Letter to the PTFC Trust trustees

To the trustees of the PTFC Trust,

We write to you on behalf of 202 season ticket holders who are therefore, or are soon expected to be, beneficiaries of the PTFC Trust. Having requested and received their permission to make representations to you on their behalf (many others may subsequently join them), we understand that at least 173 of these season ticket holders would already have been beneficiaries under the trust deed prior to its variation: they also held a season ticket in 2020-21 and 2021-22. All said beneficiaries have consented to us contacting you on their behalf to request information about the Trust in their capacity as beneficiaries and as members of our own organisation.

In Scotland, trustees owe a generalised legal duty to provide information to the beneficiaries of a trust. The rationale for such a duty is obvious: beneficiaries are entitled to hold trustees to account in the administration of the trust, and this cannot be done in a vacuum of information. We have taken detailed legal advice on this point.

Request for disclosure of minutes of meetings of the PTFC Trust

It was an established expectation and precedent that the PTFC Trust, up until March 2022, would publish the minutes of meetings of the trustees. These were available on the Club website, and therefore by extension to all of the “old-rule” beneficiaries. This was a clear example of good practice, enabling beneficiaries to stay in touch with trust matters and to understand key activities and decisions being taken.

The PTFC Trust has not published any minutes since March 2022, and no public explanation has ever been given for why this is the case. We are formally requesting that you disclose and publish, in line with established precedent, all of the minutes of trustee meetings from March onwards.

We consider these minutes, particularly those relating to the period April and May 2022, to be absolutely essential information for the beneficiaries. Those documents will enable them to understand exactly why, when, and at whose instigation, proposals were made or developed to transform the organisation. After all, those decisions included those to widen drastically the beneficiary group, fundamentally to overhaul how trustees are appointed, and to facilitate a major and material change in the Trust’s property.

This information is particularly important given that the beneficiaries were not consulted at all about whether the Trust should be changed in these fundamental ways.

You are now the custodians of the Trust, and therefore you should have available to you all of the official records of the trustees. Your legal duties are to the beneficiaries, not to the previous trustees that you have replaced.

We look forward to hearing from you soonest, and to being provided with these documents.

Kind Regards

The Jags Foundation Board of Directors

Acting on behalf of 202 (and counting) beneficiaries of the PTFC Trust