The Charity Commission and Christ Church: Is this the End-Game?

During the months and years of my trying to understand the Christ Church College dispute with its Dean, Martyn Percy, the material needing to be absorbed, has grown exponentially. There was once a time when one could easily keep on top of the available public material, but I fear that point has passed for all but a very few enthusiasts for the case. When you add in the Private Eye contributions, the letters and comments from alumni and others, you are faced with a massive amount of material. One day the whole affair will be properly written up for a D Phil thesis and all the numerous threads joined together. The villains and the heroes of the story will be identified, and there will be a measured assessment of the real motives and priorities of those who expended enormous amounts of energy in the effort to topple the Dean. 

Surviving Church has strayed, over a period, from being a blog which chiefly focused on teaching aspects of the Christian tradition to mainly commentary work. These commentary pieces try to illuminate for my readers some of the current issues in the Church that are newsworthy and topical. My qualification for doing this is not secret access to confidential information, but simply the readiness to attempt to interpret what seems to be going on according to available evidence.  The Christ Church saga is one of the stories that I have been following over two or three years. The numbers of my readers seem to shoot up when I offer my opinions on this story. The material to be reflected upon is now so extensive that it seems that there is always at least one facet of the story that needs comment or further scrutiny at any one time.

The recent news from Christ Church is centred not on the College itself, but on the Charity Commission (CC). As I pointed out some months ago, the CC potentially has real power to change the situation for the College and the Dean. As every trustee of a charity knows, charitable status, with all its tax benefits, has to be earned.  Each charity in Britain has a separate number and has to produce a published statement of their charitable purposes on a regular basis.  If a charity deviates from these charitable purposes, the CC can come in with the legal power to take charge by sacking trustees or whatever else is necessary. A large Church in London was taken to task around three years ago when large sums of money were found to have disappeared into property speculation. I don’t remember the details, but the CC became involved and was able to take decisive action. The number of occasions where there is something to be done like sacking trustees or closing bank accounts, is relatively few. The CC human and administrative resources are simply not sufficient for effective oversight of every charity in the country. The Commission, however, seems to operate decisively when scandals are high-profile, and the problems of a charity have attracted public attention.  Christ Church obviously falls into that category. Once such attention from the CC has been attracted, a casefile is opened, an investigative team gathered, and the CC pursues the problem with energy until all the outstanding issues are resolved.

The Church Times of November 26th and a blog post by Martin Sewell of the same date, refer to a letter sent by the CC on November 4th to the Christ Church Governors. This letter from Helen Earner, Director of regulatory services, does not speak soft words. It ‘requests a long list of background information about the dispute. This includes Governing Body minutes from June 2018 onwards covering the salaries-board dispute …. the money that has been spent on the action hitherto, including payments for legal advice and public relations support and details of the mediation process and why it was halted.’ David Lamming in a blog contribution on Thinking Anglicans, lists various other detailed items being demanded, including minutes of Governors’ meetings where expenditure was authorised.

This recent letter suggests that the CC is fully up to date with what has been going on in the dispute. The answers required to this latest letter will have to be of standard far higher than any platitudes offered by public relations advisers. All the way through this ongoing saga, we have often felt as though truth has been difficult to establish because the College propaganda machine has been cranked up to suggest that the Dean is a wicked dangerous person.  The point at which this process reached a peak was when a list of inhibitions against the Dean were made known to the Press.  This was at the time when a CDM was brought against the Dean in November 2020. As part of the CDM, a risk assessment for the Dean was produced, and this claimed, in summary, that he posed a significant danger to everybody in the college.  The Dean was forbidden to meet anyone in the College unchaperoned, and he was also forbidden to enter the Cathedral. The author of this risk assessment was never revealed. Two suggested authors denied any hand in it.  Clearly, whatever the origin of what I referred to at the time as the ‘dodgy risk assessment’, the existence of such a document suggests underhand behaviour among those who wished to do the Dean harm. A member of the chapter was also heard by members of the cathedral congregation to compare Percy with Peter Ball. It is stories and rumours like this, as well as minutes of meetings and published emails, that will receive forensic scrutiny by the CC. This will enable them in due course to produce an accurate narrative which has integrity and truth.

