30th of September end of Manor Residents Association - 1st of October Welcome "K

[crisstw]

Possibly

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/jul/27/charitymanagement.charitieslaw

[testing times]

I'm confused about these posts so can someone clarify a few things.

Am I to take it the old, 'new' organisation which replaced the infamous Manor Residents has now been wound up and a new, new one set up to take its place? Further, if there was some sort of re-launch, which councillors were there telling everyone how wonderful everything was going to be?

[lynda]

Firstly Manor Residents Association (still active) at the same time from same address we had Manor Community Resource Centre Ltd (wound up recently). Then in October 2013 we have Manor Family Centre Ltd(still active) which is the name above the door. And now apparently its Kilmarnock Family Resource Centre Someone should write a book. As to who runs it now I have no idea, maybe Jimbo will tell us later.

[lynda]

Im hearing its Dave Wise

[steveL]

Im hearing its Dave Wise

Nah it's not Dave Wise. There's some joint effort going on at the moment by other community groups to try and provide some of the support services up in Owton Manor using Kilmarnock Road as a base. Wise will be a part of that but only a part. That said, there's currently no money other than what the likes of West View Resource/Belle Vue/Headland Future have managed to scrape together between them. Not surprisingly and for obvious reasons, they won't allow anyone that used to be involved in the management of Manor Residents anywhere near their own efforts. ... Would you?   

Angie's Manor Residents (in its various guises) was around £600,000 in debt in the end. Think of a business, any business, and you can pretty much guarantee that Wilcox owed money to it.

The first attempt to keep things going after Wilcox was turfed out ended up being swamped as the true size of the debt became clear. That's why the tribunal winners started to receive a bit of money but then it dried up - as little bits of money came in some of it was being directed towards the compensation; some of it was going out to a bunch of other creditors all wanting their money.

In the end, with the whole Manor Residents/Wilcox story spreading, the few remaining sources of income they had dried up one by one.

There's some sort of legal reason why Manor Residents can't actually be wound up - probably it can't happen until something is sorted out about all of that debt.

From what I can see, there's no link between the shower of sh**e that went before and what other community groups from other parts of the town are now trying to put together in order to keep some sort of services going.

Even so, I can't see them being willing to dip into their own funds forever just to keep things going in Manor when they have their own areas to think about. Some sort of effort will have to come from the Manor itself - hopefully from people who remember how good it used to be before it became contaminated by Wilcox and her motley crew.   

[lynda]

 To Kipperdip, I do, I Know and I will  Steve all I know the other management has gone and  Val and Dave Wise are in   Hope to see you all 13th x 

[fred c]

To Kipperdip, I do, I Know and I will  Steve all I know the other management has gone and  Val and Dave Wise are in   Hope to see you all 13th x 

I look forward to seeing you on the 13th Lynda.... in fact i will look forward to buying you a Glass Of Veuve Cliquot or 2.......... lmao

[lynda]

Thank you Fred lol

[The Great Dictator]

It sounds like organised corruption, its a shame they didn't have an accountant.

[Carlwilliams]

The only reason angie got made coubcillor in the first place was because staff members were made to go across the road and vote.
If i remeber right steven was trustee when all this was going on.

[one direction]

£600,000 is about a lifetime's earnings on minium wage so its not like they were being greedy, just getting paid a little bit in advance!

[steveL]

mmm....assuming you were lucky enough to be paid the minimum wage, that is.

[steveL]

Let me tell you a story as the late Max Bygraves would say.

When the heat was on over Manor Residents, HBC finally relented from its 'nothing to do with us' position and agreed to carry out an audit of the organisation. One of the things that had attracted attention was the complete lack of payslips being given to employees. Wilcox had gotten around this by saying that she was now using the basic Payroll Calculator and Payslip Generator that was available from HMRC.

On the day of the audit, Wilcox went in early, pulled up the HMRC Payroll screen and entered fake data for one of the employees. She carefully left the completed screen untouched and allowed the screensaver to kick in with instructions that no one was to touch the computer. When the council auditor appeared and asked about the production of payslips, Wilcox guided him to the computer that she had been working on and said words to the effect, "Look, you can see that I'm using HMRC's own software."

She wasn't; it was all staged for the auditor's benefit. As a matter of fact, she wasn't even connected to HMRC BUT – the council auditor fell for it hook, line and sinker and dutifully reported back that Wilcox was now using the HMRC's own software even producing a report that said so. The audit itself was a sham contrived for PR purposes. How could it be anything else? £600,000 of debt and yet the council auditor didn't spot it.

Everything is a bit screwed at the moment because Wilcox is still out on bail as she has been for over a year, so there's a limit to what can be said without screwing up the investigations. That said, beyond any criminality, there is negligence here on a colossal scale from the Charity Commission who ignored several e-mail alarms that all was not as it should be at Manor Residents, to HBC.

HBC's part in all of this should not be ignored. No fewer than six local labour councillors had connections to Wilcox and Manor Residents. Is this why auditing of Manor Residents simple did not take place – even on the same scale as applied to other similar organisations around town? Even when people almost pleaded with HBC to 'take a serious look' at Manor Residents they were ignored. When duplicated accounts were highlighted, Christopher Akers-Belcher himself stood up in the council chamber and told everyone that it was all the fault of the Charity Commission and it was only when Wilcox's 'questionable activity' started to get too close to Senior Officers for comfort that the Chief Executive finally called in the Police only weeks after he had been insisting that Wilcox had done nothing wrong.

When Wilcox's part in all of this has been sorted, there is a serious need for a full public enquiry carried out by Government officials to examine fully the role of councillors and senior council officers because there is corruption here and we all know it. I sincerely hope that the criminal compensation scheme sees that Lynda Gooding and her three other tribunal winners finally get the monies that they are owed.

Lynda Gooding has more decency in the finger-nail of her little finger than all of those who have conspired against her could muster together. The hypocrites that are Hartlepool Labour Group, who last year all stuck their arms up and supported a council motion proposed by themselves condemning all employers who paid less than the minimum wage - three of those arms belonged to Angela Wilcox, Stephen Akers-Belcher and Paul Beck.