Two individuals at Datchet Parish Council — its Chairman and its Clerk — are directing public resources toward illegally assuming control of assets they have no right to. They have tried this before. They lost. They are trying again. This page records what they have done and asks Datchet residents to hold them to account.
The Datchet Recreational Centre Charitable Trust (DRCCT, charity no. 252303) owns the land and buildings at Allen Way on the Sabatini Land. Its current trustees — Monica Davies and Ewan Larcombe — applied to register that land at HM Land Registry. This is a routine, necessary step, required to bring the charity’s title onto the modern register. Datchet Parish Council, through Wellers Law Group LLP of London, has objected — stating explicitly it will not negotiate — and the matter now heads toward the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber).
What follows is not a general account of the dispute. It is a specific record of the conduct of two individuals: David Buckley, Chairman of Datchet Parish Council, and the Council’s Clerk, Sonia Masikito. It examines what they have done, what legal duties they appear to have breached, and what Datchet residents can do about it.
Every claim on this page can be substantiated. Where a claim constitutes an allegation — meaning it is a factual assertion whose truth should be tested formally — it is clearly identified as such.
This is not the first time Datchet Parish Council has attempted to seize control of the DRCCT’s assets. The history matters because it demonstrates that the current Council is not operating under a misunderstanding — it is re-running a play that has already been ruled out of bounds.
When Datchet Village Hall was completed in 1976, the Parish Council contributed substantially to its construction. That contribution was welcome. What followed was not. The Council drew up a new governing document (drafted by one David Jefferson) and passed a resolution at a Parish Council meeting. It then applied to the Charity Commission to register the Village Hall and associated buildings as a separate, new charity (number 272882) — under the Parish Council’s own governance, detached from the DRCCT.
The Charity Commission considered this application and, in 1977, rejected it. Its ruling was unambiguous: the properties were already listed as assets of Charity 252303, the DRCCT. They could not simply be re-registered under a new number because the Parish Council wished it. The Council appealed and lost again, definitively, by letter dated 14 March 1979:
Charity number 272882 could not stand as it duplicated the DRCCT. The properties on the land are already registered to the DRCCT. Therefore two Trustees are responsible for the Charity 252303 which includes the Sabatini Land & Buildings.Charity Commission — Final Ruling, 14 March 1979 (Document 6 — available from Datchet Parish Council)
The Parish Council accepted that ruling. It did not appeal further. For forty-five years the matter was settled. The DRCCT owns the land and buildings. That has been the legal position since 1967, was confirmed by the Charity Commission in 1979, and remains the position today as recorded on the Commission’s statutory register.
When the current council leadership chose to mount this new challenge in April 2025, they did so in the knowledge of that history. Datchet Parish Council’s own archive contains the 1979 ruling. The current Chairman and Clerk are not acting in ignorance. They are acting against a documented legal precedent, with public money, while the Charity Commission’s own register records the trustees they are seeking to displace as the legal trustees of the charity.
That choice demands an explanation they have not provided to Datchet residents.
Mr Buckley is the Chairman of Datchet Parish Council and, as such, the elected representative who carries ultimate political responsibility for the Council’s decisions. The actions described below were taken under his chairmanship. In a functioning democratic parish, the chairman is the servant of the council and the community — not its commander. The conduct documented here suggests a different understanding of that role.
Conduct requiring formal investigationIt is alleged that meetings relevant to the DRCCT dispute and to significant council decisions have been organised at short notice, at locations other than the Council’s established meeting place, in circumstances that had the effect — whether or not by design — of restricting public attendance and surrounding the Chairman with a pre-selected group of supporters rather than the full elected council and the observing public.
Proper meeting notice under the Local Government Act 1972 requires at least three clear days’ notice for ordinary meetings (Schedule 12, para. 10(2)). Where the Chairman has the power to convene emergency meetings, that power is intended for genuine emergencies — not for the management of political outcomes. If meetings were convened in a manner designed to limit participation or predetermine decisions, this raises a question of propriety that residents and the Monitoring Officer for the area are entitled to investigate.
