Draft Order and Draft Lease of land belonging to Alexandra Palace and Park charitable trust

Our substantive objections to this Order are contained (and their background) in the letter already sent to you (3 November 2006). The letter raised certain specific queries and issues. Unfortunately you chose not to reply to these.

Our argument boils down to this: the commission would be acting outside its powers in making this Order because as drafted it changes the purposes of this charity.

Only in limited, exceptional circumstances can such a change-of-purpose, s 13 scheme be made, as has already been confirmed to the statutory advisory committee in a letter from the commission to the chair dated 17 July 1998, copied to its then members including myself. I would refer you to this letter. Instead, Parliament only granted a s 17 scheme which sets out the powers under which the commissioners may make any order for a lease. The s 17 of the Charities Act procedure only allows Orders for minor, administrative, non-contentious changes. On this basis Parliament's Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments allowed the draft SI for the s 17 scheme to go before the House.

It was to allow non-contentious, merely administrative Orders.

I believe you have had to date 200 objections. Articles have appeared in the national Press, and on a networked BBC programme fears were expressed. The constituency MP has put down an EDM.

We would be interested in the commission's definition of "non-contentious".

Also I would again refer you to the Hansard report of the debate on the s. 17 scheme and the undertakings given by the Minister in reply to concerns and fears, made to her by MPs during the debate:

Column Number: 020
(Fiona MacTaggart:)

The scheme does not amend the charity's purposes. The trustees have a legal responsibility to ensure that those purposes are achieved, and the charity commissioners, as the regulatory body, will hold them to that. The scheme does not provide for the palace to be sold for commercial development; it [merely] provides the power to lease it and the immediate surrounding area for 125 years.

The charity's purposes are being changed by your order. The palace is to be sold for commercial development.

The objects and purposes of the charity being changed, are set out in the 1900 Act, s 17: "the park palace and other lands shall be available for the free use and recreation of the public for ever" - it does not say, you will notice, "the park or palace".

The order refers to the proposed lease. Although neither the terms of this lease, nor a plan of the exact land to be leased, have been included as an appendix to the published draft order, so making this "consultation" meaningless (because one cannot comment on something one is not allowed to see), the commission knows, as we do, that the area of the land in the proposed lease to be reserved for the purposes of this charity is in reality confined to the theatre and a tiny corner for a museum.

(Please take this letter as also constituting our formal request for sight of the lease and of all correspondence between the commission and the trustee about this order under the Freedom of Information Act.)

In particular the south-east wing under all the previous amending acts and provisions has to be used for charitable purposes and the 1983 planning permissions state that this shall be connected with its world-famous television history, but the order together with the lease purport to change that purpose and those provisions. Under the existing charity law in general, and the 1985 Act in particular, this area must properly remain available for the free use of the public to see for themselves the actual studios where television was born and developed, the costs of this educational activity to be provided from the profits of commercial actitivies permitted elsewhere in the building. They should be adequate for the purpose and further grants from English Heritage and others and donations should be available for repairs and restoration as the museum/exhibition is charitable. This would not be the case with a commercial activity there. Neither will the tax advantage that the charity enjoys be available - a considerable sum.

The commission has provided a question and answer section. It gives the impression that the trusts have failed and the charity's endowment is insufficient. That is untrue. If the present trustee has managed the charity incompetently that is no fault of the endowment. As a former member of the statutory advisory committee I know from correspondence that the trust's solicitor tried to argue that the trusts had failed and to apply for a cy-pres scheme. I will write separately to the commission about the statements made to you by the solicitor. The point is that he failed to prove, and the commission did not accept, that the endowment was insufficient, except that in the limited administrative matter of the term of the leases.

The commission should have ensured that this order was advertised to all the beneficiaries of the charity. The beneficiaries include the people of London, or at least of north London. Arguably the beneficiaries are the national public. We, and others, know that this order has not been so advertised.

This is property belonging to the public being disposed of by stealth. It appears that the trustee and the commission hoped that no-one would notice or realize the significance of the proposed change of purpose. We are sorry to disappoint but we have noticed it.

Yours sincerely

J O'Callaghan