The wardens at Lydiard Park are looking for a couple of volunteers to carry out a breeding bird survey this year, of woodland and farmland species.
If anyone is interested please contact Mark Eborn or Chris Walker on 07766368262.
The information in this article may be well known to many readers but less familiar to others. Either way I hope this article is useful in providing some background on the current situation for the Cotswold Water Park Trust and upon progress in delivering the Cleveland Lakes Project. It will also lead onto some discussion about birding in the CWP.....but more on that later.
On the 19th April 2010, following a discrete but intensive internal investigation, the Cotswold Water Park Society staff reported its own Chief Executive Officer, Dennis Grant, and Finance Director, Nick Hanson, to Gloucestershire Police for the theft of a large sum of money and other financial irregularity. Following this, they were duly arrested on the 28th April 2010. Further investigation by the Society and Gloucestershire Constabulary highlighted theft and fraudulent activity by Grant and Hanson amounting to almost £700,000. Whilst Hanson died of a heart attack before he could be brought to justice in summer 2010, Grant went to trial and was sentenced to 4 years, 4 months imprisonment on the 13th July 2011 for six counts of theft, fraud and false accounting.
We began the process of trying to recover as much of the stolen funds as possible in 2011, and whilst we are unlikely to recover them all, we hope to recover some. This is ongoing at present so we are unable to disclose more than this, but I hope in future articles to be able to share good news of some funds recovered.
This theft and the costs of the ensuing investigation has cost us dearly, both in direct financial losses, but also in legal costs, broken relationships with local partners and communities and pride in ourselves and our work. The effects will be felt for some time.
Clearly the theft of such a vast sum of money from a very small local environmental charity has huge ramifications on the organisation, its partners, its funders and the local community with which is works. In some ways, we were fortunate that the funds stolen were commercial funds and not charitable funds or grants. But clearly the stain of financial irregularity remains.
An obvious question to ask is how on earth could Grant and Hanson could possibly do this and think they could do so without consequence? The reasons are wide, varied and involve a lot of history so I won't go into the detail here (although much of this information is in the public domain and if you'd like to know more, please let me know). They can however be summarised by two points. Firstly, financial regulation; the Society was an Industrial & Provident Society (IPS) with some charitable status enabling us to secure grants and funds for charitable and environmental aims, which in financial circles is considered somewhat archaic today. IPSs are regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), but regulation is rather arms length, so for example, when Grant and Hanson failed to file annual financial reports to the FSA (as they were covering up their fraudulent activities) the FSA did nothing as they don't routinely chase up late reports and they certainly don't apply penalties for this. In summary, the regulator wasn't looking over their shoulder. (This is in complete contrast to Charities which are regulated by the Charities Commission, but I'll come back to that in a moment).
The second point regards governance within the Society. And it should be noted at this point that this has been a source of frustration for staff for many years; please don't presume that staff had been blind to the issues being discussed here. Another question that reasonable people would ask would be why didn't Society Board Members/Trustees prevent this from happening? Again, the issues are complex, but in summary, Members/Trustees DID make efforts and concerns were raised. Consider that Grant was brought in originally to correct the financial situation with the Society, which was already in difficulty, so the background to this was already one of financial problems. Added to this Grant & Hanson were able to take advantage of a vulnerable organisation by withholding financial information and creating a series of smoke screens; funds were being siphoned off, payments re-directed. And no-one knew. At the same time, Grant was trying to change the direction of the Society and some of his decisions and actions really began to strain relationships within the organisation and with partners and local communities. These were difficult times for us all.
It was becoming increasingly clear that the finances were in a mess and so Grant and Hanson were pressurised into employing a new finance officer; within days of commencing her post, Tasha Flaherty noticed a number of concerning things but to begin she wasn't privy to all the financial information she needed. Working covertly with the Society Chair, the late Brian Atfield, they gathered and amassed considerable evidence. All this was done without Grant & Hanson realising and without other staff knowing. Once they had sufficient evidence, the police were called in.....
