It was the utopian housing dream, a community project designed to support its residents from cradle to grave – 400 redbrick homes built around a village hall, leisure centre and playing fields, all of it owned and managed by the people who lived there.
The Eldonian village in Liverpool was heralded at the time of its completion by the then Prince Charles as a “leading example of a successful, community-led, bottom-up approach to neighbourhood regeneration”.
Built amid the decline of 1980s Liverpool, the Eldonian lies close to the city’s once-thriving dockyards. Residents facing dispersal through slum-clearance programmes chose instead to stay together and rebuild their homes. They moved from cramped tenement flats to their own houses with gardens. To many, it was the fulfilment of a dream.
But just over a decade ago, with Liverpool’s booming dockside real estate suddenly in demand, the facilities once owned by the residents’ community trust were closed off. Within months football pitches were ripped up and blighted by fly-tipping, the school demolished and the village hall shuttered.
The search for answers led to a long battle by a determined group of people who set out to find out how and why the Eldonian dream appeared to be dying before their eyes – and who was responsible for its demise.
The fight led a small group of neighbours on a legal odyssey – to the high court, via the Charity Commission, Switzerland, Nevis, and the British Virgin Islands. They found that community assets had been transferred offshore, held by faceless companies based in the Caribbean, or with directors living in Switzerland.
While the search for an answer was on, one of those apparently in charge of the Eldonian attempted to force through a winding-up petition, under which it would have been disolved. This would have closed the book on the project’s remarkable decades-long story – likely denying residents answers to their many questions.
Last week a high court judge dismissed the move, leaving the remnants of the organisation in the hands of the neighbours who had fought so hard for its soul.
“This is why strong governance matters most,” said David Holdsworth, the Charity Commission’s chief executive. “We stepped in to make sure the charity could protect its assets for the public benefit.”
Now neighbours believe the Eldonian can rise from the ashes once more.
______________
The Leeds and Liverpool canal was a vital artery at the beating heart of Merseyside’s industrial powerhouse. Winding its way into the city, the waterway sweeps past the former warehouses of Tate & Lyle, American Tobacco and other vestiges of Victorian commerce.
But by the 1980s amid Liverpool’s post-industrial decline, use of the canal had dwindles, like much of the area’s economic prospects. The shuttering of factories left joblessness and deprivation in place of prosperity and wealth.
Amid the bleakness emerged a pioneering vision. Led by Tony McGann, a forklift truck driver, and a group of determined residents, an audacious plan took shape: to build a community run for the benefit of its inhabitants, by them, on the banks of the canal.
Rent was kept deliberately low, paid to a housing association with amenities overseen by a charity, the Eldonian Community Trust, set up and run by residents.
“The area was nothing but bricks and rubble,” said Billy Little, a lifelong resident, whose father was an original member of the trust. “We built something of our own, for our own.”
A network of companies beneath the charity managed the community’s assets, with directors appointed, but controlled by the charity itself. It was an ambitious experiment in cooperative living, social utopia as a response to economic decline.
The charity’s memorandum of association states its mission as “to promote the benefit of the inhabitants of Liverpool with particular emphasis upon the neighbourhood of Vauxhall Liverpool … to advance education, provide social welfare facilities and improve conditions”.
By the end of the century, on land that was once derelict and polluted, residents had built a haven with facilities for the youngest – in a nursery school – and those in their old age, with living and leisure facilities for pensioners. But more importantly, they had built a community; a place where people knew their neighbours and they were proud to call home.
In the decades it took to realise the dream, Liverpool too has undergone a resurgence. With the redevelopment of the nearby docks, the land on which the Eldonian village was built was now worth considerably more than it had been. What the residents did not realise was that the custodians of their community trust had begun to take advantage of that economic opportunity.
From around 2016, leases and land had begun to be transferred into private hands. Properties including the shops, nursery, leisure centre, gym, bowling green and sports pitches were quietly offloaded to offshore firms.
Documents reveal a paper trail tracing these sales to entities and directors unknown to the community. Worse still, some seemed to have been sold off at a fraction of their value. In several cases, apparently valuable assets had changed hands for as little as £1.
“It all happened so quietly. It was gradual,” said Maureen Price, a long-term resident of the Eldonian village. “Every time we asked who was responsible, no one answered. We wanted to know who approved those sales, why was nobody told and what happened to the income from our amenities?”
Tony McGann senior, the “slumbuster” and Eldonian pioneer had died in in 2022, aged 85. He received the freedom of Liverpool in 2017 and the flag on the town hall flew at half-mast after his death.
But upon his death, the next generation of his family remained involved in the Eldonian. McGann’s daughters had become entrenched as directors of Eldonian Leisure and took day-to-day management roles in the village hall. One daughter, Marie McGann, claims to have personally lent Eldonian Leisure £80,000 in 2017 – a loan currently under investigation by the Charity Commission.
And it was McGann’s son, Anthony , a mixed martial arts cage-fighting trainer, who brought the winding-up petition, claiming the charity owed him nearly £14,400 in legal fees for a bill he said he had settled.
