The woman helping our county’s charities thrive
Behind every one of the several thousand charities in Gloucestershire is a dedicated team, and helping many of those organisations make some of their biggest decisions well is one woman.
Dear readers,
A big read for the long bank holiday weekend ahead dominates this edition.
Whenever we run appointment and promotions stories at the county’s leading professional services firms, as we did yesterday about the seven promotions at law firm Willans LLP, the curtains always twitch madly across Gloucestershire’s business community.
It was a timely announcement because we had already been lucky enough to sit down with one of those mentioned, new partner Charlotte Cowdell.
For anyone wishing to learn just what kind of career pathway can lead them to such a position, find out how Cowdell helps numerous county charities achieve successful decisions, or would just like to learn more about one of the rising stars of the county’s legal scene, we think the article makes for a great read.
We also do our thing with this week’s news from Gloucester City Homes which, together with construction partner Cape Homes, announced the delivery of 17 new homes. Which means we asked just how big the challenge is for the social housing provider. The answer is shocking.
And we also deliver you some briefing notes capturing some of the county’s significant or interesting snippets of news from the week gone.
Have a great Easter weekend.
Best regards,
Andrew Merrell (editor).
£3.4m investment reveals Gloucestershire’s “urgent need” for thousands of new homes
Seventeen new houses have come on the market thanks to a £3.4 million investment by Gloucester City Homes, and its construction partner Cape Homes, as the county battles to house 5,000 households. Gloucester City Homes announcement that it has just completed 13 energy-efficient homes in Longford, just north of Gloucester, with four more due in the coming months, is more good news for those waiting.
“Demand for secure and genuinely affordable homes is rising sharply in the local area,” according to the city-based housing association, adding that there was an “urgent need for more”.
The one and two-bedroom maisonettes and two and three-bedroom houses come with dedicated parking and private gardens and will be allocated through a system independent of GCH, which will manage the properties - along with the 5,000-plus is already in charge of. More here.
An important announcement about management and leadership apprenticeships - from Gloucestershire College
From 1 September, the government will withdraw funding for new starters of team leader/supervisor Level 3 and operations manager Level 5 apprenticeships.
Current learners won’t be affected and will continue on programme as planned, receiving high-quality coaching and being fully supported through to completion.
There is also time to act! Employers with new apprentices enrolled before 1 September can still access funded apprenticeship training for existing and future managers in your company.
Speak with the college’s team to discuss options.
The college also offers ILM-certified Level 2 and Level 3 short courses that can be tailored to specific needs of your business.
Your briefing notes...
🏊🏽♀️ It first hit the headlines two years ago when Cheltenham Lido announced a campaign to help preserve the community asset for future generations. Things have moved on since then. The town’s borough council and the Cheltenham Lido Charity have announced that future is “secure”. The first lease between Cheltenham Borough Council and the charity began back in 1996, this original lease was for 25 years running until 2021. A second lease was then permitted in 2021 running until 2056. The two organisations have now agreed what they are calling a “reversionary lease” that will run until 2120. The devolution expected to wipe out the borough council, the move is seen a critical to avoiding more uncertainty.
🏊🏽♀️ There may have been good news this week for Cheltenham Lido (see above), but across the hills in Stroud residents had barraged the town council with letters calling for a meeting after the local authority announced the proposed closure of its lido. The council said the facility needed £5 million of investment. The letters seem to have done the trick. The council has agreed to a meeting with concerned residents, which will take place on Monday 20 April at St Laurence Church, at 6pm. Representatives from the town council, district council and the Save our Lido campaign will be on a panel to take questions.
🍽️ Food Dock café restaurant owner opens new venue. The owner of Roots + Seeds, part of the stable of eateries making Gloucester Dock’s Food Dock such a hit has opened a café at wellness and events venue Far Peak off the A429 near Northleach in the Cotswolds. It brings the total number of cafes under its management to three, the other being Cattivo Pizza at The Old Kennels, in Cirencester Park. Food at the new café ranges from breakfast and brunch options, such as porridge with rhubarb and orange compote and maple syrup to a full-English, soups, salads, sandwiches and eggs hollandaise. An estimated 120 guests attended the opening of the new business.
