Sounds a lot like something recent, spooked him.
How odd. That's within the last month (is that right year?)
He's either gone in and found it's still a total clusterfuck, found significant resistance to change, found significant cultural issues (thinking along the lines of the level of incompetence at ERCC) or he's got wind of something incoming that's significant and wanted nothing further to do with it.
Further to points above I see from the accounts that demand for training is down significantly. It's more than halved.
2022/23 - 144 sessions to 2585 delegates.
2021/22 329 sessions to 7429 delegates.
Their income from training dropped by a third (not sure how that works given their number of sessions and delegates is down by over half. Clearly they've upped their prices!)
Overall the books are in the red for the year, though they still have significant reserves (over £900,000 left in the bank). But the losses they've suffered this year aren't sustainable. They will have to either do more in terms of fund raising or have to scale back operations significantly.
This is a charity that is going to have to take significant steps to ensure it's future viability even if the charity commission review isnt negative.
It's REALLY in trouble. It's got one or two years to turn things around or it will hit a crisis point. I do wonder if it's got the leadership and wherewithal to manage that. I really have my doubts tbh.
If the charity commission stuff is negative, any more damaging revelations may well be fatal in the medium term for Mermaids.
Personally I think it's screwed for two reasons. The first is that it's reputation is mud and it's lost its status and second is that the world has moved on. The trendy political cause was trans but that's moved onto Palestine now for the hip young wannabe activists and the established political classes are beginning to see these court cases mount up and are realising that actually it's not a vote winner, it's not a trendy cause and frankly the stench of scandal coming from Trans Activism is beginning to stink to high heaven. There are other causes they can virtue signal on that look good on their Instagram pages and are less likely to backfire on them.
That suggests to me, that it would be wise to watch other charities that try to step into this area going forward as much as it's worth watching Mermaids potentially terminal decline.