145: Day 6: The Big Help

Abi Whistance (The Liverpool Post) wrote a four-part investigation exposing a Liverpool housing charity which left its residents in dire conditions, yet funnelled millions of pounds into a complicated web of private firms linked to the charity’s owner.

For six days Page 94 is covering the extraordinary stories of the investigative journalists shortlisted for this year’s Paul Foot Award, before the winner’s announcement on Tuesday. 

Episode Transcript

Maisie (00:00):
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast

Andy (00:03):
Hello, our Paul Foot Award 2025 mini series is drawing to a close.
Today is the final shortlistD, and then we'll be coming
back tomorrow with the winner.
But before that, let's hand over andfind out who today's shortlist is
and what their story is all about.

Abi Whistance (00:18):
my name is Abby Wis and I work for the Liverpool Post.
So I did a Goliath four partinvestigation, with the rest of
my team into the Big Help project,which is charity in Liverpool,
that had put vulnerable peopleinto terrible living conditions.
And the owner of the charity whowas an ex labor counselor had also
misappropriated millions of poundsfrom that charity and invested it

(00:40):
into
companies that he privatelyowned with his wife.
It's quite a mouthful.

Andy (00:44):
how did this.
Story first,
cross your desk.

Abi Whistance (00:47):
So it was quite a long time.
I think it was nine months beforethe first investigation came out.
So it was certainly a very drawnout, kind of period investigating it.
A woman had emailed me saying thatshe was living in terrible conditions
and she wanted me to look into it.
We obviously get a lot of emails likethat in the climate that we live in.
a lot of people live in dreadfulconditions, especially people who live

(01:07):
in social housing supported housing.
But because I'd only just startedworking for the Post and I was young
and I was excited and a buddingreporter, I was like, I'm gonna go out
to every single email that I get andtry and pick up and chase any leads.
and I went for a coffeewith her and immediately.
I think I was struck by both how upsetshe was and she was telling me how the
person that she'd lived next door to,had committed suicide and his body wasn't

(01:30):
found for a really long time, whichI thought sounded unusual for someone
that was supposed to be, supported.
and supported accommodation.
Yeah, supported accommodation.
He was supposed to have a socialworker and his body wasn't
found for, six, seven days.
and she was telling me all thesethings about the state of living, the.
The damp, the mold, the horrific livingconditions, how she'd been pleading
with this charity that was housing herand her friend, who'd killed himself.

(01:54):
And, she just wasn'tgetting through to them.
And then when I got home, I startedgoogling, the charity and looking
at where they got their money from.
And then I stumbled acrosssomething called Home Rate,
which is an investment trust.
And when I started looking intothat, I saw that they would, they
themselves were being investigatedby the Serious Fraud Office.
And then immediatelyeverything started to unravel.

Andy (02:15):
So
what is
the big help
project?

Abi Whistance (02:18):
It's such a hard question.
So the big help project technicallyis the charity, which is the kind
of the epicenter, of big help group.
The big help project is the charity atits heart, but it has dozens of companies
surrounding it just under 30 in total.
Some community interest companies, someprivate companies, some non-for-profit.
And all of them operate within kindof the housing sector, supporting

(02:42):
vulnerable people, food banks.
I think there's initiatives in education.
There's just.
There's religious initiatives within that.
There was a nosy food bank thatstarted, on religious grounds.
So it's just a really bigweb of organizations that can
be very, difficult to track.

Andy (02:57):
But it all comes back to one man called Peter Mitchell.
Is
that right?

Abi Whistance (03:00):
It does indeed.
He's an ex labor counselor in Liverpool.
he was a labor counselor fora very long time, and then he
switched to the liberal party.
He's the CEO or was theCEO of big help project

Andy (03:11):
so he's the center of each of these organizations.
He
was a labor counselor.
His wife, I believe, still is a labor

Abi Whistance (03:17):
She is indeed.
Yeah.
So she, is often a trustee withhim or a director with him.
And the companies and thecharities associated with big help

Andy (03:24):
and seems to have started more in the food bank area,
in in charitable terms, simply
providing
food
for people.

Abi Whistance (03:33):
Yeah.
So a lot of the charities involvedin these big, so big help, I should
say, isn't the only charity in the UKthat experienced kind of rapid growth
by getting into the world of socialhousing or housing vulnerable people.
It happened, 5, 6, 7 years ago.
People started to realize that there wasa way, or there was a, for, a shortcoming,

(03:53):
I should say, with the governmentbeing able to house vulnerable people.
So they decided to fill thatgap by looking towards charities
who could provide that housing.
lots of other charities.
Attempted to do this, most ofwhich didn't have kind of original
roots within social housing.
So big help started as a food bank andthen its rapid growth is attributed
to finding that loophole withinthe government and exploiting that

(04:17):
slightly to provide housing for people.
And

Andy (04:19):
when we say rapid expansion, we should just put a number on it.
In 2020, their income was 950,000 pounds.
In 2021 it was nine anda half million pounds.
So increasing tenfold in a year, theytook on a lot of properties to house
vulnerable people in as a charity.
How on earth as a charity canyou afford to just buy up a huge

(04:40):
property portfolio like that.

