Re West Sussex Constabulary Trusts [1971] Ch. 1

Members of West Sussex Constabulary paid subscriptions into a fund providing allowances for widows and dependants of deceased members. Other receipts came from entertainments, raffles, collecting boxes, donations and legacies. After the force was amalgamated with others, a meeting attempted to wind up the fund and distribute its remaining assets. The court held that the meeting could not make that decision because the relevant membership had already ended. A surplus remained and the trustees sought directions. Its allocation required the court to distinguish the legal basis of the different payments rather than assume that all contributors retained equivalent interests.

How should the surplus of a dissolved police welfare fund be allocated where receipts came from contractual subscriptions, entertainments, anonymous collections and identifiable donations?

Goff J distinguished the sources of the money. Members' subscriptions and receipts from activities such as raffles were paid under arrangements which did not reserve an entitlement to the surplus, so no resulting trust was recognised for those payers. Anonymous collecting-box gifts were also treated as outright payments, rather than contributions recoverable on termination. Those categories became bona vacantia on the fund's ending. Identifiable donations and legacies made for the fund's continuing purpose were treated differently: their unused value could be held on resulting trust for donors or their estates. The members' attempted resolution after the relevant membership had ended did not supply a valid power to distribute everything among themselves.

The fate of an exhausted fund's surplus can depend on the legal basis of each receipt. Contractual or outright payments may not return to payers, while identifiable limited-purpose donations can give rise to a resulting trust. A single rule for all contributors is unsafe.

West Sussex is a useful exercise in distinguishing payment categories rather than treating every contributor as a settlor on identical terms. Compare Re Abbott's maintenance subscriptions and Re Buckinghamshire's contract-holding analysis. The decisions are not interchangeable: the constitution, rights and purposes require examination. In particular, anonymous collecting-box payments and identifiable donations were not given the same treatment. The continuing importance of the case is that a mixed fund may require several different legal explanations of the surplus.