STOKE POGES TASK FORCE
Is the Trust Really Financially Unsustainable?
The Council's position
Buckinghamshire Council has stated that the Farnham Park Sports Fields Charitable Trust is financially unsustainable and that charities are generally expected to be self-funding.
On its website, the Council states:
This presents the issue primarily as one of charity law and trusteeship.
What the Act of Parliament says
The Farnham Park Sports Fields Charitable Trust was not imposed upon the Council.
It was established through the Eton Rural District Council Act 1971—a private Act of Parliament promoted by the Eton Rural District Council, in agreement with the donor of the land.
The Council itself (!) chose the legal framework in 1971.
Together with the donor, it deliberately sought Parliamentary approval to place the Trust on a statutory footing, ensuring that its charitable purpose would continue regardless of future political or financial circumstances.
The fact that Eton Rural District Council has since become Buckinghamshire Council does not alter those obligations. The statutory duties created by Parliament continue to bind the Council's legal successor.
The Act provides:
"The Council shall maintain and manage the land."
This duty is imposed on the Council itself, not the trustee.
The Act does not state that this duty only applies while the Trust generates sufficient income. Nor does it require the Trust to be financially self-supporting. It contains no provision suggesting that the Council's obligation ends if maintaining the land becomes expensive.
More than fifty years later, Buckinghamshire Council argues that the existing arrangements are financially unsustainable because of pressures on its own budget.
This raises an important question:
Wasn't the very purpose of putting these duties into an Act of Parliament to ensure that the charitable purposes of the Trust would survive future changes of policy, finances and political priorities?
The Council's own report
Before inviting bids, Buckinghamshire Council produced a report explaining why a new operating model was needed.
The report states:
"There is a significant cost to the Council in maintaining the playing fields and golf course..."
"Wider pressures on Council budgets and the requirement to prioritise statutory services mean that the current arrangements are not financially sustainable..."
The recommended solution was to lease the land to reduce maintenance costs.
The report identifies a genuine financial pressure on the Council. However, the question is not whether the Council faces budget pressures—many local authorities do.
The legal question is whether those financial pressures can justify changing the use of land where Parliament has imposed a statutory duty on the Council to "maintain and manage the land."
The report refers to the need to prioritise statutory services. Yet maintaining and managing this land is itself a statutory duty created by the Eton Rural District Council Act 1971.
This raises an important question:
Does the Council's financial position alter the statutory responsibilities that Parliament placed upon it?
Two different legal roles
The Council has two distinct roles.
As Trustee, it must act in the best interests of the Charity and its beneficiaries.
Separately, as Buckinghamshire Council, it is subject to statutory duties imposed by Parliament. One of those duties is to maintain and manage the Trust land.
These are separate legal responsibilities and should not be confused.
Why this matters
If Parliament intended the Council to maintain and manage the land regardless of the Trust's own income, then the argument that the Trust is "financially unsustainable" may not, by itself, justify fundamentally changing how the land is used.
Understanding how these statutory duties interact is therefore central to assessing whether the current proposal is based on a sound legal foundation.
Conclusion
The Trust may - at times - not generate enough income to cover all of the costs of maintaining the land.
However, that is not the same as saying that the Trust itself is financially unsustainable.
The statutory framework established in 1971 appears to have been designed precisely to avoid that situation. Rather than requiring the Trust to fund its own maintenance, Parliament placed the duty to maintain and manage the land on the Council itself—a legal framework that the Council and the donor deliberately chose.
If that interpretation is correct, the financial viability of the Trust was never intended to depend solely on the income it generated.
The key question is therefore not whether the Trust makes enough money, but whether the statutory duty accepted by the Council in 1971 continues to be fulfilled today.
Relevant Documents