust - Notting Hell - in The Sunday Times Magazine of June 17 2001, this obscure property developer with charity status refused requests for basic information and to show its properties. After research was concluded and a number of allegations formally put to its chair, however, a flurry of complaints were dispatched. Those below will make no sense, however, until the material at Westway Development Trust is digested

(1) Judge Gerald Gordon, chair, to the writer, October 30 2000:

I have now had an opportunity (conspicuously absent before and during your interrogation) to consider your allegations that the Trust made unjust and dishonest claims for rate and Music and Dancing License rebates and that I, as Chair, should have stopped it. I now have the following observations:-

1. Having looked at at least some of the files, the picture about the amount of information that the Council had about Subterania is far from the simple one you were seeking to suggest from documents that you had.

2. The question of whether the Council was misled and whether or not rebates were allowable are, in the first instance, matters for the Council. I have therefore written to the Leader of the Council informing him of your allegations and inviting him to initiate an investigation with which the Trust will co-operate fully.

3. I do not accept you assertions that as Chair, I have to scrutinise everything that staff do personally: I am one Trustee among a number. Further, there is power in the Trust's constitution for the Trustees to delegate to sub-committees and there is a general power for Trustees to delegate tasks to staff (see for example Charity Commission News Issue 5 - Autumn 96). Of course, the Trustees must involve themselves in the work of the Trust and we do. That is why we meet regularly to carry out our duties as Trustees. Nevertheless in view of your assertions the Trustees will be seeking a meeting with the Charity Commission.

I understand that you have already been sent a copy of the agreement between the Trust and Subterania which, you will note, makes the Trust liable for the payment of rates.

Gerald Gordon - Chair

(2) Martin Owen, chair of property planning and management sub-committee, to the editor, The Sunday Times Magazine, November 2 2000:

I am writing in my personal capacity as a Trustee of the North Kensington Amenity Trust having been present at a meeting on the 18th October 2000 between Brian Deer and Judge Gerald Gordon who chairs the Trust.

One of the matters raised concerned a former commercial tenant of the Trust, Lyn Hardy-Smith. A number of allegations were made by Mr Deer, almost all of them concerning matters 10 or more years ago about which Gerald Gordon, who was not then connected to the Trust, had no personal knowledge. In those circumstances, and not having the voluminous files to hand, he sensibly declined to answer questions about that period.

Since Mr Deer was completely uninterested in obtaining information from anyone else present (there were three of us - all chairs of sub-committees) and since I was a Trustee at the relevant time, I am anxious that you at least should have the basic facts, particularly since Mr Hardy-Smith's allegations that the Trust should not be using its own charitable funds to support its Director in his action against Mr Hardy-Smith for libel have already been considered by the Charity Commission to whom he complained. That regulatory body, having considered the matter, indicated in May 1992 that no further action would be taken by them. It would, as I'm sure you will agree, be quite wrong for a false picture to be given particularly one concerning identifiable people.

I will outline in précis form what has been and continues to be, an extremely complicated and lengthy matter.

Mr Hardy-Smith was a commercial tenant who traded from land belonging to this Trust. Following a court case brought by the Trust suing Mr Hardy-Smith for licence fees that we maintained were owed, the Trustees believed that its Director, Roger Matland, had been libelled by Mr Hardy-Smith in that he had accused Mr Matland of the most serious misconduct in pursuit of that case on behalf of the Trust. The Trustees decided it was right and proper to support Mr Matland in his action against Mr Hardy-Smith for libel an action which was settled shortly before the case came to court with an agreement that Mr Hardy-Smith would apologise, agree not to repeat the allegations, and pay an agreed figure towards the costs incurred by the Trust. This outcome was again reported to the Charity Commission.

It is because these costs have still not been paid that the Trustees now feel morally and legally bound to recover them.

You will see that the relationship between Mr Hardy-Smith and the Trust has never been one relating to the Trust's charitable activities. He owes the Trust money and, we are legally advised, the Trustees have a duty to protect the assets of the Trust by seeking to obtain it, if he has assets. At present, the issue relates to ownership of a freehold property. If it transpires, as we are advised, that he has sought to divest himself of it to avoid paying costs, the Trustees will then have to decide what to do. One of the matters they will have to consider, and may need advice from the Charity Commission about, is whether if they were to waive payment of money properly due to the Trust they might thereby make themselves personally liable.

In the view of the possibility of Mr Deer mentioning this matter in his proposed article I hope I have no helped to put the matter straight.

It is a great pity that your reporter is wholly focused on negative issues put to him by critics of the Trust and seem uninterested in the enormous achievements made by the Trust since 1971 when the 23 acres of land was just rubble. I would actually welcome an opportunity to show you round the Trust if you were minded to see it all for yourself.

