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A host of celebrities, including rock band Coldplay and actor Joanna Lumley, have called for a controversial watchdog report into the late Camila Batmanghelidjh and her charity Kids Company to be overturned.
In a letter to the Guardian, they say a Charity Commission report that was critical of some aspects of the way Kids Company was managed, was inaccurate, unjust, and raised “serious concerns about regulatory ethics and impartiality”.
It comes ahead of a high court hearing this week, in which supporters of Batmanghelidjh will try to quash the report as part of an attempt to clear her name and that of Kids Company, its staff and trustees.
Kids Company was one of the UK’s best-known children’s charities when it collapsed in dramatic circumstances in 2015. Batmanghelidjh, its charismatic founder, subsequently endured years of personal and sustained vilification at the hands of part of the media and politicians.
The letter says this week’s judicial review is not just an attempt to bring justice for the charity and Batmanghelidjh but also an attempt to uphold “the integrity of the entire charitable sector in the UK” by ensuring the commission’s report is amended to be “consistent with the facts”.
It adds: “The Charity Commission’s report raises serious concerns about regulatory ethics and impartiality. The report inaccurately depicts the reasons for Kids Company’s closure, abjectly failing to acknowledge the harmful impact of unfounded allegations and external pressures on the charity.”
Among the 42 signatories are the members of Coldplay, actor Joanna Lumley, film director Stephen Frears, psychotherapist Susie Orbach, the poet Lemn Sissay, former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and former BBC director-general Tony Hall.
Other signatories include a roster of academic experts and senior psychotherapists, journalist and peer Rosie Boycott, chair of School of African and Oriental Studies Lord Hastings, and writer and ex-Chumbawamba musician Alice Nutter.
This week’s hearing marks the latest chapter in a decade-long fight by Batmanghelidjh and her supporters to rescue the reputation of a charity that before its downfall was hugely popular with the public, media and politicians alike, attracting the support of prime ministers, artists, and celebrities.
Kids Company had won plaudits for its groundbreaking work in London providing practical, emotional and educational support for thousands of severely traumatised children caught up in poverty and gang violence, and who in some cases had been abandoned by state-run social care and mental health services.
Financial pressures on the charity caused by increasing demands on its services, coupled with a BBC report of sexual abuse allegations – which a police investigation later found no evidence for – and Tory party infighting over whether the coalition government should help bail out the charity led to its closure in August 2015.
A government-backed attempt by the Official Receiver to ban Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company’s trustees on the grounds of financial negligence was thrown out in 2021 by a high court judge, who praised Batmanghelidjh’s achievements and paid tribute to the trustees as “a group of highly impressive and dedicated individuals”.
After this comprehensive judicial exoneration, the Charity Commission’s inquiry report into Kids Company published a year later caused surprise when it delivered a formal finding of “mismanagement in the administration of the charity” against Batmanghelidjh and the trustees.
At the time Batmanghelidjh vowed to go to court to overturn the ruling, calling it a “travesty” and a “rewriting of history”. She died in January 2024, having won permission to challenge the report. This week’s hearing has been brought by her supporters and the Camila Batmanghelidjh Foundation, a charity set up in her name.
A Charity Commission spokesperson said: “We will robustly defend the findings and conclusions of our inquiry into Kids Company at the High Court.”
