Report on the progress of CTC charity application 2012 Jan 6.doc

[PhilipBenstead1]

Report on the progress of CTC charity application 2012 Jan 6.doc

Cyclists’ Touring Club

CTC Council progress to convert the CTC into a charity.

Dear CTC Members

You may remember at CTC AGM 2011 A motion was passed that stated “This AGM authorises Council to take the steps necessary to register the Club as a charity with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, the Office of the Scottish Charity User and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland and to merge the Club with CTC Charitable Trust to become a single, charitable organisation.”

Please find below the text of an email that rejected the application for CTC charitable status in England and Wales it was received by CTC Headquarters on 18th October 2011.

The original letter can be found at

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7xjRGQnf47zNjliZjllZWQtOTYzYi00OTBmLWEwNzItOTVmYzUwYWZlOGNk


Please place this link in your browsers; you do not need a Google mail account to view.

At bottom of this email are additional links below that give you access to suggest on what you can do and other documentation if need.

The rejection letter etc has not been seem by most Director/Trustees of the CTC, why is this?

WHAT CAN YOU DO? Look at the end of the letter for suggestions.

This letter etc has been sent to CTC local group offices in UK and uploaded to CTC Forum, YACF, and Cycle Chat and Google UK rec. discussion forum under the title CTC Council progress to convert the CTC into a charity.

Apologies if this is an unwanted email or you have received duplicates, it is important, but if you do not wish to receive any additional email on this subject reply with unsubscribe in the subject line.

I would be grateful for an acknowledgement of safe receipt.

Philip Benstead

START OF REJECTION LETTER

CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES

Title 0/5020287/331958 Application for registration: The Cyclists' Touring Club CC: 00361617
Subject Cyclist's Touring Club FAO: Caroline Jones - W/5020287/331958 Application for registration: The Cyclists' Touring Club CC: 0036151

Dear’

Further to my email of 06 October, we have completed our review of the application and supporting information.

I have explained in correspondence with ?????? that in order to be established as a charity an organisation must have objects which are exclusively charitable and for the public benefit. If any part of the objects of an organisation are not charitable or if it is established in part for private benefit then it is not established as a charity.

In this case, the meaning of the objects is not entirely clear and in determining their meaning, it may be appropriate to consider the activities undertaken by the organisation. Our guidance in 'Charities and Public Benefit' sets out our approach in such cases from section D4.

Objects

The objects of the company set out an initial object 'to promote cycling, cycle touring and fellowship among cyclists for the public benefit' but describe those objects as a means to further other charitable purposes.

The first further object is then stated as: the advancement of amateur sports which involve physical or mental skills or exertion by:

Promoting, assisting and protecting the use of bicycles, tricycles and other similar vehicles on the public roads and public rights of way;
and
Promoting and safeguarding the interests of riders of bicycles, tricycles and other similar vehicles;
and
Encouraging cycling and cycle touring as a means of adventure, recreation, character training and other forms of education, to stimulate by any possible means interest and participation in the interest and participation of young persons in cycling, and to promote cycling competitions, rallies, rides and other events.

It is difficult to understand precisely from the drafting of the objects which elements or subsections of the objects may be considered as objects of themselves and which elements a means to achieve objects.

It is also the case that not every means of advancing amateur sport will be for the public benefit. For example promoting the individual rights and interests of cyclists may be directed to the private benefit of cyclists.
Given the structure of the clause neither is it beyond doubt that the first stated object of promoting cycling, cycle touring and fellowship among cyclists for the public benefit is simply a means.

The second sub object is stated as:

The promotion of the conservation and protection of the environment by any charitable means including but not limited to

Promoting and increasing appreciation of the countryside and places of public interest,
and
Establishing and protecting access thereto by cycle and on foot, and Preserving and improving amenities,
and
Taking appropriate action to advance this charitable aim in Parliament and in and before Government departments, local and other public authorities, bodies and officers, landowners, developers and others

The first and fourth of the means are political activities, which extend to securing or opposing any change in the law or in the policy or decisions of central government or local authorities. The extent to which such means are directed towards conservation or the protection of the environment or other activities which the company will undertake in that respect is not apparent. The political activity would appear to be an object of its own right rather than subsidiary and in support of other activities undertaken in furtherance of a charitable purpose. A charity may not have a political purpose.

Our guidance in CC9 'Speaking Out' sets out the principles on this point in summary at section B.

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/publications/cc9.aspx

Clause 1.8.3 is for the advancement of education ..and the promotion of any plans, measures schemes or proposals to that end.. The promotion of particular opinions, views or proposals is not education in the sense accepted by charity law.

