Special investigation: The collapsing world of Liverpool’s charity kingpin

In late October last year, Southport FC announced a surprise takeover. The new chairman was Peter Mitchell, a former Labour councillor in Liverpool who has forged a new career in recent years as the head of Big Help Group, a sprawling empire of charities and companies that says it is tackling poverty and homelessness across the country.

The growth of the group has been eye watering. Five years ago, it was known primarily for delivering food banks around Merseyside. Then, between 2018 and 2022, the annual income recorded by its main charity rose from just over £400,000 to almost £16m. Local politicians have described its work as “incredible” and last year, Mitchell was invited to a meeting at 10 Downing Street.

But Southport’s fans clearly had questions. In a video on the club’s YouTube channel, Mitchell was interviewed about Big Help’s acquisition. After a couple of minutes, the interviewer addressed the elephant in the room. “Some people have been asking me already, how is a charity becoming involved in a football club?” he asked the new boss.

Mitchell – a large man in his mid-60s, with tufts of grey hair on the back of his head, wearing a shirt under a dark fleece – began to explain. Big Help Group is the “parent group which covers a whole number of companies,” he explained, including a building arm, a housing association arm and a charity that runs food banks and other services. “But the charity hasn’t bought the football club, it is the for-profit arm that has bought the football club.”

Soon Mitchell was facing more searching questions about his affairs. On December 7^th, just weeks after his takeover of Southport was confirmed, the Charity Commission launched an inquiry into Big Help Project, Mitchell’s largest organisation. The regulator had noticed a “significant increase in its reported income”. After taking a look at the charity, investigators had “concerns around trustee decision making, potential unauthorised trustee benefit and unmanaged conflicts of interest.”

Three of the charity’s five trustees have recently resigned, including Mitchell’s partner Colette Goulding, a serving Labour councillor in the ward of West Derby Muirhead. And in February, when the Charity Commission's inquiry was announced publicly, Big Help Project said it was looking forward to "clearing up any issues raised during this process.” 

But there is a lot to clear up.

Since July last year, The Post has been trying to get to grips with what is going on inside the Big Help empire, including reviewing hundreds of pages of public records, consulting financial experts and interviewing people who have worked at Big Help and those who know Mitchell personally. From the very beginning we have found curious holes in how the group operates and seen evidence that Mitchell derived most of his charity’s income from an unsustainable housing model that has led other organisations to financial ruin.  

Most seriously, we have spoken to tenants in the housing that Big Help provides. Their experiences suggest a group that has prioritised breakneck growth over the wellbeing of the people in its care, leaving them to suffer – and in some cases, die – in shamefully poor accommodation. One former staff member described what she saw as “extremely shocking and upsetting” and recalls “a number of suicides” among people who were supposed to be housed by the charity. Because of the lack of support provided to these people, “the bodies were left there for days”.