Dartington put under pressure by government regulator

The beleaguered Dartington Hall Trust has come under further strain with the news that the government’s charity regulator has launched a formal action against the organisation, as part of an effort to shed light on its late filing of its accounts and possibly to examine other issues linked to governance.

The Charity Commission said: “We have opened a regulatory compliance case into the Dartington Hall Trust to allow us to gather more information and engage with trustees. As part of this, we have requested the charity supplies the commission with its outstanding annual accounts.”

The new development is likely to involve managers and trustees at Dartington being quizzed in detail about their actions over a difficult 18 months for the organisation,  running a sprawling estate just outside Totnes and next year celebrates the centenary of its establishment as a centre for arts and ecology that has attracted a worldwide following.

Since early 2023 the trust has seen the departure of much its former management, presided over hefty cuts in programmes and jobs, with key announcements including an effective eviction order for Schumacher College on the estate and the ending in a recognized form of the trust’s renowned summer school and music festival.

Lord David Triesman – a business and political heavyweight who was drafted in to the trust in March 2023 as chair – is suffering from a difficult illness which has restricted his efforts to steward the organisation. Triesman is one of six Dartington trustees likely to be questioned by the commission’s officials.

Following the upheaval, the trust is, according to the commission’s timetable, more than five months late in filing its annual report and accounts for 2022/23. On the positive side, Triesman and Robert Fedder, who he brought in as interim chief executive, say the charity is in a more financially robust position than before, and can look ahead reasonably confidently.

In another development that might have sparked the commission’s interest, three Dartington trustees resigned suddenly last November after an internal row linked to the future of the summer school.

Regulatory compliance cases are opened relatively sparingly by the commission and can lead to a variety of outcomes, including the regulator being assured that the charity is running its affairs properly, in which case no further action is needed, or that there are failings that require deeper probe (called a “statutory inquiry”) into how the organisation is run.

Despite the open-endedness of such cases, they are viewed in the charities world as serious matters that illustrate the commission has some reason to be worried about management and leadership.

In 2023-24 about 2 per cent of the 184,000 charities the commission regulates had cases of “regulatory concern” (including both compliance cases and a lower-level form of action called a “regulatory intelligence assessment”) opened against them.

…we responded very fully in November…

Kevin Lucas,of the Manchester-based insolvency adviser Lucas Ross, said : “Before beginning an investigation, the Charity Commission would have made an assessment of the circumstances [at Dartington] and concluded that [they] reached the high bar [required] to trigger the need to investigate and take action to protect the public’s confidence in the sector as a whole.”

He added : “If the commission are only seeking an understanding into the reasons behind the delay in the submission of the accounts then it [the inquiry] is unlikely to be [of] …concern… However, as with most investigations, subject to what they get back, it can be the start of a much bigger investigation.”

While one charities expert said “late filing of charity accounts is a serious issue with a lot of non-compliance and is one of the areas that the Charity Commision is under pressure to resolve”, a former commission board member said it was “quite a big deal for a compliance case to be opened into a charity like Dartington”.

One likely explanation for the case, this person said, were “possible issues of governance” that went beyond the late filing. A third charities practitioner – who like the others requested anonymity – said: “Being under scrutiny with the charity commission is rare and not good.”

A Dartington spokesperson said : “There is no statutory inquiry or formal investigation into the Trust’s regulation or compliance, nor has the Commission alerted us of any findings. The extent of any ‘case’ is that we responded very fully in November to a letter from the Commission in October requesting specific information, chiefly in relation to the delayed accounts.

“We have been in regular, proactive contact with the Commission to update them on our situation as we gain a clearer picture on timing. We last did this as recently as last week, when the straightforward reply we received from the Commission was ‘we will await the submission of the accounts in due course’.”

Separately, last week Triesman blamed the late filing on outdated computer systems and accounting software inherited from the previous management.

Regulatory compliance cases, the commission says in a guidance note , are used to deal with “concerns” about “the conduct of trustees and their governance and leadership of the charity”.

Such cases are “not formal investigations“, the commission says in a guidance document, “rather they aim to ensure that trustees address any failures and weaknesses in their charities’ management.”

The note continues : “This [a compliance case] may be by following our guidance or an action plan that we have agreed with them. When necessary, we can resolve charity governance issues by using our legal powers.”

As to what might happen following the opening of such a case, the commission says: “Occasionally, in cases of abuse, or where we have suspicions or evidence of mismanagement and/ or misconduct in the administration of a charity, we can open a statutory inquiry to ..resolve the problems that are found.”