The requested access by the CC regulator to the minutes of the Governing Body, also mentioned a need to see copies of the emails that Sir Andrew Smith had sight of for his 2018 Tribunal (when the Dean was exonerated). These were published in the appendix to his judgement. Some of the comments in the emails possessed a measure of vitriol who would make it very hard to make a claim that the authors were dedicated only to the pursuit of objective justice. Evidence of such poison against an individual, whether caused by professional jealousy or irrational resentment towards a challenger to the status quo, does not make for a good look. All such documents need to be re-examined by an objective third party like the CC. Given the fact that charitable activities are defined both in law and in the common-sense judgment of ordinary people, it is hard to see how the behaviour of Percy’s enemies will pass the ‘smell-test’ when their words are examined in detail.

Martin Sewell’s latest piece in the blog Archbishop Cranmer https://archbishopcranmer.com/ gives a lot of weight to the issue of the importance of justice being seen to be done. He reminds us of a letter to the Times in March 2020 from Baroness Stowell, then Chair of the CC. She stated that powerful wealthy institutions like Christ Church must earn their status as charitable entities. Public perception of what is going on in Oxford is important. Sewell observes that if the processes involved in setting up a second Tribunal are not seen to be fair, then that will tell against them. In short, the CC may quickly intervene if the process looks like a kangaroo court. One factor, which may favour Percy, is that, according to Sewell, it is going to be extremely hard to find members of the tribunal who have no conflicts of interest. The Church of England has made recent statements about the importance of observing this strictly in all legal cases.  The Sewell article goes into this point at some depth. If the College found itself unable to suggest suitably qualified tribunal members, it would lose control of the process. The previous tribunal of 2018 under Andrew Smith ruled in Percy’s favour on all 27 points and swallowed a huge tranche of charitable funds.  The first and second CDMs against the Dean have failed. Is Christ Church really going to able to risk yet another quasi-judicial process under the scrutiny of the CC?  The cost of failure this second time for the College may lead to substantial personal financial liabilities for the individual members of the Governing Body.

The indications that the Charity Commission is taking a detailed interest in the Percy affair at Christ Church is likely to be good news for all of us who have supported Percy over his years of persecution and harassment.  He has survived stress and breakdown with the help of family, supporters, and hundreds of Christ Church alumni. Meanwhile around him, the professional reputation and integrity of various people in the Church and the College is being scrutinised as never before. Vast sums of money have been spent on reputation polishers and lawyers, but this will not protect them if wrongdoing is uncovered.  The healthy functioning of two important institutions, the Oxford Diocese and Christ Church College has been weakened. If we are right that a body, the CC, which has clout and a deep desire for justice is now fully on board in the defence of truth, then we might be coming close to the final chapter in this story.  Let us hope so. Sewell’s article and the authoritative tone of Helen Earner of the CC certainly point in this direction.

About Stephen Parsons

Stephen is a retired Anglican priest living at present in Cumbria. He has taken a special interest in the issues around health and healing in the Church but also when the Church is a place of harm and abuse. He has published books on both these issues and is at present particularly interested in understanding how power works at every level in the Church. He is always interested in making contact with others who are concerned with these issues.

26 thoughts on “The Charity Commission and Christ Church: Is this the End-Game?

  1. The 2019 investigation and order was perhaps in relation to Christ Embassy: https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/commission-finds-religious-charity-made-informal-grants-amounting-to-more-than-a-million.html

    However, a new investigation appears to have been opened: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/charity-regulator-opens-investigation-into-significant-financial-concerns-at-london-church (Citygate).

    On the origins of the charitable status of places of learning, but touching on schools: https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-charitable-status-of-elite-schools-the-origins-of-a-national-scandal (note, however, that Lansdowne was a whig and not a tory) and, more generally: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1523811/1/Mills_The%20Development%20of%20the%20Public%20Benefit%20Requirement.pdf. Also: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/legal-studies/article/regulation-of-universities-as-charities-one-step-forward-two-steps-back/9B59319A7A19E744ECE59FC06604B26A

    If the trustees of Christ Church are found by the CC to be liable, and are not fully covered by insurance, I would expect the whole concept of college fellowships to come into question in Oxford and Cambridge, as the liabilities are in no way commensurate with the stipends and ‘dividends’. This would be a big problem for the colleges at both universities, since security of tenure has conventionally best been realised via election to a fellowship (unless fellowships are held on fixed term contracts). If that ‘security’ is no longer perceived as being as secure as before, then few will wish to become fellows unless they are guaranteed an indemnity, are insured and/or receive significantly larger stipends. The university administrations might not mind this, however, as the ultimate effect could be – at long last – to transfer significant power and influence to the university registries and away from the colleges; capital would then be more likely to flow to the universities instead of to the colleges.

