There are ‘no longer the resources’ for Slough Borough Council to carry on giving grants to children’s leisure activities through one of its charitable trusts, a senior official has said.
The James Elliman Trust – which issues grants for education, leisure and recreation for Slough children – is among the charities run by Slough Borough Council that could be shut down.
Strategic financial manager John Hickson told councillors his team were ‘looking at’ closing John Elliman Trust. He said: “Part of the reason for that is the council no longer has the resources and time to work with that.”
The James Elliman Trust appears to have been set up by the council in 1979 to provide ‘education, recreation and leisure-time activities for boys and girls,’ according to its founding statement.
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It says this was particularly aimed at ‘those who are deprived or disadvantaged'. More recent information on the council’s website says grant funding would be aimed at ‘worthwhile causes’ providing recreation facilities for Slough residents.
There appears to be no public information on when James Elliman Trust last issued a grant, and it is 184 days late in submitting its most recent accounts to the Charity Commission.
Mr Hickson was giving an update to Slough Borough Council’s trustees committee – the group of councillors tasked with managing its trusts – at a meeting on Wednesday, July 31.
He said the council is also looking into closing Chalvey Millennium Trust – which is responsible for managing Stabmonk Park.
The council took over the trust from Chalvey residents in 2020. The residents had run the trust themselves since 2020 after receiving grant funding as part of the Millenium Green project. But they struggled to find new volunteers and passed the trust on to the council 2020.
It had been hoped that the park – which is behind Seymour Road – would become green space for a housing development the council hoped to build at the former Montem Leisure Centre opposite.
But the council went effectively bankrupt in 2021 and agreed to sell the Montem Leisure Centre land to private developer Bellway Homes in October 2022.
Stabmonk Park has since become overgrown and the trust has not filed accounts to the charity commission since April 2022.
Bellway Homes has agreed to give the council £100,000 towards the upkeep of the park as part of planning permission, but told the Observer the council still owns the park’s land.
Mr Hickson told councillors that part of the reason for considering closing the Chalvey Millenium Green Trust is that ‘there has been no operation on the trust at all.’
But he stressed that no decision had been made on either trust while officers investigated the possibility of closing them. He said councillors would be updated at a meeting in October.
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