Abi Whistance (04:41):
this is where a lot of charities came to
ruin over the last few years.
so Home Reap who I mentioned earlier,the charity Big Help project was
leasing properties from home re
they had the properties andthey were leasing them to
charities on very long leases.
It's extremely unusual for acharity to take a lease that's
as long 10, 15, 20 year leases,

(05:05):
for these properties, most ofwhich were in terrible, conditions.
so it was quite an unusual model.
Now, the reason charities did that isbecause they were going to take money from
property dealers connected to home rate,who would then give them handouts to do up
the properties and to make them livable.
Obviously, that never
happened, so it was a bit of a houseof cards with home rate, which is

(05:25):
why they're now being investigatedand which is why all of the charities
apart from Big Help, went bust.

Andy (05:31):
and that is how we end up with a situation where there
is this property portfolio.
I believe Peter Mitchell, didhe describe it on a, in a phone
call is shitty, portfolios.

Abi Whistance (05:40):
He did indeed.

Andy (05:42):
So there's this really
Poor
condition housing that veryvulnerable people are living in like.
Callum Gravel.
The young man who took his own life.
After living in this really awful homefor a long time, he should have been
receiving, enhanced benefit where youreceive so-called intensive support.
you have people checkingin on you, basically.
And that's for people who aremaybe recovering drug addicts or

Abi Whistance (06:05):
they've Yeah,
they've,

Andy (06:06):
mentally
ill,

Abi Whistance (06:07):
people who need that extra support from a welfare officer,
to, in order to live a normal life.

Andy (06:14):
had he received.
That
extra support?

Abi Whistance (06:19):
No, and definitely not in the way that he should have.
So one of the sources that I spoke towho lived next door to him, who was
pushing the big help project to, toshow him a copy of his support plan,
she never received a copy and he hadno idea he had one in the first place.
he did have a housing officer, but shecertainly wasn't there for him, didn't
show up on a regular basis, and that's whyhis body wasn't found for, nearly a week.

Andy (06:41):
But big help, we're receiving enhanced benefit
payments for housing these.
As it were extra vulnerable people.
So the money is coming into big help,but it's not finding its way to the
people who it's meant to be supporting.
is
that right?

Abi Whistance (06:53):
Yeah, par partially.
So sometimes that would happen, butin, initially, or initially should I
say, that was the goal of, the, wholemodel, to house these vulnerable people.
But in reality, local councils andlocal authorities weren't willing to
pay that money in the first place.
Because the housing was so rubbish.
so the entire thing, the entire model wasbuilt on an idea of, we'd received the

(07:17):
money from the local councils and they'din turn then pay to these charities.
But the charities weren't getting thatmoney in the first place, but they were
subject to paying home rate, who obviouslythey'd leased the properties from.
So it was a really complicated, confusingmodel that fundamentally was flawed.
That would never work because the housingthat was being offered was so poor and all

Andy (07:35):
and all
the staff at these variouscharities were not properly
trained in housing or support work.
They didn't.
there were
there maybe a hundred staff whojust did not have the ability to
support these very vulnerable people?

Abi Whistance (07:45):
Yeah, there was a lot of confusion around what
they were supposed to be doing.
And I think this is because they wentfrom, like you mentioned earlier, a food
bank to becoming this huge operationacross the UK that's supposed to be
housing people with really, complex needs.
And that's a really difficult thing to do.
It can take years of training to do that.
And Peter Mitchell made a habit ofemploying his friends, his family.

(08:05):
People that he was very close to.
There was a lot of nepotism withinthe charity that we touched on in,
in all of the articles that we wrote.
and because of that, it meant thatthe people in charge often didn't
have the experience that they needed.
They were only in those positionsbecause they were close to him,

Andy (08:18):
but millions of pounds is being sld from.
Charity, big help to the private companies
also
owned and operated by Peter Mitchell.

Abi Whistance (08:26):
Yeah, so when we, we took a closer look at their accounts, which
we were after for some time becausethey were always delays in filing
their annual accounts, or the accountsweren't audited and we'd find things
that just seemed a little bit iffy.
When they eventually published theiraccounts, late last year, we noticed that
5.5 million pounds had been taken fromthe charity or loaned from the charity,

(08:48):
I should say, to private companiesthat both Peter or his wife were either
directly or indirectly involved inone of which one of those companies,
big Help Green, purchased outrightwithout a mortgage, the house that he
currently lives in with his wife, right?

Andy (09:00):
right?

Abi Whistance (09:01):
And also a series of cars that would be, that we used as well.

Andy (09:04):
What was Mr. Mitchell's reaction when you approached him with this story?

