Exclusive: The Big Help empire has collapsed. Now, Peter Mitchell looks to Ukraine

On the afternoon of Wednesday 21st May, around forty employees of Big Help Group and Big Help Trading — just two of the companies connected to the once-lauded charity Big Help Project — were called into a small meeting room at their head office on Boaler Street.

One of Big Help Group’s directors, former Knowsley Council leader Andrew Moorhead, stood at the front of the room, staring at his feet. “I have a short statement to make,” he can be heard saying sheepishly in a secret recording leaked to The Post. “It’s with great sadness and reluctance that we have to announce we have exhausted all means to pay wages this month.”

Moorhead said his team had fought to the “11th hour”. It was no use. Every employee at both companies — as well as other Big Help associated entities — would lose their jobs with immediate effect; their accrued wages left unpaid with no redundancy pay, either. The room erupted into anger. “So what are people with families and mortgages supposed to do?” one employee asks. “These [organisations were] based on helping people, and you’ve just left us in the lurch.”

“Unfortunately these circumstances are out of my control,” Moorhead replies, “so I can’t answer that”. 

While it fell on Moorhead to break the news, Peter Mitchell, the man once at the helm of nearly all of the companies and charities within the Big Help empire, was nowhere to be seen. Since The Post published the most recent story in our ongoing series on Big Help, revealing one of Mitchell’s businesses lied about being a Homes England government partner, he has walked away altogether, resigning from the board of every company in Big Help’s sprawling web — that is, with the exception of those already wound up. 

What was once considered one of the North West’s proudest charity-based groups, boasting a multi-million pound turnover, more than 3,000 properties under its management and local football club Southport FC to boot, has now been reduced to a shadow of its former self. The Charity Commission is investigating two entities within the Big Help empire (Big Help Project and CG Community Council) for financial misconduct, and a further compliance review has been launched into a third (Dovecot and Princess Drive Community Association). Earlier this month, Mitchell himself was also declared personally bankrupt, as well as his partner, serving Liverpool councillor Colette Goulding.

While Mitchell’s spokesperson told us in plain terms he won’t be commenting on any more of our stories “now or in the future”, we can offer some insight into what he’s been up to. He and his closest associates are already pursuing a new venture — this time turning their focus to war torn Ukraine in an attempt to salvage the Big Help name, setting up a new base in the tax haven of Gibraltar.

The bailiff bouncer

“I was on a first name basis with the bailiffs by the time I left,” one former employee of Big Help Group — who was made redundant last Wednesday — says. Last year, things had become so unstable that Big Help Group was forced to hire a designated ‘Head of Enforcement’ to deal with the debt collectors (“but we just called him the bailiff bouncer,” the ex-employee says). Each time a new bailiff would arrive, she was instructed to ring this ‘bouncer’, lock all the doors and hide any valuables around the office.

But how could things have got so bad? Only a couple of years ago, the Big Help empire was generating big numbers: its main charity, Big Help Project, reported over £15 million of income and more than 150 employees worked for its companies. Now, the entire enterprise faces financial ruin: Big Help Trading — the company responsible for managing donated furniture and clothes and running the empire’s charity shops — has been in receivership since August 2024. And, in March this year, Big Help Homes CIC went into administration. 

Until recently, Big Help Homes CIC — which managed hundreds of houses across the North West — was controlled by a combination of Mitchell, his partner Colette Goulding and Big Help Project’s Director of Financial Planning, Paul Banks. A document filed by the administrators at Companies House shows Big Help Homes now owes creditors at least £14 million, and notes “it has been suggested” that the company has used some of this cash to pay for other Big Help empire activities.

By mid-2024, visits from bailiffs to Big Help’s main offices on Boaler Street became a weekly occurrence. In the summer, one former staff member of Big Help Group remembers seeing a bailiff enter the building and start searching the corridors, attempting to gain access to locked rooms. “I was like, Oh my God, what am I supposed to do?” she says. Suddenly, an angry Peter Mitchell emerged from his office. “There was a shouting match,” she says, “the bailiff told Peter he was intimidated [by him]. Peter laughed in his face and went ‘I’m a 60-year-old man with cancer, and you’re scared of me? Get out of my office, get out of my business.”

When we asked Peter Mitchell about this incident, he did not respond. We also asked Big Help Group about the hiring of a ‘Head of Enforcement’, and the presence of bailiffs in the Boaler Street offices. They told us that bailiffs were refused entry because “a decision was taken following the Southport attacks to limit access to all individuals who were not pre-booked to the premise to protect staff”. When we pointed out that bailiffs were refused entry prior to the Southport attacks, they did not respond. 

