This page contains information that has appeared on Sandy Adirondack's legal update website for voluntary organisations at www.sandy-a.co.uk/legal.htm. For current updates, including potential changes that are in the pipeline, see the legal update website.

These websites for each chapter update the 3rd edition of The Russell-Cooke Voluntary Sector Legal Handbook by James Sinclair Taylor and the Charity Team at Russell-Cooke Solicitors, edited by Sandy Adirondack (Directory of Social Change, 2009). The websites are not intended as a comprehensive update and should not be treated as such.

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Chapter 48
FUNDING AND FUNDRAISING: GENERAL RULES

WHO OWNS GOODS LEFT OUTSIDE A CHARITY SHOP?

Added 21/11/10. This information adds to s.48.3 in The Russell-Cooke Voluntary Sector Legal Handbook (VSLH3).
Most charity shops discourage goods being left outside the shop. But if goods are left, do they belong to the donor or to the shop, or have they been abandoned?

This was considered in the high court in July 2010, in an application for judicial review by a man who had taken goods left in front of a British Heart Foundation (BHF) shop, as well as goods from bins at the back of an Oxfam shop, with the intention of selling them at a boot fair.

Theft involves dishonestly taking property belonging to someone else with the intention of permanently depriving that person of it. Under the Theft Act 1968, property belongs to a person if they have possession or control of it, or have a proprietary right or interest in it.

The high court found that although it was possible to infer that the goods would in due course belong to BHF, they did not belong to BHF at the time of the theft. But neither had they been abandoned, because it could be inferred that the donor had intended to give them to BHF, and delivery would be complete only when BHF took possession of them. So although the donor no longer possessed the items, he or she had not abandoned the items and still owned them.

In relation to goods taken from bins behind the Oxfam shop, the judge said that if the bins belonged to Oxfam — which was not disputed — it could be inferred either that a donor had put the goods in Oxfam's bins for Oxfam to receive [seems to me a weird place to leave donated goods], or that Oxfam had received the goods and put them in the bins for disposal. In either case, Oxfam was in possession of the goods at the time they had been taken.

The application for judicial review was dismissed.

The decision in Rickets v Basildon Magistrates' Court is at www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2010/2358.html.

For summaries and articles about cases, do a Google search on key words in the case name or content.

SANDY ADIRONDACK
Governance and legal training and consultancy
for the voluntary sector
39 Gabriel House, 10 Odessa Street, London SE16 7HQ
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