Charity Tribunal backs concerned Dartford residents

The Charity Tribunal has upheld in part the appeal by two Dartford residents who objected to the sale of land by an unregistered charity run by the local council.

As first reported on solicitorsjournal.com on 19 August 2009, the tribunal said in a preliminary ruling that it did not have the power to reverse the sale, but it has now held that the charity should put in place new governance procedures to ensure there would be no conflict of interest where trustees also happened to be elected members of the council.

The land, which is part of Dartford's Central Park, was left by Charles Newman Kidd to the council in 1903 for use "in perpetuity as a public recreation ground and for no other purpose whatsoever".

Derek Maidment and Lennox Ryan argued that the original terms of the legacy prevented the sale of land to a developer as part of a larger scheme for the redevelopment of central Dartford, which includes the construction of a large Tesco supermarket and housing.

It later emerged that Dartford borough council had been given erroneous legal advice, but the tribunal said it should not be forced to reverse the sale because it had acted in good faith.

Instead, it considered a remedial scheme approved by the Charity Commission which involved compensation to the Kidd Legacy and allowed the purchase of replacement land.

Ruling in Maidment and Lennox v Charity Commission (CA/2009/0001 and 0002) the tribunal said the charity should be entered on the register of charities and the replacement land registered with the Land Registry, so that charitable status could be recorded in both locations.

The tribunal commented it was 'concerned not to make a decision which would appear to drive a coach and horses through the statutory scheme for the protection of charity land', but that it understood 'the appellants' concern that there is a risk of contracting parties in future transactions 'hiding behind' plainly inadequate advice and thus evading the statutory scheme with impunity'.

'These measures will provide some reassurance to the appellants that the legacy land could not be disposed of in breach of trust or in breach of the relevant statutory requirements in the future,' the tribunal said.

>> read the full story in next week's issue of Solicitors Journal