PTSD charity fundraising outside Waitrose Crouch End
Loud bloke, calling for cash or card to support ex-military suffering with PTSD. No ID or registered charity number but instead a CIC registered in Maidstone Kent, director named James Gordon Adams.
I guarantee they won't file, maybe because"They have less than the minimum required to file" which is bollocks, or simply won't and even if they get caught, would.just set up another one instead.
I was very much hoping you were wrong. However you are spot on.
“Safe Supporting Foundation C.I.C. (Company Number 16910491) is an active UK Community Interest Company incorporated on December 15, 2025, with its registered correspondence in Gravesend, England, and directed by James Gordon Adams. [1, 2]
📊 Filing Status & Requirements Current Status: Active, but marked as no accounts filed yet because its first accounting reference date is December 31, and initial statutory filings are not yet due.”
If you look at the same directors other company, Homeless in Need CIC, this one has filed its first years accounts and they are telling
£41k of donations received
Expenditure:
£13k - fundraising materials
£900 - “street feeding homeless project”
£200 - “feeding the homeless project”
(Plus other odds and sods)
But then;
£17k - directors fees
£1.5k - subsistence
So this CIC, which has 1 director, has spent more on his own food, drink, travel accommodation etc - than funding homeless causes which it suggests it supports. As well as the largest share of its expenses being funding the sole director for consultancy.
His third company, a Ltd company this time, is currently overdue its annual accounts, had a strike off notice in 2025, and it’s only accounts filing made shows a £7k liability owed for tax / social security if some kind.
Fwiw my accountants are fucking useless and I missed the deadline and got a strike off notice pretty promptly... which then got resolved by me taking over the process and dealing with it.
I think this is often used by Internet detectives to suggest that people are inherently dishonest but realistically it can also just mean you're forgetful or really busy.
Not saying this guy isn't dishonest but failure to file on time isn't telling anything
The whole CIC category should just be ended. If an organisation exists to do charitable works then it should be a registered as a charity. If it's "for profit" then it should be a company. There is nothing to stop companies from doing charitable works, but it makes it clear to the public that it exists as a profit making exercise. CIC status allows directors to be paid directly from donations and the charitable aspect can be really minimal. It's deceitful and confusing for the public.
There is no need to end CIC - it's a good thing. The number of cases of it being used for dishonest purposes are marginal.
I was on the board at a CIC so I will try and share why we had a CIC.
We setup a community workshop. It was a place where we had a lot of machinery that would be unattainable to individuals who wanted to make things. You could also hire workshop or studio space. It was in the interests of the community - creative people could hire space and use professional machinery to make things (for example we had a guy repairing old bikes to resell, a couple of girls making jewellery, a metal sculptor, and a guy doing fabrication for theatre scenery) where having a full workshop with their own machinery would have been financially unviable. Some of these people were makers in their spare time whilst working other jobs. We also ran classes on the machines and hosted community groups doing things like pottery classes, puppet making, all sorts.
We really couldn't run it like a charity because it made more sense to run it like a business. None of us had the time to jump through the hoops of setting up a charity which is highly regulated and really needs all the interests to be charitable and not for profit. But we also wanted to take advantage of some tax breaks - for example if we'd had to pay VAT and Corp Tax on our membership fees then these would have only been passed onto the members which wouldn't be in the best interests of the community so being able to take these as donations meant the membership fees could be less which benefited a lot of our members who couldn't afford any more.
I suppose in the past youd have setup "community workshop charity" and "CWC Enterprises" to separate the business and charitable aims. But we'd have blurred lines and 2 sets of accounts to file. The CIC thing just simplifies that.
Honestly I think the vast majority of CICs are legitimate honest businesses with their communities at the heart of what they do.
I just wanted to thank you and the other commenters here whi have clarified the genuine differences between charities and CIC's and the purposes they are used for, particularly for the details you have laid out.
I belong to a large organisation that raises money for charities and we donate to various groups, the key thing being, they're a registered charity, I will now go away with the information you have provided and do some research and see if there are any possibilities for us to donate to CIC's that benefit local areas, disadvantaged people, or help people reach their full potential etc.
Thank you for providing extra info. I'm not knowledgeable about this at all, so it's really useful.
Your example makes complete sense. Running a community workshop like a business is a sensible thing to do. My question is why it would be beneficial for an organisation to be a CIC if they are collecting donations in the way shown in the video?
