Jock given the involvement can i ask on what metric these trustees measure value? Especially given the wide range seen in the data and your comment regarding:-
"Trust me, one of the measures that we scrutinise every time we meet is the ratio of income to fulfillment of charitable objects"
Also what about transparancy between the charities and the beneficial owners of the commercial entities they interact with.
Thats before you come to the operators of the aircraft themselves.
Edited re:
Oh and Pitts, you might want to look at charity numbers 1001064 and 1143118 together, before setting the Midlands Air Ambulance up as an icon of how it should be done ;-). Charitable spending of £6.3m, spend on income generation etc of £6.38m! Not sure what that does to your ratio, but does show that there are lies, damned lies and statistics. I have no idea why they choose to run two charities. None of my business!
Simply looks like this is the reason? AS FROM OCTOBER 1ST 2011OUR CHARITY NUMBER HAS CHANGED TO 1143118. FOR FUTURE INFORMATION ON MIDLANDS AIR AMBULANCE, PLEASE REFER TO THE NEW CHARITY NUMBER
The funds got spat across and retained for future use see here from the accounts:-
Other
incoming resources:
Funds transferred
from
Midlands Air Ambulance Trust 5,846,258 5,846,258
.... To be honest if as you say you are a trustee of these things the fact you are oblivious to these things kind of says it all...????!!!
If i was a trustee with the childrens AA I'd want to know how my office expenses are 10x those of Midland AA.... Then I'd ask who we pay rent to...