Martin Owen - Trustee and Chair of Propert Planning and Management Sub-Committee

(3) Roger Matland, director, to the editor, The Sunday Times Magazine, November 20 2000:

I am writing to you because the Trust has found Mr Deer's approach to us to be rude, wholly accusatory and highly partial. He appears to have no interest in looking at a balanced picture and his methods appear inconsistent with the Code of Practice of the Press Complaints Commission. We are not perfect but all we have had from Mr Deer are a series of highly selective attacks which do not reflect an accurate or balanced picture of the Trust.

From my Trustees and my own discussions with Mr Deer it appears that he has, to date, been solely affected by information given to him by a few selected people who regard themselves as stern critics of the Trust with historical axes to grind. It is a small group in comparison to the large number of individuals and groups with whom we work. Every positive thing I or Jonnie Beverley, the Deputy Director of the Trust, invited him to consider about the Trust, on 20th October was declared irrelevant or unimportant.

On 28th September I sent Mr Deer a list of twelve local groups with whom we are currently working. I asked him on 20th October how many he had approached. He said he was not prepared to tell me. As of today I can tell you that he has approached none of them. All of these groups are doing important work in North Kensington and it seems to me outrageous that Mr Deer studiously avoids contact with them - in order, presumably, to bolster his conclusion that Trust assets have not been used for community benefit.

I would like you to know that whatever Mr Deer has been told this can be countered, on a ratio of at least 100-1, by people and groups who have positively benefited from the Trust.

Several of us have voiced our concerns to Mr Deer and yourself but since your reply to Martin Owen dated 2nd November we have experienced further gratuitous hostility. Mr Deer left a message on the private ansaphone of the Chair of the Trust that if a conversation could not take place then the matter of the alleged fraud would have to be reported to the police. Of course, this would be a matter which any responsible citizen would report to the police - if true. The accusation was directed at me in my role as director and I had already informed Mr Deer that his allegation was not true. I myself have dealt with the accusation of fraud by writing to the local authority and it is for them to decide the matter. However I can tell you that there was no fraud. Mr Deer has also harassed Martin Owen over the telephone at his home about his personal business interests - what this has to do about complaints about the Trust I fail to see. He has accused the Trust's legal advisors of negligence and unprofessional conduct. He seems to enjoy accusing rather than asking for information.

I would also like to register my objections to other methods adopted by Mr Deer. You will recall my telephoning you on Monday 25th September to ask what was the context of Mr Deer telephoning me for an interview the previous Friday. He had strenuously maintained that he did not know the context about an article on the Trust several times during our conversation. He was not telling the truth. You were quite open with me and stated that it was because complaints had been received about the Trust. You will recall my somewhat sharp reaction for you to tell your reporter to come in the front door and not a side door of the Trust if that was the case. I was perfectly happy to deal with any complaints. When we met for about four hours on Friday 20 October Mr Deer had a recording machine which he kept hidden in his jacket pocket but revealed it when the tape needed changing about an hour later. It is also clear to me that Mr Deer is in part relying on documents which have been stolen from our offices.

Mr Deer's approach has neither invited nor encouraged an open discussion of broad issues about which he says he has views. He stated that few, if any, charities in general and the Trust in particular should be allowed to exist. That which is of commercial interest should be sold to the private sector and the rest handed over to the local authorities. While we profoundly disagree with that view we can see that it could form the basis of an interesting debate.

The Trust is an early example of a charity which has combined commercial activities within its affairs - primarily to provide a long term income stream a) to provide stability b) to direct financial surplus into the local community for local benefit c) so as to be free of government funding fashions which come and go d) to take the long view and e) to support that which is not susceptible to current local or national government thinking. The generic term given to such organisations is "development trusts" and we combine under a national umbrella called the Development Trusts Association. Taken together such trusts have accumulated many millions of pounds worth of assets which belong neither to the public nor private sectors (the two dominant players in regeneration), but to local communities.

Locally perceived needs and locally fashioned answers is what we are about and will be for the next 100 years or so. There are no quick fixes to rural and urban regeneration and I do not even try to assert that the Trust has all the answers but, like many other development trusts, we have, warts and all, done much to find, grow and support local capacity - sometimes with support from the private and public sectors but also without it.

A real contemporary and lively debate could be around the issue of whether charities should largely be driven by the wishes of funders or should some of them create an asset base so as to have the freedom to enter into partnerships and alliances to pursue local issues over the long term and which may have little to do with national or local political agendas. The classic and historic role of charities is to pioneer and innovate and contribute to the development of new national and local policies.

The main purpose of this letter is to offer you a far more interesting proposition which could create a national debate. But, also to point out that there is no balanced story worthy of the Sunday Times in that which has been fed to Mr Deer by a small number of hostile critics who stay in the shadows and who in no way represent the diversity of communities we actually serve.

Finally, I enclose a copy of a letter I wrote to Mr Deer on 26 October and a letter from my Chair to Mr Deer dated 30th October in case you haven't seen them.

Roger Matland