PTA requesting payment for football boots that are ours.

[WineIsTheAnswer]

DD1 lost her boots just before Christmas. She asked at lost property, checked lockers, asked teachers, reception etc I also asked teacher and checked lost property. Unfortunately cleaning the mud off weekly had worn away the name on the outside and the sticker inside had almost completely come off (dark inside so the only way of marking them.) So I accepted they were gone, my mistake not re-labelling them.

The school has a history of coats etc going missing only to turn up on the back of others with the label cut out a week later. The school does nothing in these cases.

Now I find them on the PTA FB page as part of a large picture of stuff for the next sale. I messaged the PTA lady and asked to collect them or asked for them to be left at reception so I can get them back. She responds saying all lost property is given to them by school at the end of term, they were handed to them at Christmas so they are now PTA. I explain they must of been handed in on the last day as I had checked lost property in the morning. I also think it's unfair, if you forget something on the last day it's automatically PTA's on the first day of term but I haven't said that yet.

She asked for proof, I told her the size, about the faded name (now she knows the name, she should be able to still make it out) and sent the online order receipt. She's now offering to sell me them back ahead of the sale as a goodwill gesture. I've told her I expect them to be returned to school on Monday and if they aren't will presume the PTA has stolen them. I'm being told I'm BU, so am I?

And then some PTAs wonder why no-one wants to help!

I hate the fact that fundraising needs to take place at all. You don’t see the army holding “pamper evenings” to pay for rifles.

@DarthArts - comedy gold. Loved reading that whilst dunking my free digesting my free coffee!

free digestive in free coffee! (damn auto-correct).

Give them a cheque for £10.

Then cancel the cheque

OH NO! Not this again ... I know it sounds silly but this CTC thing being repeated so long afterwards makes me cringe inside lol ...

Darth :o

Our school has done this: but you get regular warnings that everything unnamed still in the bin of festering death lost property box at such a time on the last day of term will be disposed of, with logo school uniform going to the PTA second hand sale. There's some deep Sherlock shit going on to read faded biro and/or match up former pupils' name tapes with their current younger cousins.

So by the time OP got in contact, those football boots would already be at the charity shop and wouldn't have been available to buy/sell. I think OP would have taken that on the chin.

But since the things are still available, and they've been properly identified, we would just give them back. It would be nice if OP made a small donation to recognise the work done in finding them, looking after them, communicating with her, etc, but yes it's not the enormous favour they're making it out to be.

I must admit that DH is a real stickler for rules and would definitely be insisting on selling back the boots for normal PTA price - and if you caught him on a bad day he'd put them in the general sale! I'm more sympathetic. I think both my position and his are reasonable so I can't condemn PTA lady too much and I certainly wouldn't go to the deputy head shrieking "theft".

Remembered another one...

PTA requested donation of prizes for the end of year raffle. Perfectly reasonable until it was made clear that these "donations" should specifically be provided from an online list at John Lewis (using the wedding list registration service) that had been "carefully and thoughtfully curated" by Alpha Mum herself.

Items included silver picture frames, Dualit Toasters etc etc nothing for less than £50...some items in the hundreds...

Que letter a few weeks later articulating the very "disappointing" response to the appeal and how the efforts of the PTA were being "thwarted" by parents showing a distinct lack of support .

Better not do any more as it's getting a bit outing for anyone whose children were there at the same time as mine during the reign of the Mums Mafia

I must admit that DH is a real stickler for rules and would definitely be insisting on selling back the boots for normal PTA price - and if you caught him on a bad day he'd put them in the general sale! I'm more sympathetic.

He'd better familiarise himself with the law, and become a stickler for adhering to that. PTA rules are not above the law.

Haha haha I look after the pta stock and anything that anyone claims is theirs is handed straight back. Yanbu.

it's a good cause so is bhf but it doesn't mean I'm about to donate my whole wardrobe to buy it back.

It would be interesting to see what lost property law actually says and how long the school has to hang on to things before they can sold.

Believe me most of the lost property is fit only for incineration not resale

Shocking tactics by the PTA.. stick to your guns Lady..

tell her it's THEFT and you'll involve the Police

I must admit that DH is a real stickler for rules and would definitely be insisting on selling back the boots for normal PTA price

He does understand that the PTA is just a voluntary group pf parents, and not above the law, right?