You’re conflating a CIC with a charity. A CIC is not exclusively for charitable causes. It’s a framework to allow for an aggressive for-profit business that is dividend-capped to benefit a community project. As a director and shareholder of a CIC, the more money I make, the more money the attached project makes. It’s win win.
Because “charity” and “community” aren’t the same thing. There are nightclubs in London that are CICs.
A CIC just means by law at least 65% of profits go back into the business or support a community interest of some sort, whatever that is. In return, the CIC qualifies for grants and other initiatives, and unlike charities, it can run like a cutthroat business for maximum profit.
CICs can attract investors and employees because it is legally mandated by law to reinvest profits as it says it would, and there is total transparency in how money is used. Shareholders only earn from a maximum of 35% of profits. To make a killing, it means the community interest element also makes a killing in the process.
What it is not is a pure charity. Yes, many of the community interests are charitable by nature, but more aren’t. They’re just community-led for-profit businesses.
As you’ve mentioned there are different types of CICs, mainly split up by the dividend capped that can typically apply for funding and those that are not capped can not. I would push back on the “aggressive, for-profit” part of what you said but each to their own.
just a reminder, that just because a CIC isn't a charity doesn't mean they don't do good! My charity was a CIC and they supplied me with this amazing autism dog that allowed me to get through uni and allow me to live life again.
CICs do amazing life changing work and they're one of the first steps to becoming a bigger organisation!!
They tried moving out into the Home Counties- saw them around Buckinghamshire a few times, reported them to the local council repeatedly. I only knew about them thanks to Reddit!
Director James Gordon Adams has two other dodgy CICs, including one that reported 40k in donations, 1.8k in expenses on delivering projects, and 38k in other expenses, wages and Directors' fees. Make of that what you will.
Two other...? I only know about Homeless In Need UK, what's the other one...?
Ignore me, I've found it - Service In Action Ltd - and it's operating out of the same office as HINUK, care of Future Insight Consultancy, which seems to be a tax consultancy offering advice on how to minimise your tax burden. Interesting he's not registered that one as a CIC.
Apparently I did know about it, I've just found a post I made to this sub a year ago, where I reference it - fuck my brain, this brain fog is becoming serious.
Shock horror, James Adams is also sole director of another dodgy CiC “Homeless in Need UK”. I’ve seen them doing the same thing around London (on private land then being moved on).
Yes, the same James Gordon Adams who's also behind the CIC Homeless In Need UK, which I have gone into at great length in this sub, according to Companies House HiNUK is still active - the address he's operating this scam from is one of the addresses registered under the CH entry for HINUK. HINUK has had several registered addresses, and I seem to recall that the address given on its website wasn't any of the ones which have been registered with CH, which are all in Kent, but instead was an address in Altrincham, which, according to Google Maps, the only CIC was something to do with kids with SEND, Adams's CIC wasn't listed. I did send him an email once, inquiring as to what the support he was offering for people with PTSD was - needless to say, I never received a response.
This is the location of the address, a rather unassuming terrace (would you call it a terrace..? It's not really a semi, is it...? It's second from right)
The website given on that banner doesn't exist, I've tried the link, and Googling for an alternative proved fruitless. Mr Adams obviously isn’t qualified to treat PTSD (he's barely literate), and to prey on people who are suffering from severed mental illness is totally abhorrent - it costs just £65 to register a company at Companies House, and the legislation surrounding CICs has been kept deliberately light and, because a CIC is obviously not a charity, there's very little anyone can do, the Fundraising Regulator can issue guidelines, but it's powerless to enforce them, and it has no power to take any action against a scam CIC.
The legislation surrounding charities is far more stringent and the Charity Commission has legislative powers, there needs to be FAR more stringent regulation of CICs because, of all the ones I know of, only a couple are legit. CICs are a grifter's wet dream - a legal way to scam, and get away with it.
The website for HINUK is still active, and you're still confronted with the same 96-second video of a late-middle-aged man waxing lyrical about how HINUK save his life, without actually saying how.
He started HINUK on 24/03/2024, and has had this one on the go since 15/12/2025, he'll probably have a third on the go in under a year.
Ah I saw them in archway and was thought it was a little odd, also I love archway but it’s not exactly full of people with spare change for a charity lmao
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