    1. Thank you, Froghole, for these links. The Fellows / Students at CC Oxford are on very thin ice. When will they realise this, or will they plunge into the lake beneath?

      1. I think it has dawned on them. The question is whether they really have breached their fiduciary obligations and, if so, to what extent they would need to indemnify the college.

        If a don is on a stipend of, say, £40k (often less), and is heavily mortgaged, even a small portion of the amount dissipated on fighting Dr Percy will be devastating: bankruptcy could beckon. That is why my former tutor is concerned the college might fall apart.

        This also is perhaps why so many of the dons have decided to up the ante still further, and have been grasping at every nettle. If they can prove to the CC that they are fighting a legitimate campaign then they will be hoping they will be let off the financial hook. Personally, I don’t think the CC will buy their arguments: Dr Percy has played the role of a Becket, but he has also been treated appallingly.

        However, the dons are not an amorphous blob, although they often seem to be portrayed as such. They may also have had a case if we peel back the malignant accretions of this dispute to its origins as a routine pay claim. From the vantage point of 2016-17 the dean’s desire for additional compensation was – how can I put it? – ‘problematic’. Many dons are on very low stipends relative to Oxford living costs. Their incomes, which had been nearly static in nominal terms for some time, have fallen steadily in real terms as the price of local housing/rents has gone into the stratosphere. There also were major threats to the USS, raising the spectre of additional insecurity in old age. A number are on precarious fixed term contracts. The dean did not have sole charge of the college, which is effectively run by a coterie of past and present censors (on rather lower stipends). He lives rent free in a large grace-and-favour residence (most of the dons subsist in the open housing market). Yet he was seeking more money for himself. Was he necessarily seeking it for them also? From the perspective of the dons, including the highly impecunious lecturers, the ‘injustice’ may not be a one way-street. This, I think, must account for the exceptional bitterness of the original assault on the dean.

        Nor is that all. Many dons will have noted that the main reason why Dr Percy is dean is that he is ordained. He would definitely not have become dean but for: (i) his orders; and (ii) the extreme shallowness of the ordained talent pool. Many of them think (perhaps unfairly?) that they are better than him. The last major push to laicise the deanery was led by Hugh Trevor-Roper, Robert Blake and Charles Stuart (radical tories) who chafed at the notion that the headship should be confined to such a tiny clerical cadre of the academic population. Those views have never disappeared; they just went underground thanks to the tact of deans since John Lowe and Cuthbert Simpson. Like toxins escaped from the grave, the pay claim brought 50 years of visceral accumulated suppressed resentments right into the open.

        1. You make some very interesting comments but I think one correction is needed. Martyn Percy did not ask for a pay rise. He sought a review of the salaries of a small number of senior posts, including his own. Such reviews are routine and the relevant Christ Church committee had undertaken them regularly under previous Deans.

          1. Many thanks for that correction, and that is to his credit. In that case, the students will be in an even less defensible position.

            1. If Christ Church (one of the wealthiest colleges) is so badly underpaying its academic staff, that’s another reason its governance needs to be looked at. It’s no wonder Dean Percy asked for a review of salaries. Incidentally, according to a report in the Times from a couple of years back, the Dean of Christ Church’s pay scale does not compare well with the salaries of other college heads – even though he is running both a college and a Cathedral.

              To most of us, of course, it seems a fabulous salary.

        2. Your comments about dons’ pay would seem to be contradicted by the national HE salary scale. The starting salary for a newly appointed academic is currently about £40k. With promotion this can rise to around £70k. (Professorial salaries go higher and are typically awarded on an individual basis “off scale” and can go up to £120k and beyond).

