Agenda item

Mr Kirkpatrick asked Councillor Johnston the following question:

“Despite repeated discussions, and further assurances prior to the previous full Council meeting, no action has been taken to use the £50,000 bequest for improving the Dickens House tourism product.  The initial offer was reaffirmed over two years ago.

Does the Council intend to ever take advantage of this money?”

Councillor Johnston replied:

“Mr Kirkpatrick contacted me earlier this year, because he had been in contact with officers regarding the £50,000 legacy from Joyce Smith, somebody much loved by all of us, who was a curator at the museum. When we met my immediate feeling was that I had never seen the Will, nor had our officers seen the terms of the Will.  There was also an issue about the actual ownership of the Dickens House Museum. 

I’m sorry that this has taken a long time, but I’ve asked the officers for a timeline, because I came into this story probably about March time.  An Economic Development Officer spoke to you on the 1^st October and noted that the £50,000 was for the Dickens House Museum, and could not cover anything that the Council should already be paying for.  Then we asked to see the Will around the 20^th October, I had asked for it before but it needed to be formally done.  So we requested to see the Will to understand what implications the £50,000 funding had for the Council from a legal perspective. 

We were advised that once we had the relevant legal advice we could arrange a meeting to discuss what the options might be. We were then advised that we could not discuss options until we understood fully any legal implications in relation to the Council’s ownership of the Museum. In all the years I have been here, I thought the Council fully owned it. 

Officers continued to get on with this, and on the 23^rd October, Mr Kirkpatrick, you sent an extract of Joyce’s Will to us which is what we really needed.  It said that the sum of £50,000 was to go to the Dickens House Museum Broadstairs, on condition that it was set aside in a separate endowment fund to be administered jointly by the museum and the Dickens Fellowship, Broadstairs.

Officers took legal advice on two issues:

Firstly, what the options were for the future ownership, management and operation of the Dickens House Museum based on Miss D.L.Tattam’s Will and subsequent assent.  This included the view that the Museum could be put into an external trust and be run separately.  For this, officers from the legal team sought external counsel who had more experience in the area, obviously we would have to pay for this.

Secondly, what the legal implications are in relation to the monies from Mrs Smiths Will?

On the 21^st November we received complex advice from Legal Counsel in relation to the Council’s ownership of the museum.

On the 27^th November we received advice from the internal Legal department in relation to the Legal Counsel’s advice due to its complexity.

On the 1^st December, and remember that I have been asking for all this, we received advice from the internal Legal department in relation to the query about the spending of the £50,000 from Mrs Smith’s Will. 

The summary of the advice, and I’m sure it was much longer, is:

Mrs Tattam’s Will - the Dickens House Museum is held by the Council as a charitable trustee, with the implication that the Council’s freedom to deal with it is thereby strictly limited.  The Council will need to make contact with the Charity Commission to discuss any potential options, so that the Council is not in breach of this legal trust arrangement.  Any action the Council takes moving forward will require formal consent from the Charity Commission.

Joyce’s Will – internal guidance, not specialist advice, is that the £50,000 should be in an endowment fund, and that the income from this should be used for the purposes for which the fund has been established, the museum.  Spending of the money is presumably determined by the Trustees.  It is understood that the Trustees are the Council, who it now says ‘owns’ the museum, and the Broadstairs Fellowship.

Next steps, and this is the important bit which we will forward to you in writing, officers will now send an update paper to Corporate Management Team to identify the required resources to take forward a review of the legal advice in relation to making contact with the Charity Commission, to help identify what options are available to the Council to ensure the sustainability of the museum. 

This will then inform how the funds from Joyce Smith’s Will can be spent.

I’m really sorry that this has taken so long, I came to hear about it earlier in the year from you, the Will is the first thing we should have seen, the ownership of the building was the second thing we should have been sure about, and whether the Council had any right to be in any way involved.  But I think the moral for all of you who do so much work over there is to work with us, and once we have all the advice we can move on. I’m sorry you had to wait so long.”