Captain Tom Foundation: What has happened since charity watchdog probe began?
The Captain Tom Foundation was registered in June 2020 as a grant-making charity, for the advancement of public health and wellbeing.
Captain Sir Tom Moore was a hero of the pandemic, but a foundation later set up in his name became the subject of a watchdog inquiry.
Here, the PA news agency takes a look at what has happened in the course of the past four years.
– April 2020
Ninety-nine-year-old veteran Captain Tom Moore sets out on his challenge to raise funds for the NHS in the pandemic by walking 100 25-metre laps of his garden.
His efforts gain praise from then-prime minister Boris Johnson and the royal family and he celebrates his 100th birthday on April 30 with a Spitfire flypast and a message from the Queen.
A few days earlier, on April 24, Club Nook was set up as a private limited company, with Mr and Mrs Ingram-Moore as directors. They and their two children all hold shares in the company.
– May 2020
On the same day, May 13, the family applies to the Charity Commission to register the Captain Tom Foundation, establishes a private family trust to which Captain Tom assigned all his intellectual property rights, and licenses the intellectual property rights to Club Nook.
Also on this date, a publishing agreement is made between Penguin Books and Club Nook for the services of Captain Tom for four books. Three are subsequently published, with the Ingram-Moores receiving an advance of £1,466,667 – none of which goes to the foundation – the Charity Commission finds.
– June 2020
The Captain Tom Foundation is registered on June 5 as a grant-making charity, for the advancement of public health and wellbeing.
At that point the commission advises the trustees to ensure appropriate written agreements are in place between the charity and its partners or connected commercial bodies, including any arrangements between the family and the charity in terms of managing intellectual property.
– July 2020
– December 2020
After consultation with doctors, Sir Tom and his family fly to Barbados after being treated to a holiday by British Airways.
– January 2021
Sir Tom is admitted to Bedford Hospital and is diagnosed with pneumonia. He initially tests negative for Covid-19, but about 10 days later he tests positive, on the same day he is discharged to his family home.
Having been taken back into hospital and with his condition deteriorating, Hannah Ingram-Moore and Sir Tom’s grandchildren visit his bedside to say goodbye, while his other daughter, Lucy Teixeira, speaks to him by video call.
On February 1, Mr and Mrs Ingram-Moore become trustees of the charity.
Sir Tom dies in Bedford Hospital on February 2 and his daughters pay tribute to their “incredible father”.
His funeral takes place on February 27, and his coffin, draped in a Union flag, is carried to Bedford Crematorium by soldiers from the Yorkshire Regiment.
– March 2021
Mrs Ingram-Moore resigns from her trustee position on March 15.
The Charity Commission opens a case into the Captain Tom Foundation after the charity requests permission to make Mrs Ingram-Moore chief executive.
The watchdog says the £38.9 million (including Gift Aid) raised by Sir Tom, and donated to a separate charity, NHS Charities Together, before the formation of the Captain Tom Foundation, is not part of the scope of the inquiry.
Mrs Ingram-Moore is among a number of “inspirational individuals” invited to the Royal Box on the first day of Wimbledon, enjoying applause before the first match on Centre Court as the tournament returned after Covid. Her husband is alongside her.
– July 2021
The commission refuses permission to employ Mrs Ingram-Moore as chief executive on a salary of £100,000, saying it considers the proposed salary “neither reasonable nor justifiable”.
– August 2021
The commission permits the charity to appoint Mrs Ingram-Moore as interim chief executive on a salary of £85,000 per year, on a three-month rolling contract, for a maximum of nine months, while the charity’s trustees carry out an open recruitment process.
The commission later finds Mrs Ingram-Moore has removed a conflicts of interest clause from her signed employment contract, dated August 31.
She is noted as having said it would be “too restrictive”, adding: “It is a given that I will not be doing anything to conflict with all my roles but I cannot be in a position that I have to request authority at every turn, my life would grind to a halt”.