🏇🏽 Jump racing is off at Cheltenham until the autumn. The famous course, under the control of The Jockey Club, announced its decision to cancel its three remaining events of the season to deal with drainage issues on the home straight. It means its two-day meeting scheduled for 15-16 April and its hunter-chase fixture and concern on 1 May, will not take place. In 2025 those final three dates attracted almost 25,000, so the closure represents a significant loss in ticket sales and race-day revenue. Problems with drainage were first highlighted in January with the final race of the Trials meeting delayed by 29 minutes when hole appeared on the home straight.
🍦Unilever, the owner of the Walls Ice Cream factory in Gloucester, which employs more than 500 staff, has confirmed it is in talks to merge its food business with a rival from the United States of America in a deal worth £11.9 billion ($15.7 billion US dollars). The deal would not include its Gloucestershire-based business, which it will keep. Unilever recently separated the business out under the name The Magnum Ice Cream Company. The factory will continue to produce the famous Ben & Jerry’s and Cornetto brands.
👨🦰 Shurdington-based accountants Randall & Payne has announced the appointment of a new partner. Ben Burch, who started with the firm in 2012 as a trainee and is now a specialist in auditing, joined the senior leadership team in 2022 and has now been promoted again. He has particular expertise in the academy schools, charities, hospitality, manufacturing, SaaS (software as a service) and UK subsidiary companies.
⛪ Gloucester Cathedral hosted its first-ever business networking event in collaboration with corporate partner WSP Solicitors. More than 100 businesspeople attended. The event was staged in the Chapter House in the Cathedral’s famous cloisters. Businesses in attendance included Cass Stephens, Handelsbanken, Hazelwoods, John Morgan Partnership, St James’s Place and Bruton Knowles. More here.
🏇 Willans LLP solicitors and Cheltenham Open Door, the Cheltenham-headquartered law firm’s nominated charity for the year, invite you to join them for an evening of fun, fundraising and friendly competition. The entry fee, which all goes to the charity, puts you and a team in with a chance of winning one or more of six recorded races. Price includes two drinks and pizza. The date has been moved from the end of February to 23 April. At The Bottle of Sauce, Cheltenham, from 6pm. More here.
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The woman helping our county’s charities thrive
Behind every one of the several thousand charities in Gloucestershire is a dedicated team, and helping many of those organisations make some of their biggest decisions well is one woman.
Gloucestershire has hundreds and hundreds of charities of all sizes, each one required to run to a legal framework tightly regulated by the Charity Commission, many of them with assets they need to manage - property and more.
To do all that they need the help of trustees, but it’s a role that has been accumulating an increasing legal responsibility, with many of the decisions they now make fall under the Charity Commission’s scrutiny.
And as much as recent reforms have sought to make the commission’s role more about guiding trustees and charities, about helping them make better decisions up front rather than requiring intervention later, it’s become complex.
Each charity now requires a legal guide to be able to do what they do. Be they looking to open a new shop, sell a premises, expand, take on more staff or invest in a new premises, few decisions they now come across are straightforward.
Depending on the charity’s legal structure trustees may be required to comply with the statutory directors’ duties under the Companies Act.
And then there are the duties that apply to trustees of charitable incorporated organisations (CIOs) as set out in the CIO Regulations, and the various statutory duties that apply to trustees of unincorporated charities under the Trustee Act 2000.
We could go on, but you get the picture. Charities now need good legal guides, and Charlotte Cowdell is one of those guides and a rising star of the county’s legal profession.
Cowdell has just had her efforts recognised with a promotion to partner in Cheltenham-based law firm Willans LLP’s highly rated real estate team, a team headed up by the firm’s elite Legal 500-rated property lawyer, Alasdair Garbutt (pictured below).
Colleague Emma Thompson (also pictured below) has also just been promoted to partner. And their efforts, alongside senior associates Nancy Battell and Li Garrod, are part of the magic ingredients that has helped make the firm’s team so highly respected.
Cowdell operates across the county and beyond, helping charities navigate safely through the small print – advising on everything from the challenges outlined above to coaching trustees and updating governing documents.
“That’s the reason I like working with charities. There is such variety. It can be working with faith-based charities, schools – most schools are charities – and local small community organisations, as well as national household names.
“Gloucestershire has about 3,000 charities and social enterprises. That’s a lot. Most of the big law firms have their charity teams, but we are experts in what we do too, and we’ve come to know a lot of those organisations.
“It’s a privilege to work in a place where so many organisations are making a difference,” said the Cheltenham expert, who is also listed as a ‘rising star/associate to watch’ in the independent guides The Legal 500 UK and Chambers UK.
“Charity law is very nuanced. You need to be aware of the rules as well.
