Parsons Mead Action Group

VIEW POINT - REASSESSING THE OBJECTIVES

(October 2007)

Through the summer we have been trying to salvage something from the closure of Parsons Mead. It is now time to assess what the results have been.

Firstly why has so much gone on over a year after the school closed its doors for the last time. There are several reasons. The catalyst was the publication of the Vernon Trust return to the Charity Commission which showed just how much they had got from the closure in terms of assets. The second main reason was the sale of the school to Oracle Homes. In addition to all this there had been a court case rumbling along waiting its turn in the courts since the beginning of the year and the on going dialogue with the Charity Commission.

The aims in the summer were to get someone to take notice of what the Charity Commission had decided was acceptable behavior on the part of the trust and in our view was patently totally unacceptable. The second aim was to get the government looking at the standards of ethics in Trusts and Trustees that allows the sort of things that are described throughout this website to go on. On top of this we were hoping there would be some financial compensation for all the additional costs that we as parents had had to bear as a result of the closure.

I'm afraid on all counts we have failed

The Charity Commission appear to think we are only after the money generated by the sale for ourselves.

The Government say they can't interfere in the Charity Commission's activities and they have just had new Charity legislation passed so they are not prepared to look at any new legislation in this area.

The court case has been lost.

There is one tiny chink of light. At our initial meeting with the architects they did not rule out the continuing use for education of parts of the site - i.e. Junior Department and Sports Hall. Oracle have appointed a firm of educational consultants from Bath to take a look at the educational requirements of the local area. This is why the community day is such an important event. It needs to be impressed on the developers that there is a major need in the area for just such facilities.

View Point - The Sale

(August 2007 - Sale Day)

The statement issued by the Vernon Educational Trust confirms what we have been expecting for some time now. The school has been sold to the highest bidder irrespective of what the proposed use is. The Trustees of VET are hiding behind section 36 of the Charities Act that says that in the case of disposal of assets then they should be sold to the highest bidder. If that is the case why wasn't this done by the Parsons Mead Education Trust - why did they have to give the school away to the Vernon Educational Trust. If the property as we all expected was to be sold for residential development then it should not have been impossible for PMET to borrow against that income to finance the closure of the school (i.e. redundancies etc). Then all the remaining funds could have been allocated towards supporting private education in the local area (not the whole of Surrey).

According to VET they will spend some of the money received through the sale (approx £13.8 pounds after taking out the Parsons Mead liabilities) on providing support to people who otherwise might not have afforded private education. We suspect that the remaining money will go towards the funding of the purchase of the freehold on Danes Hill (see SIRS report from School on Charity Commission web site). It will be interesting to see the split of funding.

The company that have purchased the school are Oracle Homes (Residential). They are based at 55 South Street in Epsom. Their web site talks alot about mixed development. It will be interesting to see their plans for the site.

The timing of the announcement of the sale was nearly perfect, the height of the summer holidays when everybody is away. We have to thank the Epsom Guardian for alerting us to this announcement. As normal VET have not chosen to communicate with their former clients at Parsons Mead.

What have we learned from this story thus far:

Charities and their Trustees are not obliged to be transparent in their dealings with their clients. There is no public accountability in terms of AGMs etc....

The Charities Commission appear to constantly side with the Charities and appear to have no effective powers anyway. They neglect to inform people who have asked for an investigation into the handling of the closure of a school that even before their investigation was properly started the school had been gifted to another Charity who's trustees just happened to be a subset of the Charity that was disposing of the asset.

The Charities Commission having given the green light for gifting the charity then allow the new owners to sell the school to the highest bidder without even considering what the planning consent on the site was or the wishes of the local population. The new charity can therefore pocket a cool £13.8 million for doing what? Certainly not what they were apparently brought in to do - "save the school".

This conflict of interests would not be allowed in the commercial world. There Directors are responsible to shareholders, customers and strong regulatory bodies. In the twilight world of charities this does not seem to be the case for Trustees.

The use to which the Parsons Mead site is now put is not just a matter of concern to this group but also to the residents of Ashtead. Their elected representatives in the form of Councillors and MPs have all said they would oppose any non community use - let us see if they can succeed.

In the meantime the first case for compensation will be arriving in the courts in October.

In providing background to the story that was published in The Post a VET spokesman reportedly said,

"Dane's Hill went to the rescue when Parsons Mead pupil rolls fell to a point where it could not meet running costs."

The Parsons Mead headmistress told the head of Dane's Hill the situation and our trust stepped in to take over in 2005.

This is an interesting spin on the story that was given to the parents at the time of the merger of the two Trusts (that didn't actually happen before the closure). Parents were told that it was the Chairman of the PM Governors (not the Headmistress as stated in the report) who approached Danes Hill and that it had been a condition of Danes Hill taking over that all but two of the governors resign. In addition only a few months earlier at the time of the proposed takeover by Cognita it had been explained that PM was not at any imminent financial risk but that a change of ownership would protect the school's long term future (to paraphrase the then Chairman of Governors opening remarks at that meeting). There was still an option to keep the school open even at the time of closure, an option that has not gone away even now. That option was to accept the offer from Cognita.

Finally the closing comment that the trust took over in 2005 could be viewed with a degree of cynicism given that the two trusts were never merged before the closure, only the two boards of Governors shared a virtually identical composition (except that the 2 PMET Trustees do not appear to be VET Trustees). Perhaps now the school has closed there will be a drive to merge the two trusts just in time for the new trust to inherit £13.5 million from the sale of the school that VET tried so assiduously to save......

Alternatively, the PMET Trustees could deal with that moral dilema reported by the press and accept the Cognita deal and merely pocket £2 million pounds for the newly merged trusts. That way Ashtead would keep a valuable educational location, VET would have a little money set aside and Downsend would finally get to open that secondary school they have wished to have for so long. And most importantly the children who went on to attend the newly refurbished school would learn that decency and fair play and a sense of pride in a place do have a important place in the modern world, that life should not just be about commercial self interest, self serving and competition - now that is a lesson worth learning.

View Point - what do VET have to gain

The clerk to the Vernon Educational Trust and also to Parsons Mead Educational Trust made comment to the Epsom Guardian in a recent article which was very telling. He said that the trust was not asset stripping Parsons Mead School, this despite the fact that at that point school mini buses from neighbouring schools were turning up during the school day to remove equipment from classes that were still in progress - one assumes this was sold to them not given away. He went onto to say that when the Pasons Mead Trust was wound up any remaining funds would go to another educational trust. If that trust just happened to be the Vernon Educational Trust then there would be a clear conflict of interest for most the Vernon Educational Trust Trustees since they are also trustees of the Parsons Mead Educational Trust, in fact only two of the trustees at Parsons Mead are not Trustees for the Vernon Trust.

A cynical person might suggest that VET had an interest in closing down PM from the outset since if they sold it to developers to release the value of the site then they could pass the value generated onto VET as part of the winding up of PMET. Hence there is a clear conflict of interest for the Trustees - should they do the best for PMET or should they do the best for VET, especially as they did not legally link the futures of the two trusts by amalgamating them into a single entity.

VET have a possible issue coming in the next few years when the lease on the Danes Hill site runs out - if they fail to renew the lease on that site then the proceeds of any sales for development of the Parsons Mead site would provide a handy lump sum towards the lease or purchase of a new site.

From what was said to the parents when the change of management occurred in the middle of 2005 VET had a number of schools under their umbrella when they first started and this has dwindled away to one school, has this anything to do with the constant upgrading of the Danes Hill site?

That is one very plausible construction one might put on the events of the last few months. It would have been interesting to see what the other point of view might be - but the Vernon Trust have kept up a wall of silence when confronted with anything that looks like a serious question.

Parents are now asking whether they would have seen a more acceptable outcome if the Cognita deal had been allowed to go ahead, although single sex education may have ultimately disappeared and the school may well have merged with Downsend would this have been as bad as the sudden loss of the whole school.

One last comment - at the meeting with the parents when the VET team took over the former headmaster of Danes Hill said that the fit between Danes Hill and Parsons Mead was excellent since Danes Hill was cash rich and asset poor and Parsons Mead was cash poor and asset rich. If things go as people suspect they might the Danes Hill will still be asset poor but be a lot more cash rich - so the fit really was excellent from their point of view - after all money looks after itself - assets require maintenance.