mgt committee of a church "owned" preschool?HELP!

[Burstingattheseams]

Our pre school was set up many years ago by our local church. The day to day running is delegated to a voluntary committee of parents with one church representative and a "church approved" chair.
Over the past 4 years or so the committee have raised concerns over the possibility of the committee members being financially liable should be preschool fold.

The church council have finally taken our concerns on board and offering to accept that they are liable BUT in return are proposing to
1)remove the Standing Orders (type of constitution)under which we operate
2)turn the pre school into a sub committee of the church council
3)close the pre school bank account and merge the preschool accounts with the church accounts
4)ensure that the controlling vote on the new preschool sub committee is held by the church council.

Does anyone have any advice to offer or been through a similar experience? We are at a loss as to how to proceed.

We obviously are concerned that members of the church council have no experience or knowledge of running a preschool - infact they rarely even manage to put one church council member on our committee let alone find enough to have controlling vote.

Are you a member of the PLA?

If so, ask them, they will help.

I presume you are Ofsted reg? Do you have a Childcare Dev Officer from county who comes out to you or the staff? They are often v helpful too.

When I was a member of the committee for a similar church preschool, we signed up to say that we were financially liable should the preschool close, but that the maximum amount we would be liable for was (I think) £1. We had had people voicing exactly the same concerns, and this reassured them.

Thank you. We are PLA registered though they not much help as they say that as our "owners" they have the final say.

Would it be legally binding to state that we were only liable for £1? Did your church have much input into the day to day running of your preschool?

Our LEA/counil does committee training and have said there is a new type of constitution that can give the committe limited financial responsibility perhaps that is the way forward?

Similarly to yours, Burstingattheseams, our church had representatives on the committee, and the chair was either the vicar or someone that the church had nominated. Since the big decisions of the playgroup were made by the committee, I suppose that did give the church input into the running of the pre-school, though curriculum etc were decided by the supervisors.