In the same month, a planning application is made to Central Bedfordshire Council for permission to build a Captain Tom Foundation Building in the grounds of the Ingram-Moore family home in Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire.
A subsequent retrospective application, for a larger C-shaped building containing a spa pool, is made to the council.
– April 2022
Mrs Ingram-Moore’s role as chief executive of the foundation ends on April 29.
– June 2022
The commission escalates its probe to become a statutory inquiry, amid concerns about arrangements between the charity and Club Nook, a private company controlled by Mrs Ingram-Moore and her husband, as well as ongoing concerns about the trustees’ decision-making and the charity’s governance.
– November 2022
The retrospective planning application for the building containing a spa pool at the Ingram-Moore family home is refused by the planning authority.
The Captain Tom Foundation stops taking donations after planning chiefs order the unauthorised building to be demolished.
– September 2023
The charity’s accounts show Mrs Ingram-Moore received a gross salary of £63,750 for the nine months from August 2021 to April 2022 and £7,602 in expense payments for travel and administration between June 2021 and November 2022.
Payments of just over £24,000 were also made for office rental and telephone costs to Maytrix Group Limited, a company controlled by Mrs Ingram-Moore and her husband Colin.
The charity said that its total income fell from just over £1 million for the 2021 financial year to £402,854 from June 2021 to November 2022, noting that the regulator’s intervention and subsequent launch of its statutory inquiry had “a massive adverse impact on the charity, our ability to raise new funds and to deliver operational activities”.
In an interview with Piers Morgan for TalkTV, Mrs Ingram-Moore said her family kept £800,000 in profits from three of Captain Sir Tom’s books because it was “what he wanted”.
She says her fundraising father wanted them to keep the money from the books in Club Nook, and said there was no suggestion anyone buying the books thought they were donating to charity.
Mrs Ingram-Moore also accepted she had been paid £18,000 for attending the Virgin Media O2 Captain Tom Foundation Connector Awards in 2021.
The commission’s report later finds that while she was paid £18,000, a separate sum of just £2,000 was paid to the charity.
That same month, during an appeal hearing against the demolition of the spa pool block, the family’s lawyer indicates the charity will close, saying it is “unlikely to exist” in future.
– November 2023
The family lose their appeal against the order to demolish the unauthorised spa pool block at their home.
– February 2024
Demolition begins on the unauthorised spa pool block.
It is disclosed that Hannah Ingram-Moore and her husband have been disqualified from being charity trustees.
Mrs Ingram-Moore is disqualified for 10 years and Colin for eight years, meaning neither can be a trustee or hold a senior management role in any charity in England and Wales in that time period.
The commission says the legal test for disqualification had been met because there was “misconduct and/or mismanagement, the individuals are not fit to be a trustee or hold senior management functions and disqualification is in the public interest”.
The disqualification orders against them were issued in May and came into effect on June 25.
The family say they “fundamentally disagree” with the watchdog’s decision, and describe the ongoing inquiry as a “harrowing and debilitating ordeal”.
They voice concerns that the commission’s investigations have become a “relentless pursuit”.
– November 2024
The commission publishes its report, concluding “serious and repeated” misconduct on the part of the Ingram-Moores.
It said there was a “repeated pattern of behaviour” and that the “failure to manage conflicts of interest” arising from their family links and the charity’s links to their private companies “happened repeatedly and led to direct and indirect private benefit” for them.
The commission calls on the Ingram-Moores to make a “suitable donation” to the foundation.
A spokesman for the foundation says they are “pleased with the Charity Commission’s unequivocal findings regarding the Ingram-Moores’ misconduct”.
They are “imploring the Ingram-Moores to rectify matters by returning the funds due to the Foundation, so that they can be donated to well-deserving charities as intended by the late Captain Sir Tom Moore”.
The Ingram-Moores said they felt “unfairly and unjustly” treated and accused the commission of “selective storytelling”.
They said the inquiry had taken a “serious toll on our family’s mental and physical health, unfairly tarnishing our name and affecting our ability to carry on Captain Sir Tom’s legacy”.