          Given that the Dean of Christ Church is a professorial role, with significant management duties covering both the college and cathedral, his salary of £90k seems modest. Yes, it comes with a house. But that is the norm for heads of UK universities and colleges. I am struggling to see why the Dean’s request for a salary review, after some years in post, could be regarded as an “injustice”. In fact, it is normal practice for HE employers to review the salaries of their senior managers every year.

          But the harrowing of Dr Percy, is not really about pay injustice, is it? The ring-leaders are senior dons who have done very well for themselves. Their narrative about the Dean’s “greed” is surely better understood as part of a smear campaign designed to hound him out of office. Because, yes, they despise him. Their leaked emails and briefings to the press make this clear. In reality, this is a classic case of workplace bullying. A problem that is rife in British universities but hidden by the widespread use of settlement agreements, the go-to solution of lazy leaderships, which effectively punish victims and reward perpetrators who are left in place, victorious.

          I believe the Charity Commission must, if they can: (a) insist the college pays Dr Percy’s legal fees, (b) put the key players through a disciplinary procedure and (c) issue a statement expressing confidence in Dr Percy and naming those sacked for gross misconduct. Such action would obviate the need for an Employment Tribunal and speed up a return to normality.

          1. Yes, but the national average is about £25,000. So twice that, or even more is an awful lot.

  2. Of special significance, which I don’t think is touched on here, is the following, quoting from a lengthy post by David Lamming on ‘Thinking Anglicans’:

    “In relation to the minutes of Governing Body meetings from June 2018 to present when the trustees considered / took decisions about
    (a) the Salaries Board’s report concerning the Dean,
    (b) the dispute with the Dean, and
    (c) the complaint about the Dean,
    the Charity Commission require to know “which trustees were present when the discussions took place and the decisions were taken.””

    That indicates, I would suggest, that the Charity Commission will be considering the actions of individual trustees.

  3. At last there is a possibility that decision makers will have to take full responsibility for their actions, if they are based on misconduct. It comes only after a great deal of turbulence. It is time for guidelines and regulations to reflect the fact that decision makers may well behave badly, lie, and act on less than ethical reasons, whether or not they are ordained. Surely all the scandals, including Oxford, have shown that not all who are ordained or in authority in church related matters can be trusted. It is the opinion of many that their behaviour is beyond the pale, to use a very mild term.

  4. Froghole, your story is of considerable interest. Do write to me if you’d care to do so. I’d love to know more about the sentiment among the students, who must be extremely nervous about where all this might now by going.

  5. As someone, who like many, work all hours in a caring profession for little more than the minimum wage while having complete sympathy with the treatment the dean has endured I do wonder about the sense of entitlement when his actions are being crowd funded.

    In the beginning I donated £10, something I cannot afford then a few months later the crowd funder tweeted about the much needed holiday (picture of an exotic island)the Percy’s were having and I thought seriously, get real! I haven’t had a holiday for 6 years and never been to an exotic island so Crisis got my £10 donations after that.

    I appreciate this will be an unpopular comment but there does need to be a reality check with how many people live, not in hallowed towers but on council estates.

    1. Let’s hope that anyone would be supported if they were saddled with massive legal fees. I doubt that the Percy family has the necessary under the mattress!

      1. I think Athena that misses the point I was making. If someone needs to crowd fund in order to support their actions the first question they should be asking themselves is “how long can I expect people to financially support me?” While it is true that no one is obligated to contribute the ‘visual merchandising’ on this dispute is considerable and will ensure his supporters do.

        My point was that I cannot ever imagine feeling so entitled that I kept a campaign running for myself for this length of time and for which other people are paying when other options are clearly available to me, even if they are distressing to me.

        1. I was, and am, puzzled by your use of the word “entitled” , which has hostile connotations. Surely, everyone is entitled to good manners, fairness, to live life free of abuse? That’s what we’re all about, here. Martin Percy may be better off than some. But it strikes me he is in the same position I always feared being in myself. That is, that the church has money and lawyers and would be quite prepared to hammer me into the ground if I annoyed it. While I lack the wherewithal to fight it. Some of the cost is thrust upon you by the church starting a process.