“Today I also advise on issues of governance matters at every stage, from setting up a new charity, incorporating an existing one, and supporting a merger between two charities to guiding trustees through the process of bringing a charity to a close, and generally assisting charities in complying with their regulatory requirements.
“I like the problem solving. Quite a lot of trustees from charities come to me too. That position can be short-term, but there can be a lot to learn and a lot of responsibility.
“I can help them understand what’s going on and it’s nice watching them develop and become more confident.”
Thoroughly charming without trying, disarming and personable, Cowdell also opened up about her career path to date - which is probably textbook, but inspirational nevertheless.
She breezes through the story as if anyone could do it - from school, to university, to a post-grad law course to access the profession, and then a place at a law firm to begin building experience and specialising.
Her rise through the ranks has also been timely.
“The new Charities Act came in in 2022, but many of its provisions were not implemented until 2024. There were a lot of changes in the Act still new to people.
“So, clients come to us and we help them deal with that as effectively and efficiently as possible. It might be drawing up governing documents or something on the commercial side.”
Much of those changes also come with a welcome change of stance from the commission under its relatively new chief executive officer, David Holdsworth, whose approach has been more about support, collaboration, and strategic engagement over a purely enforcement-focused model.
His stance has signalled “a move away from punitive scrutiny toward understanding and enabling resilience”, which is good news for trustees and the charities trying to attract them, but that expert help is needed more than ever.
“Being a trustee can be a big commitment. People can be worried about the liability. The Charity Commission is realising that acting as a trustee can be daunting.
“They don’t want to penalise those trustees who don’t get it right but are clearly trying to act in a charity’s best interests.
“They want to work together. Which is more reassuring for those who want to become trustees,” is how she sees it.
So just how did she get to where she is, a partner and working mum, in a career she clearly loves?
“I always liked the idea of working in the legal profession when I was young, but I was told at school not to put yourself in a niche too early.
“So, when I went to university I did geography, as it was the subject I enjoyed most at the time. Only when I finished di I go and do my legal training.
“When I came out of university I decided to do the GDL (graduate diploma in law). It was a one-year, very intense course. I did it at the University of Law. I moved back home with my parents. I don’t know how happy they were!
“But I commuted from my home in Cheltenham to Bristol two to three days a week. I felt I was prepared to do it. The course was incredibly intense, but I think it motivates you when you have a career goal. It was good for me.
“The university was amazing; it had great contacts and set you up with interview training and supported you and helped us with the routes we could go down.
“I secured a training contract with a UK-based, full-service law firm in Bristol. One of its specialisms was education and charity.
“I didn’t really think at the time ‘that’s what I wanted to go into’, but it was a good firm and it allowed you to experience every department.
“I started off in commercial property, which I also enjoyed. You had four seats over two years. The second seat was on the charities team. I loved it. I realised that was what I wanted to do.
“I also spent time with the contentious probate team, and after that I decided to go back to the charities team again and began to build my experience.
“Charity law is broad. It can be about real estate, it can be about how a charity is set up and structured as a trust, as a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO), community interest company etc. There are so many dimensions.”
She added: “When I joined Willans I joined its commercial property (now known as Real estate) team and was able to continue working with charities.
“You can’t make the commercial decisions for charities, but you can guide them through the legal aspects of buying a property, or disposing of a property, which can be a complex area of charity law.
She added: “We deal with lots of them and it’s nice to build up those relationship, help them with their commercial direction and acquire any property they need.
“Quite a few charities are looking to close. It is not a nice time for them necessarily, but we can help with that process too. We can assist by talking to trustees and walking everyone through it. And we can set up new charities.
“I still assist with commercial property matters when needed but, over time, my work has evolved to focus more on charity governance.
“It’s a lovely position to be in because it means I get to work closely with different teams across the firm who are incredibly experienced: corporate, commercial, employment, litigation.
“For example, a colleague recently needed help with a charity client. He could handle the commercial side, but he needed my governance expertise too.
“We worked together to make sure the client got exactly what they needed. Collaborating in that way and drawing on the experience of colleagues across the firm means we’re able to deliver a more rounded service to our charity clients.”
She added: “It is the people bit that I really enjoy; building those relationships and helping clients understand the legal issues. And it is nice working with people who are dedicated to doing good.
“I do get asked to join boards, but I generally say ‘no’ as I don’t want to create a conflict of interest. It is something I hope to get involved in in the future, but at the moment I’m just enjoying helping in any way I can.”