You Can Help to save Park Pharmacy Trust

It seems often to me that life just isn't fair..and that things happen to us and other people that are breath takingly unjust.
Please take time to go to the following link to the Trust website/read below and you will be shocked at the actions of Plymouth council.
http://www.parkpharmacytrust.org.uk/

Please also take a moment to click the link below to go to the Care2 website or alternatively go to the Care2 website and sign the petition, which can be found by clicking on Petitions and searching for Park Pharmacy Trust.
 http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/can-you-help-to-save-park-pharmacy-trust-plymouth/

STOP THE AUCTION OF MR PARK’S CHEMIST SHOP BEFORE 4PM TODAY

STOP PRESS: PLYMOUTH CITY CAN IF THEY WISH CALL OFF THE AUCTION OR PUT IT ON HOLD. THERE ARE MANY IRREGULATIES IN THIS WHOLE AFFAIR INCLUDING THE AUCTIONEER DISCLOSING THE IDENTIFY OF OTHERWISE ANONYMOUS BIDDERS.

In a calculated manoeuvre bailiffs acting for Plymouth City Council have arranged an on-line auction of Mr Park’s chemist shop at the top of the Merchant’s House Museum. Not for default on rent or in breach of agreements – but because of unjustified legal costs generated by the Council in a fight over development in a public park. The auction, which consists of one Lot, the C J Park pharmacy, has no reserve price. It  will go to the highest bidder at 4pm today. And if the Council is not satisfied with the amount of money it gets from the sale, I was told on Friday,  they have another order that they can use to seize all our assets at Thorn Park Lodge.

The auction has no reserve price and the items are not listed. The goods in the Merchant's House Museum were seized but not removed and the auctioneer has not recorded the accession numbers of the individual items making it impossible to know if anything is missing.  This is a catalogued collection, owned by a registered charity  in one of  Plymouth City Council’s accredited museums.  And what grieves me most is the way the council has in a cavalier way disregarded its duty of care to all the people who trusted us with their precious donations of hundreds of items of trading stock.

On Friday I went to the High Court London, to try to get an emergency injunction to stop the auction on the grounds that the auctioneer had included in the sale a vast number of un-seized goods (many of which are on loan) that are located in Thorn Park Lodge as one Job Lot. The Council knew I was going when they refused to voluntarily cancel or halt the auction. However, following a telephone call I made from the High Court to the lawyer at Plymouth Council, the auctioneer has now removed “All items with regard to the prescription books/literature in this auction.”  He has also, inadvertently revealed the identity of many of the anonymous bidders, revealing that the collections manager of Plymouth City Museums and Art Gallery is bidding in the auction.

What in heaven’s name is going on?

First Plymouth City Council refuse the offer of free mediation from a charity Conflict Dispute Resolution. Instead they spend public money on London solicitors and fees to bailiffs and seize the C J Park pharmacy in the Merchant’s House.  They then do nothing while the museum is open to visitors but after the tourist season the Council then spends more public money going to the High Court to try to buy the C J Park pharmacy for themselves by private sale, at approximately one tenth the amount of the debt. When the judge discovered that after the loss of its main collection, Park Pharmacy Trust would probably have the same debt as before, he dismissed their application and ordered them to pay their own costs.

The collections of Park Pharmacy Trust are of National and international importance and the The Wellcome Trust, the Science Museum, The Museums Association, The Pharmaceutical Society, The Royal Society of Chemistry, National Archives,  are very concerned. If the auction is put on hold, there is a very real chance that sufficient money will be raised to pay the debt owed to Plymouth City Council. The Local Government Ombudsman, who is currently carrying out an investigation,  has suggested that Plymouth City Council put the auction on hold while he completes his investigations. Sadly they have declined this suggestion as well as another one made by the Trust.

The predicament of Park Pharmacy Trust is similar to the Wedgewood Collection in which the High Court ruled that the collection could be sold to realise a debt. The difference between the predicament of Park Pharmacy Trust and the Wedgewood Collection is one of magnitude. Over £18 million will be needed to stop the sale of the Wedgewood Collection whereas the debt to Plymouth City Council is around £70,000 (including interest and profit costs).

The auctioneer has passed to the bidder all costs associated with a collection containing poisons and possibly controlled drugs. The bidder will also have  the cost of making good the Merchant’s House after removal of the display. The extra cost burden and restrictions placed on the bidder are resulting in very few bids. The Council is therefore very unlikely to realise anything approximating the debt. If the auctioneer is allowed to sell the un-seized assets of Park Pharmacy Trust at Thorn Park Lodge as part of this job lot then Park Pharmacy Trust will have to go into liquidation. This will leave the unpaid debt and the loss to the community of an award winning charity that provides a range of well needed services, free of charge, to the community of Plymouth.

