Charlbury's Charities and Community Facilities

Fri 15 Mar 2013, 16:50 (last edited on Fri 15 Mar 2013, 16:52)

Judy, in response to your questions (on behalf of Thomas Gifford's Charity's trustees):

A lot of money was spent in the past when the Town Council as trustee pursued a scheme for the site that failed. As a result of the failed scheme the Charity's trustee structure was changed so that the Town Council is no longer trustee but nominates three of the nine trustees. None of the current trustees of Thomas Gifford's Charity were involved when this money was spent and for that good reason we do not have precise details of how much it was. Whatever the number, it has no bearing on the financial position of the charity today. One of the reasons why the scheme failed is that the trustee assumed that a lottery grant would be forthcoming. In the end it was not. It might be more accurate to say that the lottery funding was not obtained rather than lost but the net effect is the same.

If the charities were to merge it is likely that there would be a new trustee structure and new appointments. We are not sure why you think that under a merged charity the funds would be any less secure than they are currently under the CMFBT.

The new community scheme will not fail because of the loss of lottery or other speculative grant funding because it will not rely on these. The scheme will be fully funded before we start incurring fees based on a conservative valuation of the land available for sale and a conservative cost for the building. There are of course no guarantees, but if for any reason we are unable to deliver a full scheme we will look at a phased delivery rather than pulling the project.

We have not yet formally appointed an architect for the remainder of the process. If there are architects in the town who believe they have the skills and experience to deliver this type of building we would be happy to hear from them. To the extent we can promote the case for local trades people's involvement in the project without unduly complicating or impacting the delivery, we will of course do that.

A lot of time can be spent trawling through the past but the trustees are more concerned with, and excited about, the future. We hope you and others will come to our meeting on the 21st to hear more and show your support for the charity.