CTC Charity Application Rejected

A place to discuss the issues relating to the proposed change in the national CTC’s structure.
Regulator
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CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by Regulator »

Major egg on face time.

The Charity Commission has rejected the CTC's application for charitable status in England and Wales.

I am sure that CTC will resubmit - but this is majorly embarassing for the pro-charity camp, who were predicting that CTC would be a charity by September. It seems that the new Mem and Arts aren't up to scratch...

So be prepared for National Office and Council to waste yet more money chasing their tails.
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Mick F
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by Mick F »

Good.

I was vary much in the NO camp.

Hopefully the egg on the faces will stick enough so CTC will drop the subject.
Mick F. Cornwall
mark a.
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by mark a. »

I'm not fully up to speed on where we are with the new structure, but could this be the worst of all worlds? What if we've restructured to the new charity setup but can't be a charity?
thirdcrank
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by thirdcrank »

I don't know anything about the specific circumstances of this case.

In general, the Charity Commission has recently been trying to move charitable giving away from being a tax wheeze for our betters, nearer to what was originally intended ie: relief of the plight of the "deserving poor." For a long long time, our betters have followed the maxim, "Charity begins at home" so private education (in "public" schools) private health provision etc.m, have benefited. This is ingrained in our system and may be impossible to change. Earlier this year, a QC was fulminating in the letters page of the Daily T, reminding readers that in Dickens' days. the (no doubt ex-public schoolboy) Master of the Rolls of the day had announced that there would be no undermining of the charity concept.

So, within the last couple of weeks, the courts have ruled against the Charity Commission's attempt to oblige public schools to offer more than token free places to pupils who would not otherwise be able to attend. No doubt the Charities Commission will have a fair bit of success redirecting charitable giving from being a tax wheeze to its original purpose. I suspect, however, that that success will be in areas of our life not dominated by people who have benefited from it. Like the CTC.
Regulator
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by Regulator »

What with the:

- Failure of the (very expensive) website project;
- Failure to achieve membership targets over the years;
- Failure to implement agreed RtR development programme;
- Failure to provide support for local groups;
- Poor returns on businesses run by CTC national office;
- Continuing problems with membership system;

and now this fialure, perhaps it's about time Council realised that a change at the top at National Office is needed.
TonyR
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by TonyR »

Regulator wrote:What with the:
- Failure to achieve membership targets over the years;


I thought they had announced record membership levels earlier this year.
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Simon L6
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by Simon L6 »

the people responsible for this farce are the members. They decided to vote themselves out of existence for the chance of winning a Gore jacket, and now they're looking at a black hole. Greg, Jeff Tollerman and John Meudell, Mick F and the few hundred that voted against can hold their heads up with pride - but the rest are simply going to pick up the bill and suck on it.

I've got no complaint. I only wanted to be in a cycling club, and that I am.
thirdcrank
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by thirdcrank »

We should remember that a substantial part of the CTC is already a charity so the application is to bring the whole organisation under one umbrella. (Portrayed by some as merely a bit of tidying up.)

I'll put my hand up to having been an outspoken "no" but I'd not want things to go wrong (in this or anything else) just so I could have the childish satisfaction of saying "I told you so." The predicted drying up of the tantalising fountain of public ££££ has inevitably come to pass, but I don't think any of us thought that the promotion of cycling was anything other than a charitable purpose in the legal sense. Unless the Charities Commission is being picky over some minor detail, it seems to imply they are looking for more giving and less taking. That would also cast doubt on the eventual extent of Gift Aid when the taxman eventually gets his hands on the proposals.
TonyR
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by TonyR »

I can't find anything on the web about this so its difficult to know what has actually happened. It could quite simply be the application was wrongly completed or information the Charity Commissioners needed was absent. In which case it would be a simple adjust and resubmit. Or it could be a "come off it you're not a charity and have no chance" in which case its a mess. I find it hard to believe the latter especially since as someone pointed out, large chunks are already a charity. But until we know more its not possible to say whether the schadenfreude displayed here is premature or not.
thirdcrank
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by thirdcrank »

TonyR wrote:I can't find anything on the web about this so its difficult to know what has actually happened ...
Search the CTC website for "Charity" and the only relevant hit on the first page is a link to this thread. :roll:
swansonj
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by swansonj »

Still nothing about this on the CTC website that I can find. Am I being paranoid, or could this absence of communication be interpreted as yet more evidence of the contempt the CTC powers that be feel for the members?
Kevin Mayne
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by Kevin Mayne »

I am sure that for certain readers of this forum there is little I can say that will change your perspective.

However for those with a more open mind I would just comment that Greg got his report from the Council meeting that took place last Saturday. That’s a meeting any member can attend, but by and large they chose not to.

We discussed a lot of issues, especially the state of CTC at the end of a relatively successful year which as expected has been unaffected by charity matters: finances are on target, we are managing the transition out of high levels of government funding, member benefits and campaigning continue.

For about five minutes we discussed the fact that the Club’s application for charitable status has been approved by the Scottish regulators and the CTC is now registered as a charity in Scotland but in England and Wales we have been pressing for an early decision on our application so we could possibly start our new financial year on October 1st 2011 as a registered charity. The Charity Commission has undergone significant change recently with significantly reduced staff and the Council always knew that they had stopped giving pre-registration advice in the way they used to some years ago. Now it appears they are even more inclined to reject applications quickly rather than allow charities time to negotiate or amend applications, preferring to deal with problems through re-application or appeal.

The Charity Commission rejected our first application because they have some concerns that we will need to address before we can go ahead. We are going to take some additional advice about the best way forward from here, including how we handle the different approaches taken by the Scottish and English regulators.

It’s not a show stopper in anyone’s mind and its certainly not something I assumed we would be putting on the web site, most members have told us they are rather bored with the internal workings of CTC and just want us to get on with doing what we do well. Not worth rushing now, no doubt at the AGM 2013 someone will ask why we changed between company and charity halfway through one of our financial years but if we need to make some changes to smooth our way past the Commission we will do so in due course.

Sorry if the actual story is somewhat underwhelming,

Kevin Mayne
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by Malaconotus »

The actual story remains entirely unclear despite Mr. Mayne's five paragraphs of rather tangential exposition. What are the Charity Commission's "concerns that we will need to address?" The patronising tone, and the implicit accusation that anyone worried about this lacks an open mind, is also entirely uncalled for. I find it rather worrying that the Chief Executive sees nothing newsworthy in the rejection of the application for charitable status, which caused such concern to many members.
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robgul
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by robgul »

Malaconotus wrote:The actual story remains entirely unclear despite Mr. Mayne's five paragraphs of rather tangential exposition. What are the Charity Commission's "concerns that we will need to address?" The patronising tone, and the implicit accusation that anyone worried about this lacks an open mind, is also entirely uncalled for. I find it rather worrying that the Chief Executive sees nothing newsworthy in the rejection of the application for charitable status, which caused such concern to many members.


Indeed - just a bullet point list of the items the Charity Commission based its rejection on would seem to be worthy of publication for the CTC members to understand what's going on ... they are after all "stakeholders" - to lapse into quango-speak.

Rob
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thirdcrank
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Re: CTC Charity Application Rejected

Post by thirdcrank »

It took me a minute or two to realise why the expression "show stopper" attracted my attention (ie sent a bit of a shiver down my spine.) In the last decade, and I hesitate to call that period the noughties, the now defunct charity Age Concern ran a project to do the opposite of what the CTC is doing, in that it set up a commercial (ie non-charitable) arm called Heyday to compete with the likes of Saga. It didn't work out, and after Age Concern had lost a reported £22,000,000 (an awful lot of flagdays etc down the tubes) it merged with (or was rescued by, depending on POV) the charity Help the Aged to form AgeUK. The new leadership commissioned Sir Christopher Kelly to conduct a review of what had happened and he concluded that several show stoppers had been ignored.

It seems an unusual expression to me, but I presume it's normal lingo in that sector.
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