This time of year, I often talk about the importance of charity. It should be something we practice all year long, but folks seem especially generous around the holidays, and I’ll take what I can get.
Furniture donations have become increasingly popular, as disaster victims and others without furnishings are given extra furniture that others don’t need for themselves. This kind of giving is very admirable.
But what if you’d donated your contract bistro chairs to the less fortunate, only to find that they hadn’t in fact been donated, but sold to the general public? That’s what happened in Tewkesbury. According to Sue Duncan, who had transported many items from Suffolk to Gloucester to be distributed to summer flood victims, some items have been marked for sale rather than donated. Says Duncan, “It’s disgraceful - the goods were collected in good faith for people in need after the floods.”
Tewkesbury mayor Phil Awford has been made aware of the situation, and is checking into it to make sure no donated goods are being sold. The mix-up was quite possibly accidental; the furniture was being stored in a warehouse that also stores furniture for the Furniture Recycling Project. FRP’s chief executive Ian Ellis insists that the sales were an innocent mistake. “It may well have been that some of these items were brought to Gloucester by Sue Duncan, but as they were in the ‘general stock’ we could not ascertain where each item was supplied from,” said Ellis. “If we inadvertently picked up articles donated by Sue Duncan it was a genuine error,” he said.
Storage seems to be an issue; officials from the borough council’s housing department say that the stored items have to be out of the warehouse by December 16th. If they cannot be distributed to the flood victims, they will either be donated to a homeless charity, or sold, with the proceeds going to the flood victims.