          1. There are probably others in this situation Athena. The tables would be turned if complainants too had access to money and lawyers to prove their case. That is obviously a situation the church trades on. As you say whatever our economic circumstances we are entitled to fairness, lives free of abuse, and lives free from persecution and harassment if we complain. I too like yourself and others cannot employ a lawyer. I believe we deserve a national enquiry on the lines of the children’s sexual abuse enquiry, but the government does not appear minded to go ahead with one. A national review into our cases is long overdue. However I hope my cdm against my Bishop will show harassment and worse of safeguarding complainants although I have long given up hope of just church processes. Whatever happens it won’t set the ball rolling for complainants such as yourself. Perhaps we should start applying pressure for a national enquiry. Past cases review just does not cut it. I accidentally found out that my Diocese tried to cover up failures by having a participant in my case “independently” review it as satisfactory for past cases review . My personal belief is that past cases review 2 has been used to cover up safeguarding failures and that my case is unlikely to be the only one to be covered up like this. I found out through a subject access request. It is well worthwhile making such a request but only if you are in a position where you can handle further hurt. Be warned you may find yourself described in extremely unpleasant terms and like myself may have been slandered. If my court case had not been dropped my Diocese submitted for trial a letter calling me mentally deranged.

  6. My reading of the articles in Private Eye suggests that the Dean’s primary antagonist is Karl Sternberg, an alumnus and successful businessman who has been welcomed back onto the Governing Body without an academic role. One can understand why he would feel frustrated that someone such as the Dean had more authority than people like him, and presumably he has the personality and financial backing to carry others along with him.
    This dispute is a microcosm of the wider issue of the separation of church and state, which have been so closely entwined since the Norman Conquest. The unraveling of this relationship may not be a bad thing for furthering the Kingdom of God.

    1. Whether Karl Sternberg is “the Dean’s primary antagonist” is a moot point. However, it is worth noting that it was he who was one of those who referred to the Dean in e-mails in disrespectful and hostile terms, as cited in the Private Eye article on 29 October 2021 (‘Quiet as a Lambeth’, Eye No.1559, page 41) and as recorded in paragraph 14 on page 5 of Appendix 5 to the Smith Tribunal decision of 19 August 2019. Having referred in paragraph 13 to an e-mail sent by Professor Hine in which he wrote of the Dean: “Nasty and stupid. He’s working against us not for us… He’s got to go”, Sir Andrew Smith continued in paragraph 14:

      “Disrespectful and hostile emails of this kind were not confined to the ex-Censors: in emails to Prof. Hine on 15 November 2017, Mr Karl Sternberg referred to the Dean as ‘such a manipulative little turd’ and ‘the little Hitler’ and wrote ‘We are doomed with this wretched man in place’. In an email of 11 January 2018, he described the Dean as ‘incorrigible, and thick, and a narcissist’. On 27 January 2018, he wrote that the Dean lacked integrity, and that the ex-Censors should ‘get rid of him’.

      It is perhaps no wonder that one of the Censors (an appropriate title in the circumstances) sought to suppress the full 110-page Smith decision when alumnus Jonathan Aitken e-mailed it to all the trustees.

      Apart from the other searching requirements of the Charity Commission set out in the appendix to Helen Earner’s letter of 4 November 2021, it is noteworthy that it has asked specifically for “Copies of the email correspondence made available to Sir Andrew Smith to prepare Appendix 5 of his report.” It seems reasonably clear, therefore, from this and its other requests, that the Commission is concerned not only about the expenditure of charity money to fund the ‘second’ tribunal against the Dean (that concerned with the alleged ‘hair-stroking’ incident on 4 October 2020), the proportionality of which was raised in the Commission’s earlier letter to Christ Church trustees of 27 January 2021, but also whether College funds were properly used to prosecute the Dean before the Smith tribunal in 2019—a prosecution that failed spectacularly, with all 27 charges against the Dean rejected by the former High Court judge.

      1. Two further purely neutral comments about Mr Sternberg: (1) He is a layman, and (2) he is a Trustee of the Charity “The Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford of the Foundation of King Henry VIII”.