Local Government Act 1972, Sch. 12 para. 10(2) — meeting notice requirementsThe Parish Council has engaged Wellers Law Group LLP, London solicitors, to object to the DRCCT’s Land Registry application. The cost of this engagement — from initial instructions through to the preparation of the objection, Land Registry submissions, and the threat of Tribunal proceedings expected by October 2026 — is being met from the parish precept levied on every household in Datchet.
The Charity Commission has already ruled on this exact question. The legal precedent is against the Council’s position. The Charity Commission’s own register records Monica Davies and Ewan Larcombe as the trustees. Wellers themselves acknowledge the Charity Commission register lists the current trustees — but ask the Land Registry to ignore it. Committing public money to litigation whose foundations the Council’s own prior history should have made it aware were unsound raises a serious question of financial propriety under the Local Government Finance Act 1988.
Local Government Finance Act 1988 — best value and lawful expenditure obligations Charities Act 2011, s.30 — Charity Commission register as statutory recordIt is a matter of public record that Mr Buckley has political ambitions beyond the parish level. Political advancement requires a narrative of decisive, successful leadership. A protracted, expensive legal defeat in a dispute that the Charity Commission decided forty-five years ago would represent a significant reputational liability — one that a politician with higher aspirations would have a personal incentive to avoid by pressing forward rather than acknowledging error.
This is not an allegation of dishonesty. It is an observation about incentive structures. When a decision-maker has a personal interest in the outcome of a decision they are directing, and that personal interest diverges from the interests of the public they are supposed to serve, they are required to declare it and, in appropriate cases, to recuse themselves. Datchet residents are entitled to ask whether this obligation was recognised and observed.
Localism Act 2011, s.31 — Disclosable Pecuniary Interests The Code of Conduct for Members, NALC 2020 — reg. 9 (personal interests)A parish clerk holds a statutory office. She is formally the Proper Officer of the council — the person legally responsible for ensuring that the council operates lawfully, that its decisions are properly recorded, that its documents are maintained and disclosed as required by law, and that the advice given to elected members is sound, impartial and in the public interest. These are not informal expectations. They are legal duties. The conduct described below suggests a failure to honour them.
Possible breach of statutory duty — investigation warrantedIt is alleged that requests for meeting documents — including agendas, minutes and supporting papers — have been made to the Parish Council and have not been fulfilled for a period exceeding twelve months. This is not an administrative inconvenience. It is a potential statutory breach.
Requests for information held by a parish council constitute requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). A public authority must respond to a FOIA request within twenty working days (s.10(1) FOIA). Failure to comply is a breach. Repeated, sustained failure to disclose information that a public authority is required to disclose is not merely negligent: Section 77 of the Act creates a criminal offence for a public authority officer who alters, defaces, blocks, erases, destroys or conceals any record held by the authority with the intention of preventing disclosure. Datchet residents who have made documented requests that have not been answered should consider reporting the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Freedom of Information Act 2000, s.10(1) — 20-day disclosure requirement Freedom of Information Act 2000, s.77 — criminal offence: concealing/destroying recordsIt is reported that the Clerk has requested the recruitment of additional staff on the grounds of workload. Datchet is a village. Its population has not materially changed. The parish council’s administrative responsibilities have not grown to reflect any significant expansion of services or statutory obligations. In normal circumstances, the workload of a small parish council warrants a part-time clerk; additional staff require clear justification.
The question residents are entitled to ask is: what is generating the additional workload? If the answer is the legal dispute with the DRCCT — correspondence with Wellers, Land Registry submissions, Charity Commission filings and associated documentation — then the cost to Datchet extends beyond solicitors’ fees. It includes staff time and any new salaries authorised to support a dispute the council had no business initiating. Councillors should have asked for this breakdown before approving any additional headcount.
Local Government Act 1972, s.112 — staff appointments must be on proper terms and justifiedThe Clerk is the principal source of legal and procedural advice to elected members, particularly those without specialist backgrounds. When a council is considering action in relation to a charitable trust, it falls to the Clerk to ensure members are informed of the relevant legal framework — including, in this case, the Charity Commission’s 1979 ruling, the Charity Commission’s current register, and the requirements of the Charities Act 2011.
If councillors voted to instruct Wellers Law Group without having been presented with a full account of the 1979 history and its implications, one of two things is true: either the Clerk did not provide that information (a failure of duty), or she did and members chose to proceed regardless. In either case, residents are entitled to ask the question directly at a public meeting: what advice was given, in writing, before the decision to litigate was taken?
