Paul Fox Response to BWY Statement of 30th January 2024

Those of you who are British Wheel of Yoga members will have received a statement on Monday 30^th January 2024 about my expulsion from the organisation.

Each of the main assertions in that statement are either wholly or partially inaccurate.

Let me take you through them one by one:

1. “(Paul) …. was expelled due to financial impropriety during his time as Chair”.  
I totally refute this statement and consider it to be defamatory and libellous. Nowhere in the findings of the governance consultant’s review is there a reference to “financial impropriety”. The consultant refers instead to various failures of “governance” – how potential conflicts of interests were recorded, minuted and managed. The Oxford dictionary defines impropriety as dishonest and improper behaviours – examples given include fraud, embezzlement and so on. Using that term in this statement appears to be a deliberate attempt to destroy my reputation and character. As I have shown in detail in my previous blog, I was open with all those around me about my work for the Yoga in Healthcare Alliance (YIHA) and sought clarification about whether or not being paid from the YIHA pot of money being looked after by BWY was permitted. Nobody on the Board, the Treasurer or the financial staff at the time thought the arrangements were wrong.

2. “A thorough investigation by an independent governance consultant”.
This is patently not true. The consultant was only given selected documents, emails and information concerning the issues raised in the charges against me. The person was not sent some critical information which would have shed an entirely different light on the issues. They did not receive all the information they needed to see the whole picture.

3. “He was given the opportunity to participate in this process which he took full advantage of, stating his case both in writing and in person”.
This is false and deliberately misleading. I was never informed about the existence of this secret investigation and the review being conducted by a consultant. So I had no opportunity to contribute to it, to speak to the consultant or to defend myself against the charges, UNTIL AFTER THE REVIEW WAS COMPLETED. I was given a few weeks’ notice of a meeting convened to expel me and invited to speak to it. But by then the review had already been completed and the NEC had already proposed a resolution to expel me. It was against the principles of natural justice to fail to inform me that I was being investigated and to fail to give me any opportunity to submit evidence BEFORE damning and far-reaching conclusions were reached.

4. “The outcome... [of this review] …was approved by the Charity Commission”.
This is unlikely to be true and I challenge BWY to produce proof that they “approved” it. The Charity Commission does not have the resources or offer a service to review evidence of decisions taken by Trustees. This is likely to have been simply notification to the Charity Commission of the decision taken and the reasons for it. If BWY would like to be transparent with members about its contacts with the Charity Commission, perhaps it could share the details of the regulatory enforcement measures imposed on BWY in 2023 by the commission as a result of the mishandling of my complaint and my testimony about being mistreated as a volunteer.

I believe the inaccurate and misleading assertions in the BWY statement to members supports the view that the decision to expel me was unfair and disproportionate. Their statement will also cause members to question whether the claims by the current leadership about what happened can be trusted.

BWY Vice-Chair who Handled the Complaints Speaks Out

“As a person without prior acquaintance of Paul Fox I had the responsibility of managing the complaints against him during my time as Vice Chair.  Due to the high sums of YIHA funds involved and the inexplicably dogged determination of two complainants, a solicitor was engaged in order to ensure complete transparency.   

At substantial expense to the BWY, the solicitor found that none of the complaints could be upheld and this was accordingly communicated to Mr Fox.  

It has been my experience of the NEC, and the reason I am no longer a member of the BWY, that governance falls significantly below acceptable standards.  The memorandum and articles of association were not fit for purpose and there was no commitment to comply with charity governance. This latest using of the BWY as a vehicle for pursuing what can only be described as a personal vendetta is an entirely inappropriate use of charity monies, and completely at odds with the principles of yoga.

The NEC ought to be a beacon of light for the organisation; collectively living and expressing yoga through example. To be so unrelentingly committed to persecution and destruction is unbecoming, and shows a profound lack of respect for the organisation, from those who are ostensibly charged with leading it.  I have never spoken out before, but I would urge all members; whether teachers, practitioners or DCTs, not to accept without question, the edicts of the NEC and to remember that if we are practicing ahimsa we always seek the path of harmony and peace.  If we are not practicing ahimsa then we should not be holding ourselves out as people fit to lead the governing body of yoga.  It is time that the Charity Commission and the members held the organisation to account.”