  7. This is a useful summary, Stephen, of recent developments in the Christ Church ‘saga’.

    One correction, and a comment about the Charity Commission letter of 4 November 2021 about which, as you’ve noted, I’ve already made a blog comment on Thinking Anglicans.

    First, the correction. You say in paragraph 7 of your post: “The first and second CDMs against the Dean have failed.” In fact, there has only been one formal complaint against the Dean under the provisions of the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, i.e. that relating to the alleged hair-stroking incident in the cathedral sacristy on 4 October 2020, which the President of Tribunals, Dame Sarah Asplin ruled, in her section 17 Decision dated 28 May 2021, did not amount to serious misconduct, even if true, so that it would be disproportionate to refer it for trial by a disciplinary tribunal. (And, if it wasn’t serious misconduct for the purposes of the CDM, it is difficult to see how it could be ‘immoral, scandalous or disgraceful’ behaviour such as would justify the removal of the Dean – the only issue that will concern the second College tribunal.)

    The other complaint made against the Dean by the malcontents in 2020 was of an alleged failure on his part to respond properly when informed of four safeguarding matters. This was investigated by a core group of the National Safeguarding Team (NST) of the Church of England and rejected; Dr Jonathan Gibbs, the lead safeguarding bishop, stating as reported in the Church Times on 11 September 2020: “An independent investigation into allegations that the Dean, Martyn Percy, failed to fulfil his safeguarding responsibilities has concluded the Dean acted entirely appropriately in each case.”

    The comment: No deadline has been set by the Charity Commission for the provision of the further information set out in the appendix to the letter of 4 November 2021. (A sentence that may have been intended to stipulate such a deadline has been cut short: “We would appreciate”, so we don’t know exactly what the Commission would appreciate.) However, what the letter does disclose is an intention by the Commission to “meet the senior leadership of the Charity” after receiving and assessing the additional information requested, and also to meet the Dean. It seems that the Commission may still be hoping for a mediated solution to the College’s dispute with the Dean.

  8. Thank you David for putting me right on the CDM point. I knew that in the March – September 2020 episode, the NST were involved in some activity against Percy which was concluded by +Jonathan in the Dean’s favour. There is everywhere a massive amount of detail. I like to think that someone like me needs to summarise stuff to stop the reader being totally overwhelmed by the detail.

  9. The Times this morning (3 December 2021) reports an IPSO adjudication, upholding a complaint about “reported quotes from confidential documents regarding [a] woman’s comments she had made about her reaction to an alleged assault against her” in Andrew Billen’s report in The Times (pages 2-3 of times2) on 16 December 2020, headlined “Is the war of Christ Church v the dean at an endgame?”

  10. At last, action from an unexpected source. The Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University have written to the Christ Church trustees, requesting a meeting. This is their letter:

    “We are writing to you as the trustees of Christ Church to request a meeting to discuss the protracted and ongoing dispute with the Dean and the damage it is doing to the reputation of the collegiate university.

    “We appreciate that the dispute is a matter for the college but you must appreciate the deleterious impact it is having on the rest of the university. We would like to request, therefore, that you invite us to attend your next Governing Body meeting so that we can discuss the matter.”

    1. The report by Andrew Billen in The Times (21 December) concludes:
      “Last night Christ Church said: “We have received the letter from the chancellor and vice-chancellor and welcome the opportunity to discuss the situation with them. We have no further comment to make at this time.”

      As I have just posted on Thinking Anglicans, where a link to the letter can be found:

      “Somehow, I doubt that the malcontents among the Governing Body of Christ Church do “welcome” the opportunity to discuss the situation with the University’s Chancellor and Vice Chancellor. The statement, by an unnamed spokesperson (“Christ Church said…”) must have been spoken through gritted teeth!

      “This is a significant intervention that may, at long last, jolt those trustees who, to date, have loyally followed the lead of the malcontents, into reconsidering their support, having regard to the potential financial peril they may already be in (flagged up by the Charity Commission letters), as well as the damage that the actions of the Governing Body are doing to the reputation of the University, not just the college.”

    2. Relevant to this is a piece in the last Private Eye, claiming that many of the other college heads are worried that the intervention of the Charity Commission threatens the whole cosy racket by which Oxford colleges are presently governed.

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