All PTA are deranged bulgy eyed cabal who exert their limited influence in an unreasonable way
They should by rights hand over your item.they could ask for a small donation £1-2
Complain vociferously to the HT,and tell everyone (not the pta sycophants) how awful they are

I’d be interested to know the specific legalities around lost property and when you can sell it. It doesn’t sound like the school or PTAs processes are well aligned to the law though and so yes, I think you were right to write and cc the deputy head. I would have written a strongly worded email insisting their return.

DarthArts love the post and dodging the pta bastardised Leaving the school drop off unscathed involved plans of stealth and cunning worthy of Jason Bourne

The minute you informed her that the boots were your property and provided proof of this, she should have returned them to you - she is depriving you of your own property and on exceptionally shaky ground if she thinks this is 100% legal, or morally acceptable. She is a stupid woman if she wants to argue the toss with you and effectively say she thinks you are lying, so wants to keep them for the PTA.

Only a faintly idiotic PTA would sell parents their own lost property in the first place. Better to give that stuff away and only sell what was knowingly donated. Personally, I would give it to the woman with both barrels for such high handed behaviour.

The law is tricky when the property has not been claimed for a period of time AND reasonable steps have been made to locate the owner.
However, a few weeks is not a reasonable length of time, and you had already made a request to locate them. Evidently their search was not a particularly thorough one as football boots aren't that commonplace, especially not if you could identify the brand and time lost etc.

Now they are faced with pretty substantial evidence of ownership, they'd stand no legitimate chance of being able to keep them, nor charge for them.

If the boots had been 'abandoned' (thrown away) it would be a different matter.

Neither of the above two circumstances would constitute theft though.

Catching up with more of DarthArts posts. The pta curated list inc dualit toasters
You could get yer own thread going with those stories
V funny

Brilliant he can be a dick and is often wrong but I think it would be difficult to prove theft by the PTA because:

1. The PTA was given the items by the school (handling stolen goods?)

1. The school had ample given notice that items left in at would be considered abandoned and had given people opportunities to collect stuff.

If you haven't dealt with lost property you may not realise the volume of stuff we're talking about. I have to bring my 4x4 to school to do the charity shop run, and that's twice a year for a small primary. Secondaries with eight or ten forms a year must be drowning in jumpers and trainers.

Now admittedly if the PTA lady has agreed that the football boots are OPDD's then that's a bit different. But PTA lady could quite easily have said "yes there's a pair of red hypervenoms in a size 3 but there's no distinguishing marks on them and half the school have that kind" which is after all why we bother to name things at all.

I think OP should suck it up and pay the tenner (which careless DD loses from pocket money or whatever) but contact the chair of the PTA to see if their procedures could be reviewed to ensure that outlying cases such as hers are fairly treated. Volunteering to help with any part of the process sweetens that kind of request.

No way,why should op pay to get her own mislaid items back.small donation maybe.pay,no
Volunteer with pta?op could volunteer to remove the stick that’s up the pta jacksie

The police will usually allow about 6 weeks to hold lost property before handing to the finder.

Eventually they are allowed to be sold, but since you enquired about the boots and they seemingly couldn't find them (or didn't look hard if at all), they would struggle to argue they'd exhausted all reasonable attempts to locate the owner. In fact, you'd already identified them as lost and they ought to have maintained a register of lost items with those of claimants - then try to match any items up. They didn't. Case closed.

Crossed with your update, Brilliant, very useful.

The timing does matter. The school could be cleverer at having lost property stored by date and only get rid of things abandoned for longer than a month (say) though that's a complicated level of admin. You could have two bins which are both rummageable, but only one gets added to at a time, say.

Problems do often arise when stuff falls between stools. The lost property is the school's responsibility, presumably (for the purposes of trying to find the owner and giving them sufficient time to collect) and then the PTA is a kind of disposal agent. If they gave everything straight to a rag and bone man or chucked them in the bin we wouldn't accuse Steptoe or the council of theft. I think the relationship between the school and the PTA muddies the waters.

@MrsHathawy it's not theft, that's a red herring. It's not handling stolen goods in any shape or form.
It would become theft only once you knew the identity of the owner and failed to disclose that you had their items, or withheld them (soon after the loss). I wouldn't worry about that, the police wouldn't go down that route, they'd do the sensible thing and say 'give her the boots back and stop being daft' and (possibly) say to the lady 'give them a donation to keep the peace, but you're not obliged to'.

Well quite. But upthread OP was being encouraged to use the word "theft" and it's meaningless here.