Its very fair to say that the actions of Tasha Flaherty were incredibly brave and probably saved the organisation before things worsened further. Today, Tasha is our Finance Director.
The imprisonment of Grant was just the first step towards the recovery of this organisation. The legacy of the £700,000 theft by Grant & Hanson lives on, and against a backdrop of a global economic recession, in which funding sources have disappeared and existing sources have become increasingly competitive. A number of issues and problems became clear during this whole sorry episode but it was clear even before this, that a re-structure of the Society was necessary to address problems regarding the governance, problems that hark back to the original launch of the Society in 1996. This was also an opportunity to address how we communicate with local communities; the Grant & Hanson era allowed a number of relationships to deteriorate, as frustration in the wider community grew as a result of their actions, including with local parishes. A re-launch is therefore an opportunity for a fresh start in a number of ways.
And so, on the 1st April 2011, following considerable work a "new" organisation was launched; the Cotswold Water Park Trust. I say "new" because the "CWP Trust" has existed since 2007; as a fully charitable body we have administered all charitable funds and grants through this body, which was parallel to the Society, for reasons that will become clear.
1. A new board of Trustees;
At time of writing the interim Chair is Dr Simon Pickering, previously Biodiversity Manager for the Society until he left to work at Ecotricity. A local recruitment specialist, Robin Rogers, of Oaksey, volunteered a considerable amount of time to recruit new trustees; the result was a series of trustees of high calibre and high influence; further information Here on our website. A new permanent chair is soon to be announced too.
2. The structure of the organisation and its financial regulation is considerably improved;
The "CWP Trust" has been brought to the forefront of the organisation to ensure that all finance and funds go through the fully charitable body. And this means that we are now fully regulated by the Charities Commission, who take their role very seriously and closely monitor their organisations. Furthermore, the public can also view the health of organisations through the Charities Commission website, for example the Trust can be viewed Here, annoyingly showing how, after considerable work, we were a mere 3 days late submitting last financial year's accounts! Regulation by the Charities Commission is extremely useful and helpful to organisations such as ours going through a period of change and recovery; they have been enormously supportive and indeed, their support and approval is an excellent reference to demonstrate good practice. To have this, is invaluable. The "old" Society is still there, in the background, as this is our landholding body; changing all leases and land registry would be an unnecessary expenditure at the moment.
3. Membership;
On the 1st April we also launched a new membership scheme. Many of you may remember the old membership that we used to run; this was simply a way of administering season passes for Keynes Country Park and since we no longer manage this (as a result of another damaging decision by Grant & Hanson) we no longer administer the season passes. Instead, the new membership is more akin to schemes that you will be familiar with at Wildlife Trusts, RSPB etc. Crucially, this membership enables members to vote at the AGM each year, representing another key change for the organisation.
And this links to another area of work at present; re-engaging with local communities. The Grant-Hanson era saw considerable friction resulting from their management and financial activities; likewise, during the past two years we have been through an extremely difficult period of scrutiny, investigation and complete airing of all proverbial dirty washing in public; its been painful, embarrassing and highly negative but probably necessary. We have hidden nothing; there is nothing else to hide! All of this necessitated a period of introspection and internal discussions and re-structure. But now that this is done, we can begin to look outwards once more, and are looking to repair those relationships.
Staff remaining in the organisation now, many of whom you will be familiar with, remain here because we are committed to delivering our various projects, promoting the area and its wildlife, working with the many volunteers who support our work; I assure you, we are not still here because of the salary!
