Dartington calls extra time on providing new recovery update

Dartington Hall Trust has given itself an extra six months of breathing space before being required to file a new set of accounts, so staving off for limited period any new examination of its finances by outsiders. As a result of a techical manouvre that came to light on Monday the trust will now need to publish its latest accounts by December 31 this year, as opposed to the end of next month that would have been the requirement under the previous reporting arrangements.

The move gives the charity – which runs the sprawling Dartington estate near Totnes – additional time in its effort to convince onlookers it is in the road to recovery after a difficult spell two years ago when it said it was close to bankruptcy.

The trust said the change in its formal accounting period – as a result of which its financial year will end in February each year rather than August – will bring the reporting of its finances more in line to those of other entities operating in hospitality and related industries.

Under accepted accounting practice, the financial year for most conventional trading organisations finishes at the end of March, as opposed to in the summer.

The trust also said the move “would afford it an additional period of time in order to resolve some of the accounting difficulties that became apparent in finalising the 2023 accounts”.

Dartington’s last accounts for the 12 months to August 31 2023 were eventually published in February this year, almost eight months behind the schedule called for by the Charity Commission, the government regulator. Since the accounts’ publication was close to 18 months after the end of the period they alluded to, their value in addressing how Dartington was faring as a viable entity was considerably reduced.  The slippage in the reporting triggered questioning by outsiders as to why the accounts were late, and was one of the factors behind the commission starting a “regulatory compliance probe” into the organisation last December.

The change in accounting arrangements was announced on the government’s Companies House website. It means that the trust’s formal “accounting period” will from now be the 12 months to the end of February each year, as compared to the end of August currently.

To align the two accounting arrangements, the 12-month accounting period that ended on August 31 2024 has been extended by six months so it will now be deemed as having finished on February 28 this year. Under government rules, charities must file a public set of accounts no later than 10 months after the end of its financial reporting period, or face potential fines.

The last set of accounts for 2022/23 – once they finally emerged into the public gaze – were scrutinised with more than the usual zeal by people keen to discover more about the financial circumstances of the charity. After Lord Triesman took over running Dartington in early 2023 he discovered what he described as a “precarious” financial position in which the once well-heeled organisation was rapidly running out of money. A newly assembled management team then ushered in a challenging period of job losses and cost cutting, from which the charity says it is slowly emerging with its finances in better shape.

The 2022/23 report – which disclosed a new £3m bank loan – said the trust continued to run a large deficit in the financial year under review, showing a loss of £4.69m, little changed from the £4.64m shortfall in 2021/22. Dartington is this year celebrating its 100th anniversary of its establishment in a modern form by wealthy benefactors Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst.

The trust last changed its accounting period in 2020 when it added another five months to its financial year to create the August 31 end-date, the switch being triggered by the need to bring the organisation into line with other operations running educational programmes. Now Dartington has ended most of these activities – as a result of the changes ushered in by the new management to prune expensive operations that lost money – the trust has argued that it no longer makes sense to observe the August end-date. Hence it is logical to switch back to the previous reference period.

With the change in reporting out of the way Dartington’s in-house financial department- headed by the interim head of finance Philip Owen and much smaller than it was in 2022 and 2023 when the previous accounting report was prepared – has the comparative luxury of another six months to come up with new publicly available numbers without the distraction of external inquiries as to how the accounts are shaping up.