Friends of Putney Common respond to latest update from Wimbledon and Putney Commons Conservators

The WPCC was dragged kicking and screaming by the Charity Commission to obtain a retrospective valuation from Daniel Watney LLP which they've now had in their hands for a month. It obviously shows that the charity did loose hundreds of thousands of pounds when selling access rights at Putney Hospital in 2014. The Friends of Putney Common community group and many other Putney residents have been right all along, despite receiving repeated denials of any wrong-doing. But the Conservators continue to hide the facts and prevaricate, and yet again fail to publish the valuation. Their lack of transparency is truly shocking.

It took over two years and the direct intervention of the Regulator to shed some light on the maladministration and misconduct confirmed by the Charity Commission of an organisation funded by over 60,000 local Council taxpayers. Not only did the WPCC sell-off the access rights across common land for a pittance, they've also spent more than £200,000 of levy-payers money on unnecessary legal fees trying to cover up their actions. Their recent trumped-up complaints against elected Conservator John Cameron for telling the truth have now cost the charity another £30,000 and prevented him attending board meetings, and seeing the new valuation. This receives no mention at all in their media release. It is thanks to John that any of this has been exposed in public.

Last year they buried the retrospective Qualified Surveyors Report obtained by the Audit and Risk Committee of the charity from Montagu Evans LLP which showed a clear loss of £1.5m. They have failed to even discuss it at board level for over a year. Now they refuse to publish the full text of their new valuation from Daniel Watney LLP which raises further serious questions about their probity and what they're trying to hide. They even fail to state how big a loss the new valuation has established, or on what basis it was arrived at.

Why has it taken over two years to reach this point? When will the Charity Commission take concrete steps to take over the running of this obviously dysfunctional charity.

Nicholas Evans,
Spokesman for local community group Friends of Putney Common