[William Clemmey]

We use Burgis and Bullock in Leamington Spa

[William Clemmey]

Tina
Please can you email me with numbers and your view on how it is working having residents as trustees as I would like to broach the subject with our trustees
Many thanks
William Clemmey
Chief Officer Municipal Charities
chiefofficer@municipal-charities.org.uk

[William Clemmey]

We converted to becoming a CIO in 2022 (see previous posting on this forum)
Very happy to supply copies of our CIO constitution and a checklist for incorporation and other materials such as TUPE of staff, the need for a new bank account, if you a re a Registered Provider the need to reregister and obtain permission from Homes England to transfer the properties to the CIO if you have received a grant from them or their predecessors;

We can provide an example of a transfer deed -transferring all of the assets and liabilities from the old charity to the CIO. You will also need to get Section 105 dispensation to Charity Commission due to the conflict of interest since most of your trustees will be the same

Its well worth doing and will attract more trustees since they gain the limited liability. A CIO is much better than a Company limited by Guarantee due to not having to report to both Companies House and the Charity Commission

Happy to supply copies of documents or chat
William Clemmey 07922508913
chiefofficer@municipal-charities.org.uk

[William Clemmey]

We have a resident on our Properties Committee and it works well – she has a lot of skills having spent her life working on historic buildings.

We have another resident who is interested in becoming a trustee and is a trained accountant which meets one of our trustees skills gaps.
All trustees sign confidentiality agreements so I dont see it being a problem having a resident as a trustee. We are trying to move away from engaging trustees in the day to day joys of residents lives and they are instead involved in the strategic decisions about redecorating a residents home rather than whether they are in hospital or not.
When running youth charities I would aim for 25% young people on the Board so I dont see why it cannot be the same for Almshouses.

William Clemmey
chiefofficer@municpal-charities.org.uk

[William Clemmey]

Under the policy we have with Grouts its £250000 management protection policy.
However we appear to have covered this 5 times as we have 5 separate policies – I am trying t sort this out.
I have always thought that Trustees insurance is a waste of money if your charity is run well
William Clemmey
Chief Officer@municipal-charities.org.uk

[William Clemmey]

We have a Scheme Manager rather than a warden and also an operations Manager so we cover holidays. Also our Handymen could take calls if needed. We give tradesmen access to resident’s keybox numbers (with their permission)
Having our own handymen has certainly reduced our maintenance costs and improved our satisfaction rating with residents

William Clemmey
Chiefofficer@municipal-charities.org.uk

[William Clemmey]

Yes we are registered with them for the Heating Network at two of our properties which have heating networks
We received a discount as a result when there were grants to individual householders

William Clemmey
chiefofficer@municipal-charities.org.uk

[William Clemmey]

Definitely reccomend them for friendliness and helpfulness. Also good quotations – hence we have moved our boiler policy across and will move lift next year
Once our current 5 year contract via Grouts ends we will be obtaining a comparative quotation from Brown and Brown
William Clemmey

[William Clemmey]

Emails from the Housing Ombudsman do come across as abrupt and just giving a week to action. They are however, open to delays if you respond to them.
Initially we were in trouble for not completing a Performance Compliance review which we put together and put onto the website.
Then over Christmas they asked why we had not also submitted our Housing Ombudsman Complaints self assessment. We had fortunately completed this 24 page document last March so were able to ask for a delay and then put it onto our website and we are now compliant.
This year we have until the end of September to submit all the updated documentation which means that it can go through our committees.
The irony is that we do not receive any complaints.

[William Clemmey]

Stephen
Provided that you are simply transferring all of the assets and liabilities of your current charity to the CIO then there should not be a problem
But you need to liaise with Homes England about this
see above
1. Homes England
As a registered provider you have to contact Homes England to check that you have not had any grants from them in the past. If you have you have to send them a letter asking them to approve the transfer to the CIO (- I will send you the one we are using.) They discovered more grants that we were not aware of. Due to problems this has taken 2 years so far – the main being our slow solicitors plus the fact that we need permission from the Charity Commission to release the permanent endowment of one of the charities under section 105 the other almshouses have been transferred under a vesting declaration whereby The Charity Trustee makes this declaration under section 310 of the Charities Act 2011 (as modified by regulation 61 of the Charitable Incorporated Organisations (General) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/3012)) to vest all the Property of the Transferors in the Transferee.

I would be very happy to share our Homes England contact which is Holly Jacobs
Email: Grant_Notifications@homesengland.gov.uk
She understands the situation
Happy to chat to you about it and share the holding letter we are sending them whilst we transfer the Almshouse property at the Land Registry from the Official Custodian of Charities to the CIO
William Clemmey
chiefofficer@municipal-charities.org.uk

[William Clemmey]

Trevor,
As Debbie says the report needs to be signed off by your Board of Trustees

Also do remember to put the report onto your website along with your complaints policy and also your Housing Ombudsman Complaints self assessment document which details how you will respond to the Complaints policy (all 27 pages of it) We got caught out in not having this document on our website even though we had produced it eight months before internally
All on our website now if you want to check or borrow https://municipal-charities.org.uk/policies/
William Clemmey
chiefofficer@municipal-charities.org.uk

[William Clemmey]

Tina
Since you are not a registered provider then you can increase your rates up to the Housing Benefit cap. You might want to consider introducing a Service Charge to help towards this figure which might be more acceptable to the local authority. There should not be any cap on the increase.

Its worth using the Equivalent fair rent figure for your WMC (we do this for all new residents as otherwise we are capped by being a Registered Provider)
You should try to to ensure that your rents are under 80% of the local market rents to be able to show that you are offering affordable housing as a charity

You can find more information on Introducing a Service Charge on the webinar we ran for the Almshouse Association

Happy to answer anything else on this
William Clemmey
Chief Officer Municipal Charities
chiefofficer@municipal-charities.org.uk
07922508913

[William Clemmey]

Very Happy to share our budget with you
We simply increase our maintenance budget over 5 years based on the estimates in the quinquennial.
We have worksheets on:
WMC
Service charge calculation
ERF and CMF
Salaries
Etc
It’s quite a work of art but really helpful for us
William Clemmey
Chiefofficer@municipal-charities.org.uk
07922508913

[William Clemmey]

Hi Jacqui
We have a number of schedules which our Scheme Manager keeps
Painting and decorating schedule
Eicr and EPCs
Refurbishment schedule which shows when the residents flat was last psinted, had new shower, was painted, new kitchen and new carpets
PAT testing

We repaint every 7 years
Happy to share any of them with you
William Clemmey
Chiefofficer@municipal-charities.org.uk

[William Clemmey]

Provided your governing deeds do not exclude residents from running a business then I would not see it as a problem.
We have had accountants and an antiques dealer ( his shop was elsewhere but he did store goods in his flat)
You would need to establish what income the business is bringing in so as to ensure that the resident still meets the Financial criteria (ie not too rich)
I guess it also depends on type of business and ensuring it’s not a nuisance to other residents

William Clemmey
Chiefofficer@municipal-charities.org.uk

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