Abi Whistance (09:09):
Funnily enough, I've never once spoken to him.
He's spoken to every otherjournalist apart from me,
which I always find upsetting.
so I, I have sent countlessemails, phone calls, spoken to his
representatives multiple times.
He's always said that he'd be willing tochat to me, when his health gets better.
He's not very well at the minute,but he has phoned up other
journalists, had long conversationswith them, explaining himself.

(09:31):
We got a generic statement fromthe project from Big help project.
and obviously he denied that he'dever received any kind of financial
compensation in any way from the charity.

Andy (09:41):
Yeah.
same

Abi Whistance (09:41):
for his wife and same for the other trustees that
he was friends with or related to.
But yeah, he never oncepicked up the phone to me.

Andy (09:48):
one of the private firms did pay for the house and all the cars.
Yes.

Abi Whistance (09:51):
Yes,

Andy (09:52):
just checking,
was there any legal pushbackfrom any of the big help?
Portfolio,

Abi Whistance (09:57):
no story, absolutely nothing.

Andy (09:59):
How

Abi Whistance (10:00):
I think it says a lot.
I think our, stories cameat a really good time.
because the charity is collapsinginwards because of, the, model,
the financial model it was builton was never built to last.
Every other charity involvedin home REIT has gone bust.
Big help is
on its last legs.
one of the, final articles we wrote.
And we're planning on potentiallydoing more as well, is about

(10:22):
the downfall of the charity.
it's now really struggling.
Resignations have been handed in,people are being made redundant.
they're struggling to keep up with pensionpayments, and people aren't getting
their wages paid, so it's on its way out.
So I think as the empire crumbles,they knew that this was on the
horizon, so there'd be no point maybecoming after us, I would assume.

(10:42):
And

Andy (10:43):
And the
Charity Commission has launchedan investigation into, big help.

Abi Whistance (10:47):
Yeah.
So they're investigating big help projectthe charity, unfortunately, because all
of the companies surrounding the charity,like I said, there's this big web that
supported the charity with money movingin between all of them all the time.
The charity can onlyinvestigate charities.
It can't investigate Community InterestCompanies or private companies.
So there's huge swathes of this empirethat were being held unaccountable, which

(11:07):
is why we were so determined, to publishthis set of articles that we did, because
we know that regardless of the outcomeof the, Charity Commission investigation,
which is yet to be seen, it won't be ableto cover in real depth what was going
on for so many years within big help.

Andy (11:21):
Peter Mitchell has stepped down as CEO of big help and as a Trustee
and his wife has stepped down as a

Abi Whistance (11:26):
And, he's begun stepping down from lots of other organizations.
He recently stepped downfrom Big Help Green.
we don't know why.
could be because of his health, couldbe because of the, kind of looming
Charity commission investigation.
but yeah, the empire's certainlystarting to be dismantled A lot of the
assets for the company and a lot ofthe staff are being moved to other.
Non-charitable aspectsof the big help empire

Andy (11:49):
and what happens to the people living in.
The houses supported by big help.

Abi Whistance (11:53):
that's the question, isn't it?
That's the point that they're stillliving there while the housing is
no longer being operated by big helpprojects being contacted by a number of
people who were living in, the projecthousing, who have now been told to,
to pay their bills to other companies.
connected to big Help again, whileassets are being moved around and
people are being moved around the.

(12:14):
The squ that they'reliving in hasn't gone away.
If anything, things are becomingeven more difficult because as the
companies fall apart and as the charityfalls apart, it's now even more hard
to email people, to find the rightpeople to speak to, to ask for help.
So unfortunately, these vulnerablepeople are still living in terrible
conditions, and that's why we arecontinuing to investigate them and,

(12:34):
follow the story as far as we can.

Andy (12:36):
and I presume a story like this is quite a big team effort.
it's, a lot of pieces you've runand there are so many different
aspects to the story as well.

Abi Whistance (12:44):
yeah, absolutely.
My editor, Yashi Herman wasa huge part of the story.
he pushed me over the first nine monthsto get as much information as I could
to really hammer down the details.
And with something like this, I thinkthat's what really matters, because
it's so incredibly complicated.
You wanna make sure that whenyou publish these stories.
People understand the gravityof what they're reading.
And he was a huge part of that.

(13:05):
And there were so many people behindthe scenes, financial advisors, people
that helped me pour over these legaldocuments, people that helped me dig
through company's house, to try andfind out where the money was moved to.
And then other people withinour organization, mill Media Co,
who were incredibly supportive.
so yeah, stories like thiscouldn't be done without them.
And I think, yeah, I think that I reallyrelied on them throughout the whole thing.

Andy (13:28):
That's it for our short listees.
Thanks to Abby and to all the othershort listees for sharing their time, for
sharing their extraordinary, outrageoussometimes infuriating stories with us.
We will be back tomorrow to discoverthe winner of this year's Paul Foot
Award, and we're gonna be checking inwith last year's winner, Tristan Kirk
of the evening standard, to see howhis story has developed since then.

(13:51):
See you tomorrow.