THE founding chairman and treasurer of a fundraising trust has stepped down from the board after admitting mistakes which led to £2,618 in public donations being unaccounted for.

Former Furness Building Society branch team leader and Barrow AFC director Pete Garbacz had been heavily involved in the Bluebirds Trust since its formation back in 2014.

He quit as treasurer of the trust in January 2016 - a decision he says was brought about by ongoing mental health problems.

But a £4k black hole in the accounts was discovered when the books were handed over to new treasurer, Ryan Potter.

At the trust's annual general meeting, held on November 30, members were informed that, despite Mr Garbacz's attempts to provide documentation to prove where the money had been spent, some £2,618 was still outstanding.

After extensive discussions with a solicitor and other professionals, a majority of the board's eight members voted to accept Mr Garbacz's offer to repay the money from his own pocket.

Mr Garbacz, a 35-year-old dad-of-two who now runs children's entertainment business Marvellous Events, says he made the offer in order to ensure the trust's work does not suffer for his "record keeping errors".

"I made a genuine mistake; there was no criminality," he told the Evening Mail.

"I was at a point in my life where I wasn't coping particularly well. As soon as I realised that, I handed the accounts over to someone else and that was when these discrepancies were noted.

"I then offered to reimburse the trust in full because it wasn't fair that the trust should bear that.

"As a director of the trust, I had a responsibility to make sure I carried out my duties so the trust could be run properly and in accordance with the constitution. I failed in those duties so it falls on me as an individual to say 'I have made these mistakes, therefore it is up to me to put it right'."

The outstanding £2,618 is made up of a total of 17 transactions, including some made using a bank card held by Mr Garbacz. At the time, the trust's bank account was registered to his home address.

Some of the trust's 300-plus members had questioned why the police had not been involved, given that Mr Garbacz accepted he should pay back the missing cash.

"I felt in my mind that offering to pay the money myself was the right thing to do," Mr Garbacz said.

"The overriding priority for me is to try and protect the integrity of the trust. If there was any indication of criminality then the police would have been involved."

Ian Rainford, fan liaison director for AFC and on the trust's board, said the decision to allow Mr Garbacz to pