The family of Captain Sir Tom Moore have slashed £250,000 off the price of their country mansion and removed any trace of him from an online listing in an attempt to shift the vast property.
Loved ones had used the name and depictions of the lockdown hero in the description of the seven-bedroom mansion, which was previously on the market for an eye-watering £2.25m.
Now the Bedfordshire property is back up for sale at over £2million, with no references to Captain Tom, his charity efforts, or his daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore and husband Colin.
It simply reads: “The vendors have owned the property for 18 years and have undertaken a comprehensive programme of improvement and renovation.”
Captain Tom, a Second World War veteran, made headlines after he raised £39m for charity during the Covid pandemic by walking 100 lengths of his garden ahead of his 100th birthday. He was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth, and died in 2021.
His daughter and her husband were found to have benefited financially from a charity set up in his name. A watchdog found they had pocketed more than £1million, resulting in backlash which saw the couple remove the property from the open market.
Before being re-listed, snaps from inside the house showed a strategically-placed photograph of him being knighted in 2020, and a bust of the moment he completed his lockdown fundraising challenge, the Mirror reports.
The Charity Commission said its investigation into the Captain Tom Foundation uncovered “repeated failures of governance and integrity”.
Its statutory inquiry found the Ingram-Moores’ “misconduct and/or mismanagement [was a] repeated pattern of behaviour“. It went on to state that sales of Captain Tom’s autobiography Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day did not benefit the charity.
In its prologue the veteran spoke about “the chance to raise even more money for the charitable foundation established in my name”. However, an advance of £1.4m for the three-book deal was paid to Club Nook, a company the couple are directors of.
The commission said the charity “hasn’t received any money from the first publishing agreement”. It added the public “would feel misled” to learn it did not receive proceeds from sales.
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In 2023, Hannah Ingram-Moore admitted keeping the book profits for themselves, and claimed she had not made an agreement with her father that the money would go to charity. The commission added there was evidence she set out an expectation for a £150,000 salary before taking charge of the foundation.
The watchdog also criticised the Ingram-Moores for using the foundation’s name when applying for planning permission to build a spa pool at the Bedfordshire property. The couple claimed they made a mistake due to being busy.
The report said that, when granting permission, planners strongly emphasised the pledge it would be used for charitable purposes. The pool block was later ordered to be demolished by the local council.
The Ingram-Moores, now banned from acting as charity trustees, argued it was a breach of privacy for details of the book deal to be disclosed. In a statement they added they felt “unfairly and unjustly” treated and accused the Charity Commission of “selective storytelling”. They said the inquiry had taken a “serious toll on our family ‘mental and physical health, unfairly tarnishing our name and affecting our ability to carry on Captain Sir Tom’s legacy”.
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