Datchet Parish Council is spending your money on London solicitors in an attempt to assume control of a charitable trust whose founder explicitly forbade political interference with it. Meanwhile, the Trust is forced to spend funds meant for your benefit defending itself. The lawyers prosper. Datchet loses.
The Datchet Recreational Centre Charitable Trust (DRCCT, charity number 252303) owns the land and buildings at Allen Way — including Datchet Village Hall, the library building, the day centre and, notably, Datchet Parish Council’s own offices. The Trust’s current trustees, Monica Davies and Ewan Larcombe, have applied to register the land at HM Land Registry — a routine step in bringing the charity’s title onto the modern register.
Datchet Parish Council has instructed Wellers Law Group LLP, London solicitors, to object to that registration. Their letter of 18 March 2026 states in explicit terms that the Council “does not wish to negotiate and does not consider it possible to reach an agreement.” HM Land Registry has issued a formal Notice of Objection. Unless the matter is resolved, it will be referred to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) on 29 October 2026 — a full judicial process whose costs, on both sides, will be very considerable.
The Trust must respond to Land Registry by noon on 15 May 2026. It intends to proceed. This page sets out why that is the right course — and why residents should be concerned about the Parish Council’s conduct in initiating and escalating this dispute.
When Denys Randolph of Wilkinson Sword fame created the DRCCT in 1967, bequeathing £6,250 of his personal wealth for the benefit of Datchet village, he placed explicit and binding conditions in the Trust Deed. These are not aspirations. They are the legal terms under which the charity exists and under which all its assets are held. The deed was received by the Charity Commission on 21 April 1967 under Trust No. 252303.
“The land, buildings and other assets belonging to the Datchet Recreation Centre Charitable Trust shall be held in perpetuity as a non-sectarian and non-political place of recreation and social intercourse… for the advantage or benefit of the said residents… without distinction of political or other opinion.”Trust Deed — Datchet Recreation Centre Charitable Trust — 21st March 1967 (Charity No. 252303)
These words require no interpretation. Datchet Parish Council is a political body. Its members are elected through a political process and take positions on political matters. Its action in directing solicitors to seize control of this charity is, by its very nature, a political act — conducted by a political institution, in pursuit of political control over assets that the founder of the trust explicitly placed beyond political reach.
Denys Randolph foresaw exactly this risk. He wrote his protection for the charity into the deed in plain English nearly sixty years ago. That protection is now being tested. No amount of legal ingenuity changes the fundamental fact: this action violates the spirit and intent of the man whose generosity created the trust in the first place.
This is not a new argument. It is not new evidence. It is a recycled claim from the 1970s that has already been decided against the Parish Council.
When the Village Hall was completed in 1976, the Parish Council — having contributed significantly to its construction — attempted to register the Hall and associated buildings as a separate charity (number 272882) under its own governance. The Charity Commission examined this application carefully. In 1977, it ruled that the new charity “could not stand” because the properties were already registered as part of Charity 252303, the DRCCT. The Council appealed. In 1979, the Charity Commission issued its final ruling: the properties on the Sabatini Land, including the Hall and bungalow, formed part of the DRCCT. They could not be separated. That was final.
The Parish Council accepted that ruling. Then, in around 2006, having nowhere else to go, the Council moved its own offices into the DRCCT’s land — the former library premises — where it has operated from charitable property ever since, rent-free, on the goodwill of the Trust.
The Parish Council is now relitigating, before a different forum (the Land Registry and Tribunal), a claim that the Charity Commission already decided against it. Not because the law has changed. Not because new evidence has emerged. The assets belong to the DRCCT. They always have.
Wellers Law Group LLP advance several grounds in their objection to HM Land Registry. Each deserves honest examination:
A Deed of Appointment exists by which the original trustees — Owen and Wilson — retired and appointed Datchet Parish Council as trustee in their place. This document is real. However, the Charity Commission’s official register — the statutory public record — currently lists Monica Davies and Ewan Larcombe as the trustees, following their appointment in 2019. The Charity Commission accepted those appointments. DPC’s claim treats the 2019 appointment as if it never happened.