Clerk to a local council — NALC Guidance: Proper Officer duties of impartiality and lawful adviceThe statutory role of a Proper Officer is to serve the council as a corporate body — not to align with its chairman or any political faction within it. A clerk who acts as an instrument of the chairman’s agenda, rather than as an impartial officer providing independent advice to all elected members, is not performing the role the law requires. The description that emerges from events at Datchet — meetings organised to serve the chairman’s purposes, documents withheld from those who have asked for them, advice apparently given to support litigation that has no good-faith legal basis — is consistent with a Proper Officer who has effectively taken sides.
This is an allegation that warrants formal investigation. Any councillor who believes this to be the case may raise a complaint under the relevant Code of Conduct framework. Any resident may raise a concern with the Monitoring Officer for the borough.
Local Government Act 1972, s.151 — Proper Officer duties Localism Act 2011, s.27 — Code of Conduct complaints mechanismAround 2006, when Datchet Library moved to larger premises, Datchet Parish Council took up occupation of the vacated building on the DRCCT’s land — the Sabatini Land — and has operated its offices from that building ever since. The building, like all the buildings on the Sabatini Land, belongs to the DRCCT. The Council has been a tenant on charitable property.
That tenancy is now ending. The DRCCT has taken steps to remove the Parish Council from its building. It is important that residents understand the reason for this, because the Council is capable of presenting this as an act of aggression against it, rather than for what it actually is.
The Council is not being asked to leave because of non-payment of rent. It is being asked to leave because the trust cannot, in good conscience, continue to provide premises to a body that is simultaneously and actively attempting to strip the trust of its legal title to those very premises. It would be an extraordinary position for any landlord to maintain — to provide facilities to a tenant who is litigating against the landlord’s right to own the building. The DRCCT is acting entirely reasonably in declining to continue that arrangement.
The Parish Council will need to find and fund alternative accommodation. That is a cost that falls on the parish precept — on Datchet residents — as a direct consequence of the Council’s decision to initiate this dispute.
Let us be precise about what control of the DRCCT would mean in practice. The DRCCT owns the Sabatini Land — 1-5 Allen Way, Datchet, SL3 9HR. It owns the buildings on that land, which include Datchet Village Hall, the day centre, the former library premises and the caretaker’s bungalow. These are not trivial assets. They are significant community property whose market value is considerable.
A charitable trust’s assets must be used for the charitable purposes specified in its deed. But a trustee controls how those purposes are expressed in practice: which activities are funded, which organisations are licensed to use the facilities, on what terms, at what cost, and for whose ultimate benefit. Control of the trust means control of the village hall and everything attached to it.
The Trust Deed of 21 March 1967 specifies that the assets shall be held “in perpetuity as a non-sectarian and non-political place of recreation… for the advantage or benefit of the said residents… without distinction of political or other opinion.” A Parish Council — an elected political body — cannot be the trustee of a non-political trust without creating an irresolvable conflict at the heart of the charity’s governance. That is not an argument invented by the current trustees. It is what the founding document says, in plain English, and what the Charity Commission’s rejection of the 1977 application effectively confirmed.
An incomplete accounting of what this dispute is costing, on the basis of what is documented:
| Item | Paid by | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Wellers Law Group LLP — Land Registry objection letter and preparation | Parish precept (Datchet households) | Incurred |
| Wellers Law Group LLP — Land Registry ST3 Forms (in preparation) | Parish precept | Ongoing |
| Wellers Law Group LLP — Tribunal preparation (if no resolution by Oct 2026) | Parish precept | Threatened |
| Additional DPC staff (requested by Clerk, workload attributed to — what exactly?) | Parish precept | Unaccounted |
| AV Law Solicitors — DRCCT’s defence costs | DRCCT charitable funds (meant for village benefit) | Incurred |
| DPC alternative office premises, once evicted from DRCCT land | Parish precept | Coming |
| Total benefit to Datchet residents from all of the above | Zero. Less than zero. | |
These are questions of public accountability. They should be asked, in writing, requiring written answers, at a public council meeting.
Everything alleged on this page can be tested against the primary documents. They are all available here: