I work for a small charity where half the board members have resigned. The three remaining members are all related (wife/husband/brother). They are also all signatories on our bank accounts. They are all linked to another local charity, one is a paid employee the other two are board members. Their board chair is/was our CEO. Our CEO wanted to resign at the end of the last financial year. he asked for a large redundancy pay out, which was rejected. He left, but unbeknown to us, he actually didn't leave, he has been on the sick and receiving full pay all this time. We are now being told he is being made redundant.

We feel he has only been aid all this time as a favour for being the chair of their board. Our chair is manipulative and very intimidating. often threatening to make us redundant if we don't get new funding etc. however, we have massive reserves from underspend's of previous funding that the CEO has been involved in.there is still a huge need for our service int he community we work in.

We are having an AGM soon and new trustees are to be invited. However, the 3 we are dubious of will remain. With no CEO between the board and us we feel very vulnerable. Even without any new funding we have enough reserves/capital to continue as we are for about 3 full years.

My question is, if the board decide to make us redundant- we will have a legal leg to stand on to challenge the validity and reasoning of the redundancy?