Thursday 19 January 2012

The independent examiner's report arrived on Tuesday. Broadly, it exonerates Dave and identifies the causes of the dispute as lack of communication and lack of formal written rules or procedures. As we knew.
But it seems to have left him more bitter and downcast than ever.

I summarised the 30 pages into 3. This is my summarised summary:

Results of the investigation into Dave Brown’s expenditure while Acting Secretary of PNFS

Subject

The investigation by the independent examiner Ms Elizabeth Hudson ACA covered:

• DCB’s expenses claims from 1 January 2010 to 28 October 2011
• items of expenditure authorised by DCB from 1 January 2011 to 3 October 2011
• whether any matters relating to these expenses and items of expenditure should be reported to the Charity Commission or other agency.

 Conclusions

·         DCB made and sought no personal gain for himself or his family, so there is no need to report to the Charity Commission or other agency.

·         DCB broke no formal rules or procedures, because there were none to break.  All his actions were wholly explicable, in their context. However, it would be in the interests of all officers and members if procedures were agreed and formalised to prevent risk to the Society’s funds and standing, and to its members’ reputations, in future. DCB had drafted a spending policy for discussion at the trustees meeting on 7 September 2011 but the trustees had refused to discuss it.

·         The root causes of the dispute were lack of communication between the secretary and the trustees, and the lack of formalised procedures on expenses and expenditure.

In our view (DCB and JAB):

·         This dispute deprived members of a dedicated, efficient and popular secretary, newsletter editor and publisher, IT consultant and short-walks organiser for 4 months. This looks like a grossly inappropriate response to a difference of opinion between officers, which goes against Charity Commission guidelines as well as against common sense.

·         If anything good is to come out of the dispute, it is to alert the Society to the  need to put its business on a more formal, professional footing in line with Charity Commission guidelines, before any other officer can be humiliated, the work of the Society interrupted, and the competence of the trustees further called into question.

 Dave is writing to all the officers initially, and probably to the inspectors and other volunteers, in these terms. He wants to do it asap to forestall any attempt by the trustees to send them a twisted version, but he has also asked Ms Hudson to revise certain parts of her report as it didn't state these points nearly as clearly as it could have done, so he may manage to hold himself back for a day or two. What gripes him at the moment is 'I don't know how to get back at Bratt. I don't know what could hurt him unless members and affiliated bodies resigned from the Society over the money and time he has wasted by attacking and humiliating me. I don't suppose they will.' 

Perhaps we will move on eventually from pure vengeance, but if you call it, instead, the conviction that justice is worth doing, that wrongdoers must be held to account, then Dave's fight is worth fighting. Bratt and Rogerson are, after all, president and chairman, as well as trustees and officers, of a worthy charitable society. 

There must be some motion of censure, at least. They have destroyed the capability and esteem of an experienced, dedicated and efficient officer, and the cost is to the Society as well as to the officer. They will have spent hundreds of pounds of charitable money on an investigation and legal fees which were wholly unnecessary. All the examiner's findings were there to see, if the trustees had thought to look - they keep the accounts, they have worked with Dave for years, they ought to have been aware that there were no formal rules or procedures for anyone to breach. All they had to do was talk to him. They have proved through this episode of maladministration that they are unfit to manage this Society. 

And now these same trustees are proposing to give themselves more not less power to tell the officers what to do. An oligarchy of five, no independent chairman, which in effect becomes a dictatorship of two, since the other three are there for a quiet life. Fewer officers meetings, far less responsibility allowed to the officers. The Society's constitution needs a fundamental overhaul, but in terms of formalising financial procedures and defining roles, rather than re-jigging the trustees' job description.

Can these issues wait until the AGM in May? I think Dave needs to get the other officers in the frame as soon as possible. Today he is now saying 'I want to be reinstated. I don't believe they had the power to suspend me in any case. If I am to resign I want to do it on my terms.' Which is more positive than railing about being powerless to get back at Bratt.

He wants me to go on Bratt's walk with him on Wednesday. I said I wasn't sure he should go himself, as a confrontation with the leader wouldn't do him any good in the eyes of the members. He says he's not going there to pick an argument with Bratt, but I suppose I'd better go to make sure he doesn't. (Or to fight for him if he does.)