The behaviour of Plymouth City Council whose museum is in receipt of Renaissance funding from the Arts Council and grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund is deplorable. We wonder what Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh, who is patron of the Friends of Plymouth City Museums and Art Gallery would say about this abomination. And the Council and the Auctioneer are trying to pass off the legal obligations under the Poisons Act, the Medicines Act, the Veterinary Medicines Regulations, Misuse of Drugs Act, COSHH regulations and much more onto the bidder.

Background

When Mr Park retired on the last day of 1983, the fixtures and fittings of the family chemist shop were going to be auctioned. This treasure house would have been lost to Plymouth but for the efforts of a conservation society. In two weeks of hectic activity which mobilised the whole of Plymouth, the society raised a loan and purchased the entire pharmacy. Park Pharmacy Trust, a registered charity, was then established to own, manage and make available to the public, this marvellous piece of history.

Mr Park’s chemists shop, the bit of Plymouth’s heritage that survived the war, was rebuilt at the top of the Merchants House Museum where it re-opened to visitors in April 1984. There it rapidly became a very popular tourist attraction where thousands of visitors could go inside the shop, try their hand at old fashioned pill-rolling (and earn a certificate of proficiency in the art of pill rolling) and talk to volunteers on duty in the pharmacy. A weekend event held at the Merchant’s House Museum Pharmacy is Phun, attracted record numbers of visitors.

Park Pharmacy Trust has received National recognition for both its innovative approaches to life-long learning and as a tourist attraction for visitors to Plymouth. The pharmacy was televised Nationally to over 8 million viewers when Park Pharmacy Trust became the joint United Kingdom winner in the Tourism/Heritage category of the BBC’s “It’s My City!” competition.

The trust has its headquarters in Thorn Park Lodge, in Mutley Park Plymouth. At the lodge is a pharmaceutical library, a collection of materia medica (used in the past for making pharmaceutical preparations) an extensive collection of artefacts and old fashioned proprietary goods. People of all ages visit its headquarters (by appointment) where they are transported back in time by the touch and smells of our pharmaceutical past and can even earn a certificate in pill rolling and powder envelope folding. For many years the trust has been developing a medicinal garden at Thorn Park Lodge where visitors can learn about plants used in the medicine or just sit and enjoy the surroundings. In addition to visits to the Lodge, the trust runs recall reminiscence sessions at residential homes and day centres, science based children’s workshops at primary schools and participates in fun days and exhibitions. Its science-based practical workshops for primary school children, Children’s Industry Workshops have attracted National and International recognition including being short-listed for the prestigious Jerwood Award.

It has also received two grants from the Royal Society of London COPUS (Committee on the Public Understanding of Science) and other grant awarding bodies. It received a commendation for its innovative educational work from the Gulbenkian Trust’s Museums and Galleries Awards.                         

 Mr Park’s chemist shop in the Merchant’s House Museum, Plymouth, England

·         This, the tourist attraction considered by many to be the jewel in the crown of the Merchant’s House Museum, was televised to 8 million viewers when Park Pharmacy Trust won the BBC’s, It’s My City! competition in the category of tourism and heritage.

·         This is the tourist attraction that was going to be lost forever from Plymouth when at the end of 1983 Mr Armstrong Park was retiring and the contents of his family chemist shop were to be auctioned on 14 January 1984.

·         This was the last remaining family pharmacy in Plymouth which represented to the people of Plymouth the last bit of old Plymouth --- the part that wasn’t destroyed in the blitz.

·         This is the chemist shop that the museum had been monitoring for 8 years, but when Mr Park told the museum he was retiring on the last day of 1983, the museum was unable to do anything about it.

·         This is the tourist attraction that, with the help of BBC Spotlight, was secured by a loan in order to stop the auction and save the whole collection for the people of Plymouth.

·         This was a magnificent demonstration of partnership with all political parties working together with one object only, to save Mr Park’s chemist shop.

Registered Charity 294774

VAT 887 6847 41

Dr Jan Knight

Chairman of Trustees

Tel: +44 (0)1752 565 676

Email: jan@knightscientific.com


ParkLodge

ThornPark

Plymouth, PL3 4TF

Phone: +44 (0)1752 263 501

ParkPharmTrust@btconnect.com

February 2012

PARK PHARMACY TRUST RELEASE

There are only unti 4pm left to save Park Pharmacy Trust

Plymouth City Council has seized all the assets of Park Pharmacy Trust and is currently selling them in a public auction.