By August, staff had been told to cover up any posters in the office that had the charity’s name on — “so we could deny [Big Help Project] was there”. “There were two massive trophy cases of awards, too,” the employee adds, “and we were told to turn them all around to face the wall [so the bailiffs couldn’t see that Big Help Project was] engraved on them.” When we asked Big Help Group about this, they told us this was on the instruction of the Charity Commission to “separate parts of the organisation”. We have asked the Charity Commission about this, and await their response. 

The financial situation across the empire became so dire that staff at warehouses operated by Big Help Trading were prohibited from turning on the heating, even during the coldest winter months. Portable electric heaters were also banned. “We were working in cold, cold conditions, and I was constantly getting ill,” one employee tells me.

To make matters worse, additional unpaid water bills meant their water supply was cut off — even to their on-site bathrooms. “We were told to go to [Big Help’s] food bank and take bottles of water and use those to manually flush the toilets,” another employee says, “we shouldn’t be doing that, that’s meant to be donated water”. Eventually, the smell from the toilets became too much to bear, and staff were told to use the facilities in a nearby supermarket. Big Help Group said they “vehemently deny” this was the case and a “full health and safety policy was followed”.

Things were even harder for the staff members that lived in accommodation once provided by Big Help Homes. One woman — who is a single mother to a small child and worked for Big Help Group — tells me she repeatedly complained after the gate to her apartment building in Kirkby broke, leaving her block insecure. “They stopped [coming to] fix it,” she says, “I had a knock on the door one day and I was expecting parcels. I opened the door and there was just a man standing there, covered in blood”. She immediately called the police. She also reported this to Big Help Homes, but “nothing came from it”. Big Help Group told us that the gate was repaired on “multiple occasions” and Big Help Homes “did not refuse to repair [it]”. 

As Big Help Homes enters administration, she is now facing eviction — as well as redundancy. “Obviously when Big Help started they were claiming to help people out of poverty,” she says, “but I don’t think I’ve ever been in a worse situation in my life”.

To add insult to injury, in recent months members of Peter Mitchell’s family have shown up at Big Help Trading’s warehouses, asking for first dibs on donated furniture, white goods and other supplies intended for the vulnerable. According to testimony from three employees of Big Help Trading, these family members would inform staff that Mitchell had told them they could “pick out whatever [they] wanted” from the warehouse. We asked Mitchell about this, but he did not respond. Big Help Group told us this was “factually inaccurate”. 

As all this was unfolding, Mitchell made himself scarce and was regularly travelling to sunny Gibraltar. Until recently the reason why was unclear, but developments in the last few weeks have cleared up that mystery.

A new pal for Peter?

In the redundancy meeting held at the Boaler Street offices last week, Big Help Group director Andrew Moorhead made it very clear the companies did not have the funds to pay staff. “There was just no way in the world we could do any more to get your wages,” Moorhead is heard saying on the secret recording. 

This did not ring true to those in the room. “Well, what about this Overseas thing?” another voice can be heard asking. “If there's no money, how has [Peter Mitchell] got the money to do that?”. In what would quickly become his signature response during that meeting, Moorhead replied quietly: “I’m not involved in that, so I can’t say.”

The “Overseas thing” in question was Big Help Overseas Development Ltd, a company set up in June 2023 in Gibraltar by Mitchell and a man called Chris Dandridge. Dandridge’s holding company had been involved in the ill-fated takeover of Wigan Athletic Football Club by a middle-eastern consortium in 2021, following which the club gifted front-of-shirt sponsorship to Big Help Project. 

A press release quoted Dandridge as being “delighted to welcome Big Help Project to Wigan.” Unfortunately, though, things didn’t go any better for Wigan’s new owners than for the Big Help empire. In March 2023, Wigan Athletic failed for the fourth time to pay players’ wages, following which HMRC lodged a winding-up petition against the club for unpaid bills. 

After Wigan was sold in mid-2023, Dandridge and Mitchell set up Big Help Overseas Development Ltd in Gibraltar. This is a for-profit company whose website says it plans to provide “low-cost affordable housing” in Gibraltar and Australia.

Not only that, though. “As the devastating war in Ukraine continues….millions of people across the country have been affected,” the website reads. “Investment in Ukraine is essential…Big Help aims to do just that, investing in transformative projects to support civilian’s emergency needs”. 

