The air ambulance community have been moaning about this, the first, Children's Air Ambulance for a while and that is what lay behind some of my earlier posts. The AAA say a great deal of 'their' money is being creamed off by the CAA collectors [and others] to no good end. Most of this is contained in the earlier posts.
At the time I approached the Charity Commission about this directly and they 'investigated' .... well if sitting on your hands in a Liverpool office and ringing up the people concerned can be taken as 'investigation' .... but found nothing to worry about. This is just one of a number of instances where the CC have been found to be poor investigators of matters raised with them and yet they are potentially the only body that undertakes this.
It would seem that the money raised in the last accounts represents little more than the annual cost of the Torquay building that is the base and some of the expences likely due to collectors. That the base is also apparently the home of the main Trustees would seem to be against the spirit of charity fundraising but is not likely to be illegal.
That there is a Children's Air Ambulance 2 on the horizon in darkest Yorkshire suggests that the set up is seen as a good heart rending business model. Save a life is one thing, save a child and the purses spring open.
The original drive behind the Children's Air Ambulance [1] is/was Paul Forster a very well regarded helicopter man who ran the conventional air ambulances for Cabair and saw a CAA as the next stage to go. He was last heard of involved with fixed wing.
You can find him via Google but links between him and the current set ups of CAA1 and CAA2 are not evident to me. He was the CAA CEO back in 2007 but there is nothing with a recent date that remains active. That said, a one time reader of PAN he suddenly withdrew himself from the database a year ago.... after the stories about CAA1 appeared.