Bidding stops at 4pm on monday 27^th february

the trust needs pledges of money to enable it to bid at the auction

Contact: Dr Jan Knight, Chair of Park Pharmacy Trust,

jan@knightscientific.com,  telephone: 01752 565 676

Note for editors:

This story touches on issues at the heart of local authority accountability and on the vulnerability of charity assets to distraint for debt. The Trustees of Park Pharmacy Trust have carefully followed all channels to protect their collections and the continuation of their public responsibilities and been frustrated by apparent Council indifference to the issues involved. The sorry tale can be explored at length by inviting comment on issues as diverse as innovative approaches to mental health and fun for the elderly, schools workshops supporting: health, science, engineering, maths, history and employability, local government competence and accountability, charity issues, disposal of museum collections, health and safety law in relation to seizure of chemicals, open spaces and many more matters of public interest. We offer our support and cooperation in providing names and telephone numbers of independent commentators in all of these areas to enable a full public interest disclosure of council ineptitude in this matter. 

IThe auction consists of one Lot, the famous C J Park pharmacy, rescued for the people of Plymouth in 1984 together with hundreds of items bought and donated to the collection. The auction catalogue includes many assets of the trust that have not even been seized. And while the collection is completely catalogued (by Park Pharmacy Trust) none of the catalogue numbers that identify the donors of items have been recorded by either the Museum or the Auctioneer. The behaviour of a museum in receipt of Renaissance funding from the Arts Council and grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund is deplorable. We wonder what Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who is patron of Plymouth City Museums and Art Gallery, would say about this abomination. And the Council and the Auctioneer are trying to pass off their legal obligations under the Poisons Act, the Medicines Act, the Veterinary Medicines Regulations, Misuse of Drugs Act, COSHH regulations and much more onto the bidder; we believe this is illegal.

Park Pharmacy Trust, which has owned, displayed, conserved, interpreted, managed and provided staff for the display in the Merchant’s House since 1984, is determined to buy back this wonderful piece of Plymouth’s history. It is looking for people who will pledge any amount of money for donation or loan to the trust in order to save this wonderful collection. Such donations will be eligible for tax relief. 

Debt enforcement measures are being pursued actively four years after a David and Goliath tussle over planning permission that would have destroyed the medicinal garden and blighted a park within a conservation area leaving behind an unfinished housing development. The planning issue is a complicated one (see Annex 2) but the Council has consistently refused to engage with the Trust or to seek a mutually supportive way around the issue of legal fees incurred by Plymouth City in defending their position.

When the head teacher, Mrs Liz Hill,  of Hyde Park Infants School, near Thorn Park Lodge learned that the trust was in danger of being closed down, she said “We can’t lose you, you are part of the community and moreover, you are embedded in our curriculum.“

What is the Council doing?

Despite flawed procedures and an acknowledged failure to follow up issues when pointed out to them, the law is on the side of local authorities simply through their determination of planning applications on officers’ advice – they are the last resort. In addition to the initial time and trouble taken by the Trust to make officers aware of the issues Trustees pursued the whole procedure as far as judicial review when the default position – that the Council in effect cannot be wrong – was stated. Since that time the Trust has proposed numerous ways of allowing the Council to recognise the community worth of this work while writing the ‘debt’ off against services rendered or collection transfer –all to no avail.  Legal officers have consistently refused to engage and extra costs have been added as a result of the Trust’s attempts to resolve the matter.

Initial costs of £18k disbursements plus £34,000 of local authority legal department profit charges, awarded by the Court against the Trust, have now been increased by the Council going to the High Court to obtain a certificate of seizure. This certificate includes over £12,000 of interest and £5,500 of execution costs and Sheriff’s fees, bringing the costs owed to £71,493.

In its latest attempt to supply a mutually acceptable compromise the trust has asked to make monthly payments of £250 in order to repay the initial non-profit £18k of costs. This offer has been refused.

The Council and the Wellers Auctions could be heading into serious legal health and safety issues

In March 2010, Park Pharmacy Trust won a prize for providing a sample of Blue Pills for analysis by the Royal Society of Chemistry. It was in connection with the celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency of the United States and the suspicion that his verbal and physical rages were due to ingesting Blue Pills, which the analysis of the sample we sent to the RSC revealed contained 33.6% mercury, 80-120 times the World Health Organisation’s acceptable daily intake. And though the trust had not realised initially that it had Blue Pills in the collection, when discovered, knowledge of how to handle the Blue Pills and subsequently store them was within its expertise.

