THE Charity Commission has issued an official warning to the trustees of Christ Church, Oxford, after the college spent £6.6 million in its attempts to remove its former Dean, Dr Martyn Percy. The figure is three times the figure that has been reported publicly.
In a ruling published on Thursday, the Charity Commission’s reviewer says that the “failures and omissions” of the college’s trustees “amount to misconduct and/or mismanagement in the charity’s administration”.
Christ Church is set up as an educational charity. Its 65 trustees, which include all but one of the canons of Christ Church Cathedral, around which the college was built, form the college’s Governing Body. In January last year, the Charity Commission wrote to each trustee to warn them that it was investigating the expenditure of charitable funds on the dispute with the then Dean, which had dragged on since 2018 (News, 5 November 2018; 1 February 2021).
In the end, Dr Percy left in February this year after the college agreed to pay his legal fees, thought to have been about £1.5 million, as well as a seven-figure pay-off (News, 4 February) which was in addition to the £6.6 million.
The Charity Commission told Christ Church in July that it planned to issue an official warning, but gave the trustees an opportunity to make representations, which they did. These were considered by a reviewer, Chris Sladen, who is Head of Proactive Casework, Regulatory Services.
Several other representations to the Commission, including one from Dr Percy, argued that it would be unfair to include all the trustees in the warning, since many had been kept in the dark by the college’s executive officers. The Commission’s reviewer, however, points out that, in law, trustees of a charity are collectively responsible for its conduct, and writes: “The Reviewer’s assessment is that the governance of the Charity has at times been less than adequate . . . and the trustees collectively must bear responsibility for that.”
The Governing Body submitted an 800-page defence, arguing that the Charity Commission’s investigation was flawed, and that any official warning should be replaced by an agreed “Action Plan”.
The reviewer rejected the Governing Body’s arguments, and appears to have been influenced by the difficulty of obtaining information from the college, writing “that the defensive way in which the Charity responded to legitimate questions from the Commission as regulator indicates that ‘close oversight of costs’ in relation specifically to the dispute was not present”.
The Commission found that the college had listed its costs for the dispute in the 2018-21 published accounts as “other direct costs — teaching, research and residential”. This had “the potential to mislead the readers of the accounts”, the Charity Commission says.
The reviewer goes on to say that he has considered whether the lack of oversight they identify “amounts to either misconduct and/or mismanagement in the administration and management of the Charity sufficient to warrant the use of the proposed power [to issue an official warning].
“On balance, the Reviewer considers that, as a minimum, this lack of oversight amounts to mismanagement because substantial charitable funds have been spent in connection with the dispute and some of the Charity’s trustees were clearly unaware of the extent of the expenditure.
“The Reviewer considers that an argument could be made that this is also misconduct because it ought to have been obvious to the Charity and its trustees that given the high level of public interest in the ongoing dispute, not keeping readily accessible records would likely be regarded as not in accordance with the duty to manage the Charity’s resources responsibly.”
Elsewhere, the reviewer observes: “It is hard to avoid a view, having read the case files, that the trustees, or a proportion of them, were determined to remove the Dean from the Charity at almost any cost and this is exactly why the Commission has had such concern about the size of the costs incurred in the dispute with him and that this warranted consideration of an Official Warning.”
A spokesperson for Christ Church said on Thursday had “repeatedly asked the Charity Commission for help to resolve the disputes with Dr Percy, and explained the ways in which Dr Percy was unfit to be a trustee”. This is countered by the Charity Commission reviewer, who writes that no grounds were provided to disqualify the former Dean as a trustee.
The spokesperson defended the college’s expenditure by blaming Dr Percy, who “behaved in a way that maximised the costs and other damage to Christ Church. Many of the costs were incurred as a result of Dr Percy’s refusal to settle with a Governing Body which had lost trust and confidence in him.” During three years of mediation, Dr Percy had “always resisted a settlement”.
The official warning sets out the remedial actions that the Charity Commission considers should be taken by Christ Church, including greater transparency in its annual report and accounts.
The college has anticipated the main requirement, however, by setting up an independent governance review under Dominic Grieve, the former Attorney General (News, 24 June).
The college spokesperson said on Thursday that Mr Grieve had already made “substantial progress”, and the Governing Body was “looking forward to hearing his recommendations. In particular, Christ Church hopes to reform its procedures so as to enable any future disputes of this nature to be resolved fairly and cost-effectively.”
On Thursday, Dr Percy expressed his gratitude to the Charity Commission. “This is a devastating finding against a charity that was clearly out of control.” He describes it as “absurd” to suggest that the costs were properly incurred in a “relentless, wasteful and unsuccessful campaign” against him.