In January 2020, Marie McGann was appointed as trustee-director of the Eldonian Community Trust. In November the following year, her sister Lisa Clark joined her at the charity, also taking a role as trustee-director.
However, an investigator at the Charity Commission told the court that neither of these appointments was to be considered valid because the previous board had failed to follow the legal framework when making them.
The history of Anthony’s involvement in the Eldonian charity affairs is ambiguous and contested. He denies to have ever acted as a director or trustee, but the court heard evidence he was a de facto director and, it is alleged, that at a meeting in November 2022, a resolution was passed authorising him to assist with legal and accountancy fees.
Linked to the charity, historically and through his family, he also acted informally to instruct a barrister who was to act on behalf of the community trust. In his ruling, Judge Halliwell said, McGann, “was able and did, at some point dictate some of the decisions taken”. The court viewed his involvement as complex and unofficial.
______________
For many residents, the first sign that anything was wrong was when they received an anonymous letter. Until then, they had believed that the village was still owned and run by its residents. “This being a matter of grave concern must be investigated immediately,” the six-page letter read.
And investigate they did. The Eldonians took their campaign to the social housing regulator, the local press, the national press, to local politicians and to the Charity Commission, each sounding the alarm about what had gone wrong in their small corner of Liverpool.
But untangling the complex web of transfers and transactions was not their only hurdle. Two Christmases ago, Price woke up to find graffiti had been spray-painted on the wall of her house saying: “Maureen the grass.” In December 2022, outside the church where another campaigner, Brian Jones, volunteered, the nativity crib was smashed to pieces.
At a meeting in 2021 of the Eldonian Community Based Housing Association in the village hall, residents arrived to be greeted by mixed martial arts fighters stationed on the doors.
“We felt like we were being intimidated,” Jones said. “Someone wanted us to stop asking questions, but we weren’t going to give up.”
Price added: “We definitely felt as if they were trying to scare us. Some people told us it wasn’t worth it and to just leave it, but we were fighting for our community and we weren’t going to back down.”
Finally, in September 2024, they learned their calls had been heeded when the Charity Commission announced it had opened a statutory inquiry into the charity over concerns about its governance.
In a statement at the time, the charity said: “The focus of this inquiry centres around an issue of whether the charity rules were fully followed with the election of three members at an AGM in November 2023.
“There had not been any AGMs for several years due to the previous trustees’ advanced ageing, and of course the Covid pandemic. The trust would like to clarify there are no financial issue concerns by the commission, and will of course continue to cooperate with the regulatory body.”
The inquiry continues, but while residents waited for the commission to report back, another challenge reared its head: litigation filed in the civil courts.
______________
By early 2025, the charity’s future was hanging by a thread. Its bank balance stood at just £42.66; fundraising and donations had dried up, its accounts had been frozen by the Charity Commission’s investigation, and alleged financial mismanagement had left the trust drained.
It was against this backdrop that McGann went into court, represented by a pro bono legal team.
Central to his winding-up claim was a document that appeared to show that £14,400 in legal fees had been paid to the law firm Mishcon de Reya. Because the trust couldn’t afford the bill, it should be wound up, McGann’s claim said.
But an invoice submitted to the court contained visible alterations, including a substituted client name and a mismatched reference. The law firm quickly disowned it, and in a letter to the Charity Commission, confirmed that only one genuine invoice had ever been issued, and that it was addressed not to the Eldonian Community Trust but to “Eldonian Community Based Housing Association & others”.
Judge Halliwell concluded: “There is no specific evidence as to when, how and by whom this was done. However, there is no room for doubt that it involves a significant retrospective alteration to the original invoice,”
Dismissing the petition, he said: “I have treated Mr McGann’s case and the evidence which he now deploys in support of his case with a great deal of caution.”
A Charity Commission spokesperson said: “We welcome the court’s decision to dismiss the winding-up petition brought by Mr McGann as against the Eldonian Community Trust Limited in which we were permitted to intervene and make submissions.
“This judgment will allow the trustees to move on and focus on the charity and its beneficiaries in the Eldonian village community. We are unable to comment any further while our statutory inquiry is ongoing.”
The hearing of the winding-up claim did not look into the question of the asset transfers and it is still unclear who was responsible. Meanwhile, the judgment has saved the charity from extinction. But the community – that was so nearly broken – now faces a struggle to rebuild.
And its court battles may not yet be over.
Shaun Smith, a Liverpool-based debt collector who has served five years in prison for firearms offences, said the charity had agreed to pay him £1,500 a month for “investigation work”, plus expenses – a total of £25,500.
He has signalled his intention to bring another legal case, with a hearing expected in early 2026. Trustees say they have found no supporting evidence for his claim.
Lord Rennard, a Liverpool-born peer who now chairs the Eldonian Community Trust, has praised the residents’ resilience. “Credit is due to their bravery and determination to fight back,” he said. “The charity has turned a new page in its history and we are determined to restore hope and look to the future.”
“We built this place with our own hands,” Little said. “We are not going to let anyone take it away, not then and not now.”
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