The website also states that, despite ongoing Charity Commission investigations into at least three charities previously run by Mitchell, he and his team at Big Help Overseas Development have set up another charitable foundation in Ukraine — “which [we will use] as the main driver for ongoing charitable activities and initiatives in the country”.

In press releases published over the past few weeks, Big Help Overseas lists a number of projects and ventures in war-torn Ukraine that have apparently been completed: delivering medicine packages, clothes and food to outreach organisations across the country and even “fund[ing] the restoration of a roof on a disused building”, which was renovated into a children’s hospital.

As so often is the case with Mitchell and Big Help, it’s not clear which organisation in his empire actually carried out these projects or where the money came from. Big Help Overseas’ first set of financial results, for the year ending June 2024, show it generating zero turnover and losing £68,000. Most of this consisted of £50,000 in legal and professional fees, and it looks as though Mitchell himself had personally put in £36,500 to support the venture.

Nor is it clear how Mitchell can currently have any involvement in this new company, given that two weeks ago he and his partner, sitting Labour councillor Colette Goulding, were declared personally bankrupt. Undischarged bankrupts face legal restrictions on what they can do. For example, they are not allowed to act as a company director or to “create, manage or promote a company without the court’s permission.” 

A Google search leaves it ambiguous whether these restrictions on undischarged bankrupts in the UK apply to a company registered in Gibraltar. The Big Help Overseas website still lists Mitchell as a Director and Chair of the Board, and it’s hard to see why his key role with the company would not count as “managing and promoting” it. Mitchell did not respond to our questions on the matter. We also asked Colette Goulding if she planned to resign from her role as councillor after being declared bankrupt. She told The Post she retains the “full support” of the Labour Party, and will remain a councillor for West Derby Muirhead while "continuing to challenge this unreasonable judgement”. 

Perhaps Big Help Overseas’ focus on Ukraine simply signals a new, philanthropic approach by Mitchell, putting his past behind him and looking to help victims of war. Alas, those within the Big Help empire are more sceptical of his motivations. According to one ex-employee of Big Help Group, Mitchell is only interested in “publicity and things that made [him] look good”. They see this recent pivot to Ukraine as part of his overall strategy to repair his reputation, rather than supporting a country in its time of need. One employee remembers questioning her manager when she saw a social media post by Big Help Group in mid-2024, stating members of the team had taken a trip to Ukraine to donate food parcels and other essential items. “She told me we needed to help them because we needed good press,” she says. 

Last Christmas, hundreds of presents were donated to Big Help by a local business consultancy firm. The presents, she says, were intended to be given to the Ukrainian community in the North West, but by the end of December around 50 bags of presents remained untouched. She asked management if it would be possible to donate these presents to local families, instead. “We had people ringing up crying on the phone constantly, because they couldn’t get their kids presents,” she says, “I kept saying is there anything we can do to help these families in need?” Despite her pleas, she was told she wasn’t allowed to touch the leftover presents. Four months later, those presents remained stacked up in the Boaler Street offices. We asked Big Help Group's director, Andrew Moorhead, about this, but he did not respond.

To many back home in the crumbling Big Help empire, Mitchell’s latest venture feels like a kick in the teeth. “I’m incredibly angry,” one ex-employee of Big Help Group tells me. “They can afford to build all these things for Ukraine, and [make plans in] Gibraltar and Australia, but they couldn't afford to pay their staff for two weeks of work?”. We have attempted to contact Big Help Overseas Development, but the email address listed on their website is incorrect. Instead, we forwarded our questions onto Peter Mitchell. He did not respond.

In a video posted on Big Help Overseas Development’s new Facebook profile, Peter Mitchell looks into the camera. “If you want to build something, to create something, then there should be something sustainable that lasts,” he says. To the employees left unable to pay their bills, fearing for their futures — these words are particularly hard to swallow.

Thank you for reading Part 5 of our investigation into Peter Mitchell and Big Help Project. We will continue to report on this story as it develops — email abi@livpost.co.uk with any tips or information. 

Revisit our investigation:

• Part One: Special investigation: The collapsing world of Liverpool’s charity kingpin
• Part Two: ‘I don’t give a shite about your auditors’: A secret recording and the growing questions about Big Help
• Part Three: Exclusive: The mystery £5m loans to companies owned by a Liverpool councillor and disgraced charity boss
• Part Four: Exclusive: Peter Mitchell’s company claimed to be a government partner. Unsurprisingly, that was a lie