Our guidance in 'The Advancement of Education for the Public Benefit' sets this out from section C5.
http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/Library/guidance/resedu1208.pdf

Clause 1.8.4 is for the preservation and protection of health ... by any means. The reference to 'any means' would extend beyond that which would confine the object of public benefit. It would allow either unlawful, private or political objects. Indeed the enforcement of rights as referenced in the wording may be capable of being either of private benefit or political.

Clause 1.8.5 is for the promotion of cycling ... Catering for the needs of cyclists would appear to extend beyond what is charitable, for example for provision of facilities in the interests of social welfare, and is directed towards private benefit of cyclists. The further provision of benefits appears to be of a private nature.

Activities

I have outlined the ambiguous nature of the objects. The company has existed as an organisation to benefit and promote the interests of its members. The website refers at 'Converting CTC to a Charity' to 'supporting membership and campaigning' as its charitable activities.

There appears to be a misunderstanding of as to the nature of charitable purposes and public benefit. An organisation established to provide benefits for its members is not a charity being directed towards private benefit. The 2006 Act has not changed the nature of public in public benefit (as suggested on the company's website). Similarly, the campaigning appears in part to be directed towards political purposes which cannot be a charitable purpose.

The Club has established a charitable organisation to undertake such of its work as is directed towards charitable purposes.

However the Club itself is not established for exclusively charitable purposes for the public benefit. It is a members' organisation established to promote the interests of its members and provide them with benefit. It is not therefore established for exclusively charitable purposes or the public benefit.

Summary

I am sorry to tell you that, for the reasons given above, we feel bound to reject the application for registration. Our decision has taken account of all information, evidence and argument received.

If you think our decision is wrong, you can ask us to review it by writing to the Final Decision and Tribunal Coordinator at
enquiries@charitvcommission.asi.nov.uk,

or by using our online application form at

www.charitvcommission.gov.uk/reviewprocform.aspx

Alternatively, you may appeal against our decision to the First-Tier Tribunal (Charity).

Further details about our decision review procedure and the First-Tier Tribunal (Charity) can be found on our website at
www.charitv-commission.gov.uklAbout_us/Complaining/Complaining_about_our_decision index.aspx

Yours sincerely
Caroline Jones
Registration Division
Tel: 01 823 345458
Fax: 01823 345003
www.charitvcommission.aov.uk


END OF REJECTION LETTER

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7xjRGQnf47zZWJhYjA3MGQtMzA2Yy00MTFlLTk4NTctOWY5Y2M5MTJhNDcz

END

Thank you for your help in this matter.

Philip Benstead

CTC Member

Telephone: 020-7630-0475
Mobile: 0794-980-1698
Email: philipbenstead1@gmail.com

Address:Victoria,
London, SW1P 1PG

 

[Theseus]

Your links to the letter and what can be done are not available to me.

 

[PhilipBenstead1]

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7xjRGQnf47zNjliZjllZWQtOTYzYi00OTBmLWEwNzItOTVmYzUwYWZlOGNk


Please place this link in your browsers; you do not need a Google mail account to view.

 

[Riding in Circles]

Was this actually a surprise?

 

[Theseus]

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7xjRGQnf47zNjliZjllZWQtOTYzYi00OTBmLWEwNzItOTVmYzUwYWZlOGNk


Please place this link in your browsers; you do not need a Google mail account to view.

Nope, still no luck.

 

[benb]

Try this, it works for me:
Link

 

[dellzeqq]

works for me too............

Catrike - almost by definition it was a surprise to those who drafted the changes to the Memorandum of Association, and those who voted for the changes.

I'm not so clever with this kind of stuff, but it seems to me that the Charity Commission is saying that if the application is to succeed the member groups will not have a claim upon funds except in so far that they are undertaking charitable purposes. I wonder if the recent changes in the funding of member groups, which has moved from a per-member arrangement to a simple disbursement is in some way connected with the response of the Charity Commission.

The larger question of benefits for members seems to me to be unclear. Any number of charities sell benefits to their members, send them magazines and offer them deals on this that and the other - the RHS and the National Trust being the first that come to mind.

In a general way, though, I do feel that the savethectc campaign has been vindicated (albeit way too late). We did warn that the Charities Commission would circumscribe the CTC's campaigning, impose conditions on the status of member groups (or DAs as some of us still think of them) and we were puzzled by how precisely the benefits to members would be distinguished from charitable purposes and how the ratio between the one and the other might affect the charity status.

I can imagine that there's some headscratching in Council, not least since there will be a change of Chief Exec. If Council wishes to proceed with the application then they will have to propose a motion to the AGM, and that will require a 75% majority.

Speaking personally I feel a little distant from all of this - I've got precisely what I want in the form of The Fridays (which is an affiliate) and actually receive a very good service from National Office, but I wonder if the traditional member group, riding out on Sunday is going to be an integral part of the CTC in a couple of years time.

