THE Charity Commission’s inquiry into the purchase of a building by the Waltham Forest Islamic Association (WFIA) has now closed.

The building, in Grove Road, Walthamstow, was purchased for £1.5million by the current committee with the intention of converting it into a specialist Islamic school for girls.

An inquiry was launched after the WFIA was found to have no properly appointed trustees, and a vesting order has been placed on the building until an interim committee is put in place.

Imtiaz Qadir, 51, who is a member of the current committee and works for the Active Change Foundation (ACF), saw the closure of the inquiry as a victory.

He said: “We’ve been cleared after the inquiry. In actual fact, we welcomed the order in a sense because of the accusations that were coming out. It’s very important now to cool matters down.

“We’ve met with the police and the opposition, and we’ve come up with a reasonable proposal for a way forward.”

However, a report has yet to be released following the inquiry and a letter from the Charity Commission to the WFIA stated only that ‘there is nothing further to consider in this case’.

The committee has faced fierce opposition from within the WFIA and both groups also continue to make allegations of violence against one another. They have not yet formally reached an agreement on how to proceed.

Representing the opposition, Tariq Mahmood, 52, of Leyton, said: “The Charity Commission say they’ve closed the inquiry but that doesn’t mean everything’s hunky dory.

“We need to have an interim committee and hold an election and everything’s got to be above board. If we don’t do that, then the problem is going to stay there.”

The Charity Commission were unable to comment as the final report on the inquiry has not yet been published and did not confirm that the vesting order on the building was still in place.