Date Published 18 June 2013
Letting agents are calling for Shelter’s charitable status to be withdrawn, and for the organisation to be reported to the Charity Commission
The call – supported by Martin & Co’s Ian Wilson (see separate story) – was sounded loudly and clearly in a number of comments made on LAT to our report of Shelter’s bid to get letting agent fees to tenants banned by law.
Posters said that Shelter – which was a beneficiary last year of agents’ generous fund-raising for the homeless in the form of the Estate Agents Foundation and the Zoopla Property Cycle Ride – is a political lobbying organisation and not a charity.
They claimed that this could breach the Charity Commission’s regulations, with one poster saying that donors were being misled. One poster described Shelter as a `government funded scandal`.
Some suggested making complaints to Shelter’s trustees and to MPs, as well as to the Charity Commission.
Shelter no longer features on lists of beneficiaries of the industry’s main fund-raisers this year.
