CAVS Chair reported to Charity Commission

Carmarthenshire Association of Voluntary Services (CAVS) Chair and County Councillor Mair Stephens has allegedly been reported to the Charity Commission by disgruntled CAVS staff.

The story and letter were first made public by Your Llanelli’s own Democracy Watch columnist Jacqui Thompson. Writing on her blog Carmarthen Planning she says:

Trouble brewing as staff at the Carmathenshire Associations of Voluntary Services (CAVS) have blown the whistle on the Chair of the organisation, Cllr Mair Stephens (Ind) and made a complaint to the Charity Commission about the inappropriate use of charity and public funds.

Cllr Stephens, member for St Ishmaels (Ferryside, Llandyfaelog area), is also an Executive Board Member on Carmarthenshire Council with responsibility for Human Resources, budgeting and efficiencies. CAVS is funded in part by the Council and of course is a key ‘third sector’ partner.

Although I am publishing the letter here, as it is in the public interest, the due process of investigation will follow. The contents of the letter are self-explanatory.

CAVS are the body responsible for helping the voluntary services with Carmarthenshire. Each county has their own organisation and they recieve funds from the local Council and Welsh Government.

Currently CAVS employ 33 staff and are based in The Mount in Carmarthen. In Llanelli, they currently project manage The Llanelli Multicultural Network and Communities First Bigyn 4.

The letter alleges that Councillor Mair Stephens has:

• been undertaking many actions without the knowledge or consent of the trustee board.
• offering the retiring managing director £50,000 of charity funds without the knowledge of the board.
• manipulating charitable funds to remove the Managing Director
• Allowing a staff member to paid for 5 days work whilst only doing 4.
• delaying an appointment so that the new staff member could recieve redundancy from a County Council.

According to the Charity Commission website, Councillor Mair Stephens is also a trustee of Oriel Myrddin and the Llandyfaelog and District Agricultural and Horticultural Society who incidentally are 25 days late submitting their documents to the Commission.

Ironically, CAVS which has web articles on Trustees and governance and managing money available to help local organisations even managed to file their last accounts (Annual Return for 31 Mar 2011) 85 days late!

We contacted CAVS for a statement and Elizabeth Jenkins, Finance Manager emailed to say:

“Further to your telephone call earlier, the letter purporting to be from CAVS’ Staff is the subject of a full investigation and we have no comment to make at present.”

We did reply and ask if CAVS denied all the accusations contained within the letter but have not received a reply.

We also emailed Councillor Stephens to ask for a comment but have yet received no reply.

A Charity Commission spokesperson confirmed that concerns had been raised but denied any form of investigation was taking place, they said:

“Concerns have been raised with us about the charity Carmarthenshire Association of Voluntary Services (charity number 1062144).”

“We are assessing the concerns to determine what, if any, role there might be for the Commission.”

“All concerns raised about charities are assessed against our risk framework.”

“We cannot comment about the source of concerns raised with us. Please note this does not mean we are investigating the charity.”