To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web
browser that
supports HTML5
video
Captain Tom Moore’s daughter said she is sorry if the public ‘feel misled’ but denied being dishonest.
The World War Two veteran shot to fame as while raising £38.9million for NHS charities by walking laps around is Bedfordshire home.
Off the back of his soaring popularity, his daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore and her husband launched their own charity – the Captain Tom Foundation.
But they repeatedly blurred ‘boundaries between private and charitable interests’, and received ‘significant personal benefit’ themselves, according to a recent Charity Commission investigation.
Among the concerns raised was a £1.47million advance paid to the couple’s company, Club Nook, for three Captain Tom books.
Statements at the time implied at least some of the money benefit the charity.
But ‘to date the charity has not received any money from the first publishing agreement’, something that the public ‘would understandably feel misled’ to learn, the 30-page report said.
Ms Ingram-Moore told the BBC she’s sorry if they do feel that way, but she’s not taking responsibility.
She said: ‘I’m sorry they feel misled. I genuinely am. But there was never any intent to mislead, and if there was any misleading, it wasn’t our doing.’
Asked whether they would comply with the Charity Commission’s request that they make a donation to charity, she said claimed they already had.
But she refused to reveal how much of the book advance had gone to the Captain Tom Foundation.
Ingram-Moore said: ‘I don’t think it’s helpful now for me to put another number out, because that’s the number everyone will talk about.
‘There is nothing dishonest about what happened. The book said, it said it would support the launch, and it did.’
Last year the family was forced to demolish an unauthorised spa complex next to their Marston Moretaine home, which they have since tried to sell for more than £2million.
They had been given permission to make a Captain Tom Foundation building in their garden to store cards and gifts sent by admirers.
Planning permission had initially been granted for an L-shaped building in the grounds of the family home.
The planning authority refused a second application in 2022 for a larger C-shaped building containing a spa pool. But construction went ahead anyway.
Ms Ingram-Moore told the BBC setting up the charity ‘completely derailed our lives’.
She said: ‘It was set up with my father’s name and that is our deepest regret.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.