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Charity Falls Victim To Red Tape And Greed

Wednesday 12 March 2003

Northern Ireland’s leading heart charity is facing a £10,000 bill from bureaucrats who are attempting to take a share of its income from advertising.

Northern Ireland’s leading heart charity is facing a £10,000 bill from bureaucrats who are attempting to take a share of its income from advertising.

The NI Chest, Heart & Stroke Association earns money from an advertising hoarding on the outside wall of its Belfast headquarters. But the Department of Regional Development (DRD) is claiming a slice of the profits because the hoarding overlooks one of the Roads Service car parks. The charity agreed to give 50% of the income from the rental of the hoarding to the Roads Service Agency (RSA) on the understanding that it was the accepted practice throughout Belfast. However, it has now been discovered that in other sites no such high level of fee is required. The RSA aims to take the matter to court – a course of action that could cost the Association £10,000 even before legal costs are taken into account. This action has been taken despite direction from the Lord Chancellor that Government Departments and Agencies should do everything in their power to settle a dispute through conciliation, mediation or arbitration rather than subjecting Government Agencies and the other party to sizeable legal fees.

The charity’s Chief Executive, Andrew Dougal said, “The amount of money being sought by the RSA would pay a cardiac nurse’s salary for 6 months or buy 100 home nebulisers for young children suffering from severe asthma. But that does not appear to matter.”

A letter from the DoE (now DRD) in 1999 said, “Where a hoarding is erected on private land, but access and sight lines are over Departmental land, which does not form part of the public road, the Department seeks to achieve a figure of 50% of the hoarding’s rental value, in any licence for access.” In a meeting on December 1999, however, the Department could not provide the Association with any examples of a similar level of payment for a licence fee. More extensive hoardings at the other end of the same car park are only paying a fraction of the charge being levied against the charity. There are examples of sites where no fee is payable and these are:-

Winetavern Street, Kings Street, Millfield/North Street and Great Victoria Street.

Said Mr Dougal, “Essentially we are being asked to hand over an excessive amount of our hard earned income because people can see our advertising hoarding across the corner of a car park and because someone has to walk across the same car park to change the sign every fortnight. This is not just bureaucracy gone mad – it’s a direct assault on the money, which we use to change people’s lives. This charity relies for 80% of its income from voluntary donations from the people of Northern Ireland.”

The charity is particularly angered by the fact that it has suddenly received notice of court action after little or no activity over a period of years.

Mr Dougal added, “To be victimised in this way by a Government Agency is intolerable. We are quite happy to pay a reasonable amount to the Agency for the fact that contractors have to walk on the RSA car park in order to change the sign every fortnight. This attack on the income of the Association will result in suffering to chest, heart and stroke clients as well as their carers. We appeal to the Roads Service Agency to settle the matter amicably through mediation.”

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