There are people far more up on this than me, but it's clear that the funding of the CTC is in flux, and large contracts have come, or are coming to an end. There have been redundancies. That makes things even more complicated for Councillors (and the majority of them don't like thinking complicated things through) and I think that the concealment of this letter, now released by Philip, is a symptom of their insecurity.

There is a big fat plus to this. The CTC strategy for 2007-2012, drawn up by Alan Luxton, is up for renewal. That strategy started by stating the case for two organisations. It was only in 2008/9 that Councillors suggested converting the entire thing in to one charitable organisation - where this came from I've no idea. Come April the CTC will have a new Chief Exec, and an opportunity to think again. They could do worse than to go back to the document adopted in 2007 and apply themselves to auditing expenditure in the hope of making membership of the Club more worthwhile and more sustainable. The alternative is further expense on lawyers, further bad feeling at yet another AGM, further delay in extending accountability, and further uncertainty for the member groups. Some people are convinced that Councillors will press on with this charity business out of sheer bloody-mindedness, but I reckon that there's just a chance that they'll smell the coffee and wake up.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Is it not more likely they smell the Gift Aid and will press on as a result?

 

[dellzeqq]

Is it not more likely they smell the Gift Aid and will press on as a result?

ha! The Mythical Gift Aid at the End of the Rainbow!

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cOlwnJ24AE

 

[srw]

The CEO appointment process is not exactly designed to inspire confidence in the candidate that emerges at the end...

 

[dellzeqq]

The CEO appointment process is not exactly designed to inspire confidence in the candidate that emerges at the end...

it's not, but I am completely hopeful that a good candidate will emerge. it's then down to Councillors on the appointments panel to do some thinking. And I'm hopeful that they will............

 

[GrumpyGregry]

ha! The Mythical Gift Aid at the End of the Rainbow!

Starring the lovely Susie as Marge Gunderson and all the councillors as Jerry, Gaere, etc.?

 

[Riding in Circles]

It is a member group there for the benefit of its membership, that puts it outside the scope of a charity, that is basis on which it has been turned down, the vagary of the description of its aims just adds to the reason for turning them down. For it to become a charity it would need to become far less exclusive which would see many of the current benefits being done away with, I am surprised that this was not considered but not surprised at the same time having watched how this all unfolded.

 

[dellzeqq]

Starring the lovely Susie as Marge Gunderson and all the councillors as Jerry, Gaere, etc.?

you may say that.........

in fairness the benefits were discussed at great length, and, put simply, Councillors (relying, in part, on legal advice) came to the wrong conclusion. I'm doing nothing more than stating the obvious by saying that Greg, John, Colin, Peter Brake and I came to the right conclusion. Since some of those Councillors sank to some really low depths by spicing their response to our arguments by indulging in a bit of character association I await their personal apologies. Cometh the hour, cometh the representatives from the northeast and Yorkshire..........(or not)

 

[dellzeqq]

AS POSTED ON THE CTC FORUM http://forum.ctc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=59042&start=15

If we’re being entirely fair, then the CTC can say that the ground laid out by the Charities Commission shifted beneath their feet, and that they, the CTC, lacked the political muscle to pull off the coup de force that let the independent schools off the public benefit hook. Having said that.....there is the most delicious irony here. Most of the Councillors work in a sector that takes decisions in an opaque fashion and never feels the need to explain itself in an adult manner. Most of the Councillors buy in to a system of governance in which formal meetings are rushed through (David Robinson used to boast about quarterly Council meetings finishing early) and decisions being made by concentric circles of Councillors orbiting around the Management Committee. That they’ve been turned over by a similarly opaque decision-making process, and that the decision is so poorly worded that it leaves more questions than answers would be sweet justice if members’ funds hadn’t been so foolishly wasted.

The truly startling thing is that the Charities Commission formally refused the application – had the application been properly managed a line of communication to the incoherent Ms. Jones would have been opened up, and all surprise eliminated. At the very least, the application could have been withdrawn prior to the decision going against the CTC, and the matter re-presented to the AGM without the embarrassment that has caused Ms. Jones’ letter to be concealed and the Councillors having had to enter in to a kind of collective purdah.

A further, even more delicious irony is that, just as Greg, John, Colin and I saw this coming (and were derided for our insight) I’m absolutely sure that fifteen years of running smash and grab planning applications would have equipped me to gain a better result than the one the CTC has now. I’ve never, ever got myself in this kind of position because I take the sort of bureaucrat that writes this kind of letter for what they are – unresponsive, unimaginative and too frightened to talk freely without some pretty horrific glozing going on. The wonder (actually it’s not so much of a wonder) is that those Councillors who spend their working days shuffling round the musty corridors of something that purports to be power didn’t recognise their own kind and make the political moves required.