Source: Wellers letter, 18 Mar 2026, §3 & §7Wellers contend the Commission’s online register “should not serve as evidence” because it is “controlled by whomever has access” — implying the trustees have manipulated a statutory public record. The Charity Commission is the regulator of charities in England and Wales, established under statute. Its register is the definitive public record of trustee appointments. Dismissing it as unreliable while simultaneously expecting the Land Registry to ignore it is a remarkable position for a public body to adopt.
Source: Wellers letter, 18 Mar 2026, §7Wellers acknowledge plainly that “the originals of the copy documents which are attached to this objection have been lost.” The Parish Council is relying on copy documents of uncertain provenance, whose originals cannot be produced, to support a claim to control a significant piece of community property. This is the evidentiary foundation of a claim that the Council is willing to take to a tribunal — at public expense.
Source: Wellers letter, 18 Mar 2026, §6The solicitors state clearly: “Our client does not wish to negotiate and does not consider it possible to reach an agreement.” This is a deliberate choice. The Land Registry wrote to both parties specifically asking whether they wished to negotiate; DPC instructed its solicitors to say no. The most expensive, most adversarial path was chosen — with public money, without, as far as residents can tell, any public debate or authorisation from the council as a whole.
Source: Wellers letter, 18 Mar 2026, final paragraphIn August 2024 — less than two years ago — Datchet Parish Council received the DRCCT’s 2023/24 annual accounts at their public meeting without objection. In the same month, the DPC Clerk countersigned a legally binding Community Orchard Licence Agreement with Ewan Larcombe, the DRCCT Chair. The Council was perfectly content to enter binding legal agreements with these trustees when it suited them. The sudden reversal in 2026 demands an explanation.
Source: Community Orchard Licence, 15 Aug 2024; DRCCT Accounts 2023/24Every solicitor’s letter, every Land Registry submission, every tribunal day has a price. Here is who is paying, and who is losing:
| Party | Legal costs funded by | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Datchet Parish Council Wellers Law Group LLP, London |
The parish precept — levied on every household in Datchet | Public money diverted from services to litigation |
| DRCCT AV Law Solicitors, Hayes |
Charitable funds — reserves held in trust for the benefit of Datchet residents | Money meant for the village spent on legal defence |
| Datchet Residents — the intended beneficiaries of both bodies | Losing both ways, regardless of outcome | |
If the Parish Council loses, it will have wasted public money pursuing what the law — and the Charity Commission — has already decided. If it wins, it gains control of a charity that its founder explicitly created to operate free from political control. In neither outcome do Datchet residents gain anything that they do not already have.
The lawyers, however, will be paid regardless.
Parish councillors are elected representatives. They are accountable to Datchet residents — not to political parties, not to their own career ambitions, and certainly not to any desire to be seen as decisive or to avoid the embarrassment of having initiated a dispute they cannot win.
It is evident that those directing this action have political horizons wider than Datchet Parish Council. Political advancement is built on demonstrable wins. An expensive, protracted, publicly-funded legal defeat over assets that the Charity Commission has already ruled upon would be a difficult record to defend to constituents or to those with influence over a political career. The incentive to press on — regardless of the legal merits — is therefore substantial. That incentive is not the same thing as acting in the best interests of Datchet.
When a parish council acts as trustee of a charity — as DPC claims to do here — it is legally required to act in the best interests of the charity and its beneficiaries, not in its own institutional or political interests. Those are incompatible with expending public money on adversarial litigation to obtain control of a charity that exists, by explicit legal terms, to remain free from political control.
The Trust Deed answers the central question plainly: this charity exists for the benefit of Datchet residents “without distinction of political or other opinion.” It does not exist to serve political careers or to satisfy institutional ambitions. Residents are entitled to ask their councillors — directly and in public — whether this action was properly authorised, how much it has cost, and who is responsible for it.
Every claim on this page is grounded in documentary evidence. You can read the primary sources yourself: