The Garden Bridge Trust has defended its decision to postpone the filing of its next full set of accounts with both Companies House and the Charity Commission by five months.
The Trust, which was established to build and deliver London’s new Garden Bridge, was criticised in The Guardian over its decision to delay the filing of its second full set of accounts by five months.
But the charity said the decision brings it more in line with “the traditional financial year end of 31 March”.
A spokesman for the Garden Bridge Trust said: “The Garden Bridge Trust currently has a year-end date of October, which reflects the commencement date of the Trust. It has been decided to align the future year end to March which is a common year end date for charities.
“The new year end for the Trust will therefore be the traditional financial year end of 31 March. This will result in accounts being prepared for a 17 month period from 1 November 2014 to 31 March 2016.”
He said that the new filing date for the charity will be 31 December 2016 with its accounts on Companies House. It will then file with the Charity Commission one month later on 31 January 2017.
The news comes a few months after the Charity Commission and the National Audit Office both confirmed they were looking into the spending activities of the charity.
The Charity Commission confirmed in July that it had opened an operational compliance case into the charity after Kate Hoey, Labour MP for Vauxhall, wrote to the NAO over concerns about the Trust’s spending. It emerged that the Trust had spent over £37.7m of its funding already, before any construction on the bridge had begun.
The NAO also confirmed it was also looking into the organisation, after the Department for Transport’s decision to commit £30m to the £175m total project, questioning how the department exercised controls over the grant.
The Commission’s operation compliance case is continuing.
On 10 June 2016, the Garden Bridge Trust released a breakdown of how it had spent the £37.7m of public funding to date.
It said that £9.7m had been spent on “pre-planning” including design and public consultations; £22.7m on “pre-construction activities”, including obtaining licenses, permits and planning approvals and a further £3.4m on “professional services”, such as legal, property and planning advice.
If said that “of the £36.4m received, the total cost of public funding spent so far is just under £36m. This excludes a £1.3m of liability. This was a figure allocated for costs incurred if the project was stopped for any reason”.
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