Exclusive: How a food bank siphoned £195,000 into private hands

It was a typical quiet morning when Knowsley Foodbank received the email. Despite its bland and bureaucratic subject line — “Unannounced visit 24 June 2025” — panic descended on the charity’s Kirkby warehouse.

The email informed the food bank’s bosses, Antonia Bell and Carolyn Vaughan, that a council-appointed auditor would be visiting that day to review all of their financial documents. The auditor wanted to learn how the food bank had spent £1.1 million of taxpayers’ money.

Bell and Vaughan had less than three hours to craft their strategy. By 1pm, the auditor had arrived at their door, accompanied by a council officer. The plan? Give them nothing. According to two staffers at the food bank, Bell claimed all the requested documents were held by an employee who was unfortunately “unavailable” for the audit. “[She] most definitely lied,” one of the staffers told The Post.

For over a year, Knowsley Foodbank had been receiving monthly payments of between £40,000 and £50,000 from the council. However, late last year, the council became concerned that cash wasn’t all being spent to feed the hungry. They had suspicions about the food bank’s links to a scandal-hit network of companies that Post readers have become familiar with: the Big Help empire of former Liverpool Labour councillor, Peter Mitchell. 

The suggestion that public money might be going missing from a food bank is an incendiary claim. But after three months of reporting, we can now reveal that’s exactly what happened. 

Documents obtained by The Post show that last year and early this year, Knowsley Foodbank siphoned large sums of money into organisations that Mitchell directly or indirectly controlled – effectively becoming a cash machine for his Big Help network. Bank statements for two separate months during that time period show £165,000 in such payments, plus additional transfers of more than £49,000 into a company that one of Mitchell’s aides described as “Peter’s private company”.     

Leaked emails show that Mitchell and his partner, sitting Liverpool Labour councillor Colette Goulding, remained closely involved with Knowsley Foodbank during this period — contradicting  assurances food bank bosses gave the council.

The Post can also reveal that as a result of these transfers, Knowsley Foodbank is under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. The Charity Commission said in September it has launched an inquiry into Knowsley Foodbank over “regulatory concerns”  regarding “payments to a non-charitable company”.

We contacted Knowsley Foodbank for this story, as well as Peter Mitchell, Colette Goulding, Antonia Bell and Carolyn Vaughan. Only Mitchell responded to our request for comment, telling The Post he takes the allegations raised in today’s story “very seriously”, but he is unable to answer our specific questions because he needs to “review the physical and electronic records”. The SFO said they could neither confirm nor deny that an investigation is underway.