Government funding of over £840,000 written off to charity which contributed £7,500 twice to Labour Party

Charity Commissioners - Regulatory Case report - Catz Club Reg. Charity No 1112772 5/9/2008. ( Beware Catzclub.uk.org is an adults only site)


1. Catz club (a a non profit organisation Ho.Ho.Ho.) was registered in 2004 by Amanda and Stephen Argent and operates as Schoolfriends etc. and runs about 150 breakfast clubs in schools nationwide (case study) for some 25,000 children. Ending September 2006 (last Accounts available) they received £853 K (including £200,000 of lottery funding ) and and expenditure was £4.257 Mn. 2008 accounts are overdue.


2. An MP unnamed in the report but it was Greg Clark, then the shadow charities minister, on Friday 29th August 2008 disclosed that the Charity had donated £7,500 cash donation to the Labour Party in breach of Commmission's guidance.


3. The payment was initially explained as an "administrative error" by trading subsidiary Catz Club Care Services Ltd.,


4. A further and identical sum had been paid to the Labour Party to cover the costs of attending an even to lobby senor politicians for funds for after school care. It has relied on the generosity of Tony Mitchell, its chairman, who is based in Florida and had outstanding loans to the charity of £13.1m in the year to September 2007.

At the Wembley event in 2007, Mitchell chatted with Ed Balls, the children’s secretary. He said Catz Club paid £15,000 for just three people to attend the function.

Mitchell runs the Warburg Investment Corporation, (No connection with UBS Warburg bankers) a factoring company which buys invoices from organisations at less than their face value, then collects the full sum.


5. The "misapplied" funds have been repaid by the Labour Party.


More information (and if you have any more pease let us know) ;


Catz Club has revealed that it failed to pay back approximately £570,000 out of £1.3m it borrowed from Futurebuilders. Futurebuilders has written off part of the £1.8m loan it made to the after-school childcare charity Catz Club. (Now known to be £840,000).


New Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne has agreed to make inquiries about the roles played by two people with Labour Party connections in the funding of childcare charity Catz Club by Futurebuilders England.


Margaret McDonagh, former general secretary of the Labour Party , is a former trustee of the childcare charity, which trades under the name Schoolfriendetc . Amanda Delew, who fundraises for the charity (and of course has worked hand in glove with cash for coronets crook Lord Levy) , is an ex-Labour fundraiser. Futurebuilders , is a £215m government fund to help charities deliver public services.


Curiously ,Futurebuilders England has deleted from its website , references to its £1.8m loan and £200,000 grant to Catz Club.

PS : Man to watch - ex Christ Church, Oxford . Stephen Bubb is Chief Executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) – a dynamic and high profile UK body - where his work on leadership, sector funding and public service reform has radically shifted attitudes and policies. In 2007 he became Secretary General of EUCLID, the European Third Sector Leaders Network.