The trust has been trying to explain to the Senior Lawyer Miss Julie Rundle that the Council could get into serious health and safety trouble if they were to go ahead with a public auction of the collection. We have informed the Council of Legal and Ethical Advisory Service fact sheets of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society concerning handling and disposal of chemical and pharmaceutical items in the trust’s collection.  The Council has never valued the free professional services provided to them nor appeared to understand its legal responsibilities regarding this kind of collection. The Council and the Wellers Auctions we believe are guilty of selling restricted goods.  And ignorance of the contents of the bottles is not an excuse as we have been warning Miss Rundle of this fact for a few years. I have even suggested she contact the Royal Pharmaceutical Society legal department and obtain names of qualified consultants. The Council might come to realise the value of the professional services provided by Park Pharmacy Trust free for some 27 years. They have chosen to go down the route of passing off the responsibility to the bidder. This is wrong and probably is illegal. This was why when the pharmacy was rescued from auction in 1983 the curator then of the City Museum was so keen not to own the collection.

Annex 1

What does the Trust do and what do people think about it?

·         Park Pharmacy Trust is a sitting tenant of Plymouth City Council at Thorn Park Lodge, Mannamead, Plymouth. The Lodge and medicinal garden is within Mutley Park, which is in the Mannamead Conservation Area.

·         Park Pharmacy Trust provides valued services to the community. The trust has recently had two mental health grants from PCC for our work with elderly patients and others with stroke and Alzheimer’s disease. Park Pharmacy Trust invented Recall Reminiscence using its collection in 1984 to run the No matter how bitter the pill, the memories of it are sweet workshops. These have taken our trained volunteers all over Devon county, but over the past few years the trust has concentrated mainly on services to Plymouth.

·         The trust’s hands on practical Children’s Industry Workshops, of which there are 5, have won international acclaim. And the trust was short-listed for the prestigious Jerwood Award for these workshops. The Trust was winner of the BBC’s  It’s My City! competition and used its prize money on the medicinal garden. Over the years the trust has won many awards and grants and is planning at the Wolseley Business Park  to have its second Victorian pharmacy accessible to people and schools in a area of Plymouth with a considerable amount of social deprivation.

•     The trust has received small grants for projects, such as the mental health project it is running for Plymouth City Council, and tiny amounts of money it makes in selling post cards, pill rolling certificates and other items. It receives small donations in the jar in the Merchant’s House Museum. The Council receives the income from entrance to the Merchant’s and it can be seen in the many entries in the visitor book very flattering references to the volunteers who man the pharmacy alongside statements that the £3.50 entrance fee was very good value.

•     The trust’s only guaranteed income was £3,400 in 2010 from the Council for hire to the City Museum of the C J Park Victorian pharmacy in the Merchant’s House Museum. The collection is insured by the Council for £65,000. It is fully interpreted, catalogued and manned with trained volunteers and the trust provides professional specialist curatorial services free of charge.  Over the years it has become a very popular tourist attraction and the trust has been featured on television on a number occasions. The Council charges entrance fees for people to visit the Merchant’s House and chemist’s shop.

•        Visitors do not realise that the Trust does not receive any of the entrance fee.

Annex 2

The Planning Issue that has created the debt

·         When Planning permission was granted in 2006 to build 4 terraced houses in the garden of Thorn Park Lodge it was said in the report to the committee that “none of the site falls within the park”. That statement was wrong. The Historic Environment Officer, in his witness statement said  “I made no reference to the extension of the site into the rear garden of the Lodge or any concerns arising therefrom. This was no longer a real issue in my view given the boundary changes.” The boundary had not changed and all the arguments that followed were therefore flawed.

·         There is no right of appeal by third parties to the granting of planning permission. The only course of action is to try to have the application quashed by judicial review. However, unlike a planning appeal against refusal, it is not permitted to revisit the merits of the planning application. To this day no one in the Council can say, in retrospect, that the planning decision was a good one.

·         Many people were shocked by the outcome of the judicial review and really believed that the number of errors would have been sufficient to justify a quashing of the application. However, the judge said at the hearing, “If there are errors in a report to the committee and the committee accepts the report then you are stuck with a flawed outcome.” He also said “officers are professionals: sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong”. “If the committee accepts the officer’s recommendations, right or wrong, good or bad, we are all stuck with them”.

