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| DARTINGTON COLLEGE – DTI ASKED TO INVESTIGATE |
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The Department of Trade and Industry has been asked to open an investigation into allegations of breach of duty on the part of the directors of Dartington College under company law. The College is a limited company, and its governors are also its directors, with obligations under company law.
The Complaints Investigation Bureau of the Department of Trade and Industry, if it takes up the complaint and finds the allegations founded, has the power to require the removal of directors.
The request to investigate is based essentially upon two questions :
First, whether Mr Vaughan Lindsay and Mr Mark Howell have a conflict of interests.
Lindsay and Howell are on the one hand executive officers, and directors, of Dartington Hall Trust, and on the other, directors of Dartington College.
The Trust website advocates a policy of “One Dartington” – a close working relationship between the Trust, the College, and the Estate on which the College is situated. Lindsay and Howell are responsible, as executives, for this policy. Yet, in working for and advocating a dismemberment of that relationship by a proposed merger with Falmouth Art College, whilst acting as directors of Dartington College, it is alleged that a conflict of interests arises.
What is more, Dartington Trust has recently applied to the Patent Office to register ownership of the trade name “Dartington College of Arts” . Again, Lindsay and Howell are responsible for this policy. Yet, as directors of the College, it is alleged, they were under a duty to register an opposition to the Trust’s application, in order to safeguard the interest of the College in its own name. The College’s name, after all, is built on a unique 40-year international reputation in the arts. It has been partly responsible for enabling the Trust to reap the benefit of funding for other projects such as Dartington Plus and the Dartington Summer School.
The second question the Department has been requested to investigate is whether the directors of the College have acted in breach of their duty to the company and maladministration in failing to protect its assets. The failure to oppose the Trust’s patent application falls under this head of compaint too. But further, it appears that no steps have been taken by the College Board to enforce repair covenants under the leases for the accommodation blocks. Mr Andrew Brewerton, as Chief Executive of the College, has primary responsibility for this. The College directors also bear responsibility.
The poor state of repair of these blocks and the expense of repair has of course been used by Vaughan Lindsay and Andrew Brewerton, the College’s chief executive, as an argument for the College being unviable on the Estate.
Brewerton’s failure to act in this regard begs the question whether the allowing of the buildings to deteriorate, and the enormous sums quoted by both Lindsay and Brewerton (£12 million) as being needed to repair them, were not part of a predetermined policy to move the College off the Estate.
Incidental to this is the question whether the “consultation exercises” with the town and public mounted by Lindsay and Brewerton over the winter 2006/07, were not in fact a sham – the policy of merger with Falmouth having already been decided upon, at least at executive level.
It remains to be seen whether or not this is the case.
The matter of Lindsay and Howell’s conflicts of interests was put by letter to the Chairmen of the Trust and the College Boards, respectively Messrs James Cornford and John Bull, by the Campaign Group in December 2006. In true consultative fashion, neither deigned to reply.
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