Gillian Osborne

I am grateful to Gillian for coming forwards to set the record straight. Her remarks point to a gaping omission in BWY’s statement to members – an explanation as to why I was secretly re-investigated after being cleared of any wrongdoing. Or why the mixed and inconclusive findings of a governance expert would supersede a legal investigation that ran from Autumn 2019 to May 2021 and concluded with me being cleared of any wrongdoing. What grounds or policy did BWY use to re-open a closed complaints process which had already dragged on for two-and-a-half years? Gillian calls it a personal vendetta against me. Whatever the reason it was wrong, possibly illegal, and must be quashed.

Background information

Many of you may have already read my original blog about what happened: -

https://paul-fox-bwy.blogspot.com/2024/01/bwy.html

You may already know that I signed an agreement with the NHS on behalf of the British Wheel of Yoga on 23^rd March 2017, enabling BWY to hold a £250,000 pot of money that had been awarded to the Yoga In Healthcare Alliance (YIHA) to develop and deliver a ground-breaking yoga social prescribing pathway for NHS patients. This was a fantastic opportunity to develop strong links between BWY and the NHS and social prescribers.

I am not going to repeat in detail the content of the blog on the disputed financial matters, but in summary: -

• At the time I signed the agreement enabling BWY to hold the NHS grant awarded to YIHA, I had not received and did not expect to receive any financial benefit from the contract;
• Four months later I was asked to take on a paid role as Assistant Project Manager working for the Yoga In Healthcare Alliance;
• Before payment of my first invoice to YIHA (an entirely separate organisation with no links to BWY) 6 months had elapsed since the fundholding contract was signed;
• I initiated a discussion with fellow Trustees and staff at BWY head office about the propriety of the process of paying me from the funds that belonged to YIHA but being disbursed by BWY. It was decided as a group that no conflict of interest could be established;
• The view of the Trustees, and senior staff at Central Office can be summed up by the Financial Controller’s statement which was accepted by the BWY’s accountants at the time: “we are just doing the payment of invoices, so the cash isn’t actually ours”;
• Everyone on the BWY’s National Executive Committee (NEC) and the staff at BWY believed that BWY’s role was limited to holding the pot of money on behalf of the Yoga In Healthcare Alliance and disbursing funds when invoices were submitted and approved by YIHA and NHS managers, with no involvement by anyone (including me) at BWY;

These facts demonstrate that the phrase “expelled due to financial impropriety” is misleading and defamatory.

BWY Trustees based their decision to expel me on the governance consultant’s report on my conduct that they commissioned. However, the governance consultant engaged by BWY lays the blame for this squarely on a culture of poor governance at BWY as a whole, that extended many years before I held the position of Chair and continued afterwards. It is unfair that I as a volunteer should be singled out and made the scapegoat for these governance failures.

In 2023 an independent review into the decision to expel me was commissioned entirely separately from BWY by the Yoga In Healthcare Alliance. The YIHA charity trustees wanted a rigorous and independent review of BWY’s decision, because I was running their charity and my expulsion could damage YIHA’s reputation. The review looked at the exact same governance consultant’s report carried out for BWY to see if it did justify expelling me. It concluded that my expulsion was not justified, because a conflict of interest had not been established and that a more appropriate response would have been to strengthen governance and remind all trustees of the need to declare real and perceived conflicts of interest and manage them more transparently.

BWY members are very familiar with cyclical in-fighting on the NEC; many Trustees have stepped down feeling bruised and battered. Some of you may recall that when I was elected Chair of BWY all but one of the previous NEC Trustees had resigned, principally over disagreements on conflicts of interest. In the Spring of 2016, I inherited half an NEC of just 4 Trustees. We were pretty much given the Trustees Handbook and expected to get on with it. There was no handover pack and there was no induction process or training for Trustees in place at that time. We also had a brand-new Operations Manager who was finding her feet.

The point here is a person who is prepared to step forwards and volunteer most of their time cannot be expected to be better than the culture and practice of the organisation as it exists without support. We did our best with openness, honesty, and integrity.

If you support my reinstatement as a BWY member, please write to the British Wheel of Yoga chair@bwy.org.uk

As I write this, nearly 250 people have signed the public petition demanding my reinstatement on Change.org. If you would like to add your name please follow this link https://chng.it/zN8HwfmCWS

Paul Fox

2^nd February 2024