All documents of charity 1050889

The request was successful.

Christopher West

Dear Charity Commission for England and Wales,

Please can you provide an electronic copy of all 'Governing
Documents', letters and any other documents and correspondence for the registered charity:

1050889 - Trust of St Michael the Archangel (TSMA)

Yours faithfully,

Christopher West

Kenneth Dibble, Charity Commission for England and Wales

Dear Mr West

I acknowledge receipt of you email and request for information. I have forwarded it to our Business Assurance team who handle all Freedom of Information requests.

They will be in touch with you within 20 days.

Yours sincerely

Kenneth Dibble

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Carroll, Liam, Charity Commission for England and Wales

1 Attachment

Dear Mr West

The Trust of St Michael the Archangel (1050889)

Thank you for your recent email. I have considered your request for
information under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (2000).

You have asked for ‘an electronic copy of all ‘Governing Documents’,
letters and other documents for the registered charity: 1050889 – The
Trust of St Michael the Archangel’.

I should initially confirm that the Act does not require us to provide you
with copy correspondence, rather that we will need to consider any request
for specific information that we may hold. It does impose a duty, set out
in section 1 (1) (a) to confirm or deny whether we hold information of the
description specified in your request.

Having searched our records for this charity it appears that we do not
have a lot of information. It is governed by a Declaration of Trust dated
22 March 1995. I have attached a copy of this as it is a matter of public
record (it has not been released under the terms of the Act). I have,
though, redacted any signatures in accordance with Data Protection
principles. 

We have also received Annual Returns completed by the trustees for the
years 2009 and 2010. I have attached these for your information. As you
will see some information here has been redacted as it is exempt under
Section 40 of the Act, as the information constitutes third party personal
data for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). There are
also Returns for 2006 and 2008 (partial) and these have been released
subject to Section 40.

Section 40(2) of the Act provides that personal data about third parties
is exempt information if one of the conditions set out in section 40(3) is
satisfied, namely whether any of the data protection principles would be
contravened by the disclosure.  Under the Act, disclosure of this
information would breach the fair processing principle contained in the
DPA where it would be unfair to that person and/or is confidential. The
information that has been released is that which is publicly available on
the Register of Charities.

I have previously released to you a copy of the interim and final Inquiry
report published by the Commission into this charity and the Saint George
Educational Trust– 1043158 (September 2000 and May 2001 respectively). I
have not, therefore, provided this again. There is also a letter from the
Commission to the charity, dated February 2005, in respect of an
evaluation into the charity, which was opened to monitor the actions taken
by the trustees following the inquiry. This is attached subject to the
removal of personal information under Section 40 (2).

Further to this there is a case note referring to both charities dated
January 2005. I am sorry that I did not refer to this in my earlier
request. It was only available as part of the information we hold for this
charity and I did not know about it until I looked at what we held here.

The information within is an internal note which outlines the Commission’s
approach and refers in part to other parties and information supplied to
the Commission from others. We would consider this information exempt
under Sections 31,41 and 40(2) of the Act.

Section 40(2) because it contains personal information about third parties
which would be exempt due to the reasons I have explained earlier.

S31 (1) (g) of the Act is engaged if disclosure ‘would or would be likely
to prejudice ‘the exercise by any public authority of its functions for
any of the purposes specified in subsection (2)’.

The relevant purposes in subsection (2) are:

(a)        the purpose of ascertaining whether any person has failed to
comply with the law;

(b)        the purpose of ascertaining whether any person is responsible
for any conduct which is improper;

(c)         the purpose of ascertaining whether circumstances which would
justify regulatory action in pursuance of any enactment exist or may
arise;

(f)          the purpose of protecting charities against misconduct or
mismanagement (whether by trustees or other persons) in their
administration;

(g)        the purposes of protecting the property of charities from loss
or misapplication.

It is considered that disclosure of the information requested may
prejudice these functions given its sensitive nature and that it would be
exempt under S31.To be an effective regulator the Commission needs the
opportunity to assess the information it holds. The information in
question was created by the Commission in furtherance of its statutory
objectives and functions as outlined by sections 14 and 15 of the
Charities Act 2011. These include (but are not limited to) increasing
public trust and confidence in charities, promoting compliance by charity
trustees with their legal obligations, identifying and investigating
apparent misconduct or mismanagement in the administration of charities
and taking appropriate remedial or protective action in connection with
misconduct or management therein.

This is a qualified exemption which means that it requires the Commission
to balance the public interest in disclosure against the public interest
of non-disclosure.

In balancing the public interest of disclosure against the public interest
of withholding the information, I have taken into account the factors in
favour of disclosure which includes the need for the Commission as a
public body to be transparent and accountable and to provide assistance to
members of the public as far as possible with regard to the information
held by the Commission about charities. I have also considered the very
considerable public interest in the Commission being able to operate and
regulate charities effectively.  It is the Commission’s view that in this
instance the public interest lies in not disclosing the information.

Further to this the exemption under Section 41 of the Act is engaged as we
consider it worthy of the protection of confidence. This is because it
refers to information obtained by other parties and that disclosure would
breach the duty of confidence, and would be potentially actionable by
those who supplied it.  This is an absolute exemption by virtue of section
2 (3) (f) and (g) of the Act and no public interest test need be applied.

Other than this there are a set of accounts dated for the year ended 2005
which I have attached. Again I have redacted a signature. The only other
accounts that we have are those available on our website.

There is also a telephone note from February 2011 in which a new address
for the charity (the one referred to on the Register of Charities) was
confirmed.

I hope that this is sufficient for your needs, however If you think our
decision is wrong, you can ask for it to be reviewed.   Such requests
should be submitted within three months of the date of our response and
should be addressed to the Charity Commission at PO Box 1227, Liverpool,
L69 3UG

(email: [1][email address] .) 

More information about our Freedom of Information Act review service can
be found on the following link on our website:
[2]http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/medi....

If, after this, you remain unhappy with the decision, you may apply
directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision.  Generally,
the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted our review
procedure.  The ICO  can be contacted at the Information Commissioner’s
Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF (email:
[3][email address].)

Regards

Liam Carroll – Complaints and FOI Manager

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