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Didn't even notice that was you. Sorry Drac, please don't think you're being stalked by a personal fact checker.
Hahaha! No, prefer it if I’ve got it wrong and corrected.
Wel said @edlong . It is good that they are saying they are open to working with the CC. The level of reserves looks high, or rather there isn't an obvious reason why it should be at that level. I'm a trustee of a charity and the reseres are about 10% of that level, to cover 6 months of run down costs for staff and lease, factorng in any other obligations. It's all very individual to each charity and needs to be constantly revisited.
If the charity has had a large lump sum fund raise, then it is hard to see how reserves of £500k are in any way sustainable. Hopefully the CC will be helping them here, but they do already have a decent firm of accountants and lawyer to help them.
There is a focus in the accounts on ensuring they have trustees with the right expertise, but it seems only passing reference to the need to find a CEO and head of fund raising. The CEO should be the key person they need to run the charity correctly, with the trustees ensuring the CEO is doing their job and the charity is achieving is objectives - the trustees aren't there to run the charity in a executive capacity. If they have a CEO and a fund raising person, they could see a real pressure to raise significant funds to justify that approach and cost. It is potentially a challenging situation for the trustees - do they take the view that it was largely a one-off and decide to distribute the funds for maximum impact, or do they think they can annnual raise substantial funds when we move further and further away from Covid and memories of Sir Tom walking around the garden.
Maytrix Group seems to be doing fairly well and I assume is sub letting part of its office to the charity (but who to if there are no employees?). I think it would look better if Matrix simply let the charity use the space, especially if it is surplus. Charging £9k pa rent doesn't looks so good from a perception perspective. The same applies to recharging mileage costs from the charity I think.
Having Matryx pay some relatively small costs, or let it use space it isn't using for free, would have looked much better than it does here.
I'm fairly sure the rent payments aren't ultimately to Maytrix, they are just through it. From the accounts:
"These costs [the office rent and a load of other stuff] were initially funded by Maytrix.. on behalf of the charitable company, and reimbursed when sufficient funds were available."
If they were actually renting an office from the firm that would be disclosed as such, including, I think, reference to whether it was at market rates, or something different. If it was discounted that would also be disclosed e.g. if fair market rent was 20k but they agreed to charge 10k because charity, then the charity should report the value of the £10k "benefit in kind" received as well as the actual transaction being in the related parties note.
EDIT: I strongly disagree that there is any issue or criticism for reclaiming expenses, including mileage.