They have a choice. They can, as Karen suggests they might, turn the member groups in to affiliates. I know Karen disagrees with me, but I think that would be a good thing for the member groups. The Fridays gets a first class service from National Office (once I’ve tracked down the people I need to speak to) and the Arvato offices in Twickenham do a great job (I’m skipping lightly over the ‘fulfillment’ section) – I’ve put in 31 membership applications for over 300 members in less than a year and such problems that have arisen have been sorted out with great good humour. The Fridays members get a decent (fifteen quid) deal, I don’t have to fill in those nonsense annual returns, and the club can charge a modest (two quid) fee to both 'affiliate' and 'full' CTC members, BC members and LCC members alike to help with the costs. The CTC could then address the concerns in Ms. Brown’s letter and say goodbye to anything approaching politics, and, to be honest, that would be no big loss – the campaigning side of the CTC is moribund anyway. The CTC would, shorn of the awkward squad in the member groups, become, fully, a ‘lifestyle’ purchase, rather like the National Trust or Sustrans. Members would pay handsomely for the joy of belonging in an abstract sense and get all kinds of e-mails, a spiffy mag and a deal on third party insurance, while the CTC could become an affinity group undertaking good works and channelling offers of varying merit from Evans, Wiggle and such like to their captive audience.

On the other hand they could re-read the CTC’s own strategy for 2007-2012, written by Alan Luxton and others, because it still stands up. Alan started the document by setting out the twin Club and Charity approach that was then, less than two years later, undermined by Jim Brown, Peter Mathison, David Robinson and others who, for reasons that they themselves could never express in concrete terms, decided that the ‘one big organisation’ was a better idea. The old maxim ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ never had a better application.

Those are the alternatives, and one would expect Council to be in deep, meaningful, open, and even, heavens above, inclusive discussion given that the time for the preparation of a resolution to the AGM is running out. Fond hope. The concealment of the Ms. Jones’ letter, with Councillors telling people that they hadn’t seen it themselves is, sad to say, indicative of what passes for business as usual. Wagons are still being drawn up in concentric circles. Omerta rules. I doubt that even the derision within this contribution will prise a word out of them.

Still and all, there is a chance that the search for a new Chief Exec will open minds. The need to capture somebody who isn’t a self-serving opportunist (I name no names) might just prompt a bit of collective self-analysis, and might just, in turn, cause the brighter and newer Councillors to ask why some of the CTC’s directors are marginalised while others are suborned, and, (let’s get really jiggy with the hope thing) demand a proper explanation from the Chair. How did this application get refused? What precisely does the refusal mean, and, if it’s not clear in the letter (and it’s not) what has been done to clarify the meaning of the refusal. What is so all-fired wrong with the CTC’s own five year strategy? And, here’s the big one, what are members getting for their money, and what might they expect to get in the future by way of an inducement to keep on paying their subs?

It could all come good. The CTC’s new Chief Exec might just set about answering the questions that should have been asked. The half million quid spent on campaigning might just be given the VFM test. Contracts with Government might just start to pay off. I'm guessing that, with Barry Flood on the case, costs are now examined in a way that they were not back in 2009. There might just be a re-connection with the wider membership that goes beyond affinity purchases.

It could...but my guess is that it won’t, and that guess isn’t informed by anything other than a sobering reflection on the way the wider membership reacted to the first and second charity debates. In the end, the members get the CTC they deserve, and, whether I and my former colleagues in SavetheCTC care to admit it or not, the members pretty much deserve what they’ve got now. I’m sure that a few will throw up their hands and leave, but the chances of a widespread coherent message being sent to Council can be measured in minus numbers. The CTC may become a more responsive and outgoing organisation, but if the last two years proves anything at all, it will never become what is truly meant by a membership organisation, because the members simply see themselves as purchasers rather than participants. The CTC may do great things, may become a joyful inspiration to cyclists, a beacon of cycling knowledge, a thorn in the side of Highways Engineers and a source of expertise for politicians local and national looking for a more sustainable future, but democracy in any real sense is beyond it simply because democracy requires members to behave like members. That, dear peeps, is your problem, but it’s no longer mine. I do wish the CTC the very best, and I’m proud to have ‘CTC Affiliate’ stamped on the The Fridays, but there comes a time when one realises that there is only so much that one can do as a member of a Club that isn’t really a Club. I dreamt of a ‘bottom-up’ organisation, but the truth is that, however potent the spirit of some of the members, the bottom, taken as a whole, is weak. I fervently hope that a chastened and revived Council together with the new Chief Exec can forge a more efficient, more effective CTC, and that the next few years are an improvement on the last, but, for now, I’m just happy to be a member of that most remarkable of things, a Cycling Club. Good luck one and all.