·         The grant of planning permission was based largely on the fact that the planners believed wrongly that Thorn Park Lodge and garden was a residential property and not parkland. However, it was subsequently discovered during the time of the preparation of the judicial review hearing, that Thorn Park Lodge and garden were within the boundary of Mutley Park. In addition it was discovered that the land was compulsorily purchased in 1951 for the purpose of providing walks and pleasure grounds. There are also a number of restrictive covenants on Mutley Park. The Council had in fact made an error in advertising and then giving itself permission to change a tiny portion of the medicinal garden from greenscape to residential.

·         The time taken in the run up to the judicial review hearing resulted in the mistake regarding the designation of the land being recognised. The Council would need permission from the Secretary of State now, to sell the garden for residential use.

·         Had Park Pharmacy Trust not challenged the planning decision the garden and historic boundary wall would have been sold and bulldozed. It is also very likely that the community would have been left with a building site of half built and unsold houses, similar to that on the west side of Mutley Park. Yes, the trust would have complained to the Secretary of State, but the garden, pond, trees, beds, walls and wildlife would have been destroyed. 

·         The garden had been built by thousands of hours of volunteer work together with over £150,000 of grant and prize money. The trust had no alternative but to accept the verdict as it had no money to appeal against the decision. However, it does not mean that the trust should have just stood idly by and watched 25 years of work of volunteers at Thorn Park Lodge destroyed.

·         In view of the ethical issues involved, in particular the mistakes made by the officers, which had they not made these mistakes would have led to a recommendation for refusal of planning permission, it seems cruel for the Council to capitalise on these mistakes by securing £34,000 of profit costs (plus £12,000 now of  interest), against Park Pharmacy Trust. These issues were discussed at the costs hearing when the judge acknowledged that the in-house legal costs were profit. He also said that it is normal practice for local authorities to put these costs in the bill but he added, it was entirely up to the Council to decide what it wanted to do regarding repayment of the costs awarded.

Annex 3

The story of the Park Pharmacy Trust origins

When Mr Charles Armstrong Park retired on the last day of 1983 the fixtures and fittings of the family chemist shop were going to be auctioned. This treasure house would have been lost to Plymouth but for the efforts of a conservation society. In two weeks of hectic activity which mobilised the whole of Plymouth, the society raised a loan and purchased the entire pharmacy. Park Pharmacy Trust, a registered charity, was then established to own, manage and make available to the public, this marvellous piece of history.

The C J Park pharmacy, the last remaining family chemist shop in Plymouth, established in 1864, was rebuilt at the top of the Merchants House Museum, Plymouth and opened to visitors in April 1984. There it rapidly became a very popular tourist attraction where thousands of visitors could go inside the shop, try their hand at old fashioned pill-rolling (and earn a certificate of proficiency in the art of pill rolling) and talk to volunteers on duty in the pharmacy.

The trust also owns the Edwardian pharmacy of Miss Mary Burr, Nottingham, the second woman to become President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. This pharmacy had been in the Cookworthy Museum, Kingsbridge, until recently. It has now been taken into the community, rebuilt in a development trust business park, in order to be accessible to everyone, especially those unable to climb to the top of the Merchant’s House.  This new visitor centre, not yet complete, will be the first stage of the trust’s long term plans for a Museum of Health Man.

The trust has its headquarters in Thorn Park Lodge, Thorn Park, Plymouth. At the lodge is a pharmaceutical library, a collection of materia medica (used in the past for making pharmaceutical preparations) an extensive collection of artefacts and old fashioned proprietary goods. People of all ages visit its headquarters (by appointment) where they are transported back in time by the touch and smells of our pharmaceutical past and can even earn a certificate in pill rolling and powder envelope folding. For many years the trust has been developing a medicinal garden at Thorn Park Lodge where visitors can learn about plants used in the medicine or just sit and enjoy the surroundings. In addition to visits to the Lodge, the trust runs recall reminiscence sessions at residential homes and day centres, children’s workshops at primary schools and participates in fun days and exhibitions. The trust was winner of the BBC’s It’s My City competition in the category of heritage and tourism.  

Some details of Park Pharmacy Trust can be seen at www.ParkPharmacyTrust.org.uk.

I would like to add to the above that there are many who avoid paying a variety of debts, including child maintenance, who are not treated in this extremely shabby way by local authorities or judges, and are given the opportunity to pay off debts in (often very) small amounts as a matter of course. And they are not running a Trust or charity.

Please take a moment to sign the petition on the Care2 website.Search 'Petitions' for Park Pharmacy Trust.
Or try the link below;
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/can-you-help-to-save-park-pharmacy-trust-plymouth/
Thank you !