Members of the Lower Moss Wood Educational Nature Reserve and Wildlife Hospital wish to request an EGM.

There have been concerns raised that the charity trustees are not fulfilling the charity’s aims and objectives, and that the charity is not being administered and governed effectively and professionally. At the EGM members will seek full and transparent explanations from the charity trustees for their recent actions and governance of the charity. In order to formally request the Board of Trustees to call an EGM, 10 members are required to request such a meeting.

The issues which have been raised are:

Postponement of the AGM without explanation or an alternative date.

Resignation of 3 trustees due to the conduct of the remaining 3 trustees.

Board has been non-responsive to formal enquiries and concerns, resulting in a lack of transparency and communication

No board member has signed Conflict of Interest forms provided at last AGM

Staff have repeatedly asked for decisions to be explained and evidenced in writing and have been repeatedly ignored. Board have dictated action without due explanation

Coercion of staff members

HR company (brought in by the board) has not been properly introduced to all staff. HR and grievance procedures not being followed

Staff member submitted an official grievance against board members, subsequently resigned with immediate effect due to further upset and unacceptable time length before grievance hearing to be held.

If you would like to support the request for an EGM please enter your full name and email address and hit 'Sign Now' .

Email to trustees Friday 18th September 202

To, Elaine Alexander and Members of the Board.

Ref: Motion calling for Extraordinary General Meeting of the Lower Moss Wood Educational Nature Reserve and Wildlife Hospital. With an excess of 10 of the members of Lower Moss Wood signing the online petition calling for an EGM, we are formally writing to you as Chair to announce, in accordance with clause Q of the charity’s constitution that an EGM take place at the earliest possible date.

A minimum of 21-days notice needs to be given to the members that the meeting is taking place. Therefore we expect a meeting to be called during the week beginning the 11th October 2021. The nature of the meeting is to,

1. Directly question the Board's recent actions, communications and behaviour in regards to the governance of the organisation.

2. To allow members to address the evidence’s in hand as to the Board’s conduct.

3. To give the Board the right of reply to questions for the members as to their actions, in accordance with natural justice.

4. To allow the members to decide whether the Board's actions have brought the organisation into disrepute.

Upon receipt of your agreement to call an immediate EGM on behalf of the membership, we will submit our formal items for the agenda. We require that you acknowledge receipt of this letter by return and that you call the EGM date within three days of receipt of this letter. If you are unable to do this, or we do not hear from you within 3 working days (5pm 22nd September 2021), we will move to call the meeting ourselves as is our right as members. Please direct your reply to Ian Daniells who is acting as facilitator for the EGM.

Yours respectfully,

Ian Daniells
on behalf of The Members of Lower Moss Wood who signed the petition.

Trustees response Wednesday 22nd September 2021

Dear Ian,

Thank you for your email requesting an EGM.

From the points you've raised, as to the reasons why you are calling for an EGM, I think there has been some miscommunication between the trustees, employees and volunteers.

The trustees are very keen to have an open dialogue with the volunteers and you'll remember from when we were on the Board together, that I was and still am, very supportive of conducting an employee survey and having regular meetings with the volunteers. The trustees have been looking to prioritise communication between us and the volunteers/employees and in line with this, we have revised the volunteer survey document twice to make it more relevant and inclusive for both volunteers and trustee to work with. Unfortunately, it has still not been possible to get a consensus on its circulation around the Wood. The trustees are absolutely committed to working together with all at the Wood and want to ensure that the voices of employees and volunteers are heard as it is their experience of the Wood which will tell us how we can consolidate the elements that are working well and improve the ones that they feel could be improved.

I think its very important that trustees, employees and volunteers work together to achieve the objectives of the Charity.

With this in mind and due to extenuating circumstances, the trustees decided that it was in the best interests of the Wood to postpone the AGM until January 2022 and we let Ray know this and the reasons for it.

The reasons for the postponement are due to several factors - we have no financial reports for 2020 yet and the independent financial examiner has some outstanding queries, which, due to the resignation of the financial co-ordinator, there will be a delay in getting this information to them. One of the primary reasons for an AGM is to present the financial reports, so until we have sight of them, we don't want to put a date in for an AGM. We have contacted the Charity Commission to ensure we are working within the constitution and they have given their approval to this decision.

The other reasons for the postponement are that the trustees would like an opportunity to put in place the Charity Excellence Framework, which was suggested by Rachel Jackson. This seems an excellent tool for ensuring that the Charity is functioning as it should and highlighting our strengths and areas for development and inputting into the plans for LMW, which will be presented at the AGM.

The trustees are very keen to obtain the views and opinions of the volunteers as to the future plans for the Wood and how the trustees can best support the volunteers and as well as informing Ray of our decision to postpone the AGM, we also let him know that we are intending to use the 19th October as a volunteer meeting, as this date has already been circulated.

I hope you can see that the Trustees are working in the best interests of Lower Moss Wood.

We will circulate the date of the 19th October, to the volunteers. In the meantime, if there are specific items you would like on the agenda for the volunteer meeting, please let me know and I will ensure they are given priority.

If you'd like to meet with us before the 19th October to discuss any points, we can certainly arrange that. Please let me know a suitable date and time and we will do our best to accommodate your preferences.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Elaine

Friday 24th September 2021 Response from Ian Daniells (member facilitator)

To Trustees of Lower Moss Wood

Your decision to call a volunteers meeting is not addressing the members request for an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) therefore under the rules of the Lower Moss Wood Constitution Para Q the Secretary now has to call the EGM within 21 days. We now demand that this EGM is called when you will be able to answer the members' questions in person. The number of members signing the petition has now increased to 20.

As we now believe this is a stalling tactic we are also going to introduce further to the items put forward a vote of no confidence in the Trustees. As your tenure is for only 12 months before needing to be voted in again by the members this will also be discussed.

At the last AGM I explained the ethos that keeps volunteers at LMW and you all said you would be spending time at the wood to understand this ethos. That has certainly not occurred. If it had, you would have seen the volunteers carrying out emergency care during the COVID pandemic, maintaining contact with the resident animals and birds so needed. A minor point maybe to you but a great therapeutic relief to many of the volunteers and residents. There was no support or thanks from the Trustees until after I had posted my thanks as a senior volunteer to all those concerned.

We also voted in 4 members of the wood as Trustees, within a matter of months there are none of those left which sends alarm bells ringing to a lot of members. Not only that the financial administrator has resigned after being with the wood both as a volunteer and then employee for nearly 20 years.

We look forward to seeing the notification of the EGM being posted on Monday 27th September for the directed 19th October 2021.

Respectfully

Ian Daniells

On behalf of the 20 members of Lower Moss Wood who have signed the petition so far.

Response from trustees Sunday 26th September 202

Dear Ian

Further to your e-mail of 24th September, we are more than happy to call an EGM in order to address any issues, questions and concerns that the volunteers have.

In preparation for that meeting could you please furnish us with the following 3 items of information, so that we may support and inform the volunteers in the best possible way, and also so that we are able to seek guidance on which issues can be shared in full and which cannot for HR and employee confidentiality reasons;

1. Could you please forward the wording of the petition requesting support from volunteers for the EGM so that we can understand the foundations of your concerns.

2. Could you please forward the key questions that your petitioners and volunteers would like addressed regards the governance of the Wood, so that we can provide appropriate information or evidence. Clearly from your e-mail one area of concern are the reasons for resignation of trustees this year but what other specific questions do you have?

3. The actions or issues which you believe the trustees are responsible for that bring the Wood into disrepute.

If you can respond to these by return it will allow us to put out notification of the meeting on 19th October by the end of business on Monday 27th September.

Many thanks

Please note- to keep your name and details invisible on the online signature list please UNCHECK the box "Show my name in the online signature list" above the 'Sign Now' button.

The petition will be left open till Monday 27th September 2021 at 5pm so please continue to sign to express your support for transparency and accountability at the heart of the Lower Moss Wood Educational Nature Reserve and Wildlife Hospital reg charity 1078209