Care4Calais: Watchdog criticises past management of charity

The charity's new trustees have been praised

The former trustees of a charity set up to aid migrants in Calais have been criticised over their management.

In a report, the Charity Commission criticised the financial, leadership and complaints processes at Care4Calais in the past.

Clare Moseley, founder and former chief executive, quit during the three-year inquiry.

The charity's new board said its growth had "vastly outpaced" needed structural reforms.

Care4Calais was set up in 2016. Between October 2017 and August 2020, payments of more than £340,000 had been made to Ms Moseley's personal bank account, according to the commission.

The watchdog added Ms Moseley said this arrangement saved the charity around £3,000 a year in foreign exchange fees.

But the report concluded that while no funds were misused or misappropriated for private benefit, the arrangement was "inappropriate and had put the charity's funds at undue risk".

However, it praised the new trustees, saying management and governance has now "improved significantly".

'Our work was worth it'

Ms Moseley said she had always followed the advice of lawyers, accountants and auditors and that independent officials had "always given clean reports on our accounts".

She said Care4Calais had gone from a grass roots project to an organisation with a £2m turnover that had "helped hundreds of thousands of refugees in the UK and France".

Another former trustee was Ms Moseley's sister. The commission said its inquiry "found little evidence to demonstrate that any past conflicts of interest or loyalty which may have existed had been appropriately managed".

It concluded that, coupled with poor minute-taking, this amounted to misconduct and/or mismanagement.

The report also highlighted how the charity operated without the required number of trustees and, on at least one occasion, one trustee handled a complaint about another trustee they were related to, in breach of the charity's own policy.

Commission chairman Orlando Fraser KC said: "Our inquiry found that, over a significant period of time, and following a rapid expansion of its operations, Care4Calais was not managed well. Its funds were put at risk, and there was serious misconduct and/or mismanagement by the former trustees."

He said the charity is now "in a much better position to deliver on its purposes".

Current Care4Calais CEO Steve Smith said that the new board of trustees "all acknowledge that the growth in our humanitarian work since 2015 vastly outpaced the development of the charity's governance structures".

Welcoming the conclusion of the inquiry, he said Care4Calais' commitment to support refugees "never wavered" and there was now an opportunity to create "a new and forward-looking organisation that puts refugees front and centre of our work."

Sign up for our morning newsletter and get BBC News in your inbox.