And here we are, nearly in 2012; we have re-structured the organisation and re-launched as the Cotswold Water Park Trust, launched a new membership and despite all of this, we have actually continued to develop and deliver our key projects. Its been a phenomenally busy few years. We've proven that we are still here and are not going into administration. For a while this seemed likely; how could an organisation as small as ours recover from such a huge theft? But we are recovering and we are driving forward now. The next few years are going to be tough; as we all know, sourcing funding is now more difficult than ever and all organisations and businesses are struggling in this respect. However, we are starting from a strong platform, albeit smaller. The organisation has shrunk somewhat with now only 7 fulltime paid members of staff; 2 in Biodiversity, 2 in Estates, 1 in Events & Education, a Finance Director and our Director. Thankfully a number of volunteers support our work, ranging from those who work with us 2-3 days per week to those who undertake weekly surveys and tasks. Our volunteers are incredibly important to us and to our work. Without the support of these volunteers we would struggle to deliver as much as we do, whether in managing our reserves, undertaking guided walks or countless other ways.
One particular area that we are keen to work upon, which urgently needs some attention, is our relationship with local birders and other naturalists.
The local birding community is clearly becoming increasingly disillusioned with the CWP and, it appears, the Trust. Much of this has been ongoing for some time. The reasons for this are wide and varied, ranging from the slow progress in delivering the Cleveland Lakes Project to the loss of favoured birding locations to development. Some of the issues relate to our reserves, and we will be working to resolve some of these. Some of the issues are CWP-wide and relate to land that we don't own or manage; resolving these issues will be challenging, if indeed there is anything that we can do. The result though is fewer birders visiting the CWP, failure to recognise the value of the CWP for all biodiversity (its not just about the birds!) and a reduction in volunteers supporting biodiversity work across the CWP.
Local birders like you, are but one facet of the local community that we work with. In the past the local birding community has provided extensive help and support with surveys, monitoring and reserve management, but in recent years this has significantly dwindled, although of course, many local birders are still very committed to supporting our work. You represent a highly motivated and passionate part of the local community and we should be working together more than we currently are.
It seems that at present, local birders are perhaps especially disillusioned, more so than other sections of the community, or are at least more vocal in their disillusionment! And this may only be reasonable.
We are going to try to make some improvements to the situation; and we are going to try to engage with you all in coming months to try to understand the issues and see if there is anything that can be done. The issues are wide, varied and complex. I don't think that anyone would suggest that they can be resolved quickly and easily but there needs to be greater understanding by us all of the situation, the causes, the responsibilities and the possible solutions.
Many of the issues that we hear about reach us second- or third-hand; something we are keen to instigate is some direct contact; if there is a problem or some feedback, talk to us directly. In order that we may begin to understand your concerns, I am proposing to launch a simple online survey that anyone who wishes to can complete anonymously. I'd prefer that people provided their contact details so that we can talk directly, but to begin with, we just need to hear from people first-hand.
Information provision for local and visiting birders is not what it should be; so the Trust is working with Bob Philpott (who administers the CWP bird sightings blog) and some local birders to begin work correcting this. In coming weeks you will hopefully start to see some positive changes and I hope you'll welcome these. I also hope that you'll understand the background to these changes; they are just the beginning. There are other plans too but one step at a time.....
Future articles will be shorter than this one, but clearly there is a lot to say to begin with; so much has happened. Future correspondence will address more specific points and detail recent progress and if there are any specific questions, please do get in touch.
A bit of local interest. A Colour-ringed Lesser Black-backed Gull (female), photographed by Maurice Carne on the 28th Oct 2011 at Coate Water, was originally ringed in Bristol on the 30th June 2003 by Peter Rock. It has since been sighted a couple of times at Gloucester Landfill in Aug 2003, then in Madrid on Mar 2006 and Jan 2007, and also in Swindon in May 2009. It gets around a bit!
Up until the university plans emerged, the Coate/Badbury Wick area was protected for its high landscape value. This policy was then deleted from the Local Plan to enable the development area.
It is of extreme importance to get a landscape protection policy back for the emerging Swindon Core Strategy. It wouldn't stop all development, but it might ensure that, if development is permitted, it must be of a scale, nature and design that is in keeping with the character of the area.
Click Here to add your name to the petition.