FRIENDS OF BLACKA MOOR

Committed to protecting all that's best about a special place
Intro
Not A Nature Reserve
Blacka Moor Story 1
1999 Decisions
Our Proposals
R.A.G. Meetings
The Graves Covenant
Icarus Meetings
After Icarus
Winter on Blacka
Red Deer
Fungi of Thistle Hill
Plan of Blacka Moor
Contact Us
Site Map
The Charity Commission
A Message To Supporters
Cattle Grazing
Who Are We?
No Longer a Grouse Moor
 
Blacka Moor and The Charity Commission
 
In 1999 Sheffield City Council decided that it wished to dispose of the Blacka site to Sheffield Wildlife Trust. This followed a proposal being made by the trust suggesting it would be for the good of the land for this to happen.

Before the process could go ahead it was necessary to consult the Charity Commission to establish whether this was possible. The CC promptly decided that it was not. The Graves Covenant was the governing document of the charitable land and it was clearly set out that the purpose of the land was as a public open space and public pleasure ground. The wording of the covenant permits no doubt about this.

Discussions took place between officials of the City Council and the Commission to see if there was any way round this.
It is our belief that the Charity Commission should not have engaged with SCC in looking for a way that the disposal could be effected; at least not before making absolutely sure that no other way forward could be found. The course of action proposed should only be sanctioned if it can be demonstrated without any doubt that the charitable land is quite incapable of being governed according to the terms of the charity unless the disposal is granted.
 
This would have meant going through a number of different alternatives before establishing that these very extreme measures were unavoidable. In other words it would mean deciding that the charity had failed and was in desperate need of crisis measures. This was clearly not so. The land may have been in need of some maintenance where paths had received no attention for some years, but this was no different to the situation on many country sites and most visitors were quite happy. The Town Hall had not been receiving complaints about the condition of the site.

 

But the council had decided that it must go ahead with the proposed lease to Sheffield Wildlife Trust. It had been persuaded that this would save the council money and this was the council's clear priority. Members of the public who enquired about this at the time were not given access to the details of the Graves Covenant and were kept in the dark about why the Charity Commission objected to the proposal. This meant that opposition to the planned disposal lacked a clear focus.

 

The Charity Commission was asked by the council to suggest ways out of their 'problem' and the two organisations came up with a proposal to change the covenant while the wildlife trust at the same time changed its charitable aims. The changing of the wording of the covenant was subject to a procedure laid down by the CC which needed to be followed. There is little doubt that this would have gone through with little or no opposition if it were not for the determined enquiries pursued by one member of the public who was a regular member of the RAG and who had been corresponding with the CC over a long period. Eventually his enquiries led to the disclosure of the full text of the Graves Covenant and the proposed alterations, much to the annoyance of the council's legal department. 

 

The Charity Commission published the scheme altering a section of the Graves Covenant. Those of us who were following this process were surprised how difficult it was to discover what was going on. The statutory notification was correct but only the minimum requirement and no effort was made by public servants to make this easier for us.  We had a number of reservations. One was the notice posted on Blacka: a council officer palced this on a convenient post, took a photo and sent this to the Charity Commission to prove that it duty had been done. Two days later the notice had mysteriously disappeared. When people went to the desk at the Town Hall to see the proposed scheme they were shown a copy of the new wording to be inserted but no copy of a transcript of the original document which would put it in context and to which the new wording referred!

 

Many representations were made to the Charity Commission from memebers of the public who wanted no change.

 

The eventual decision of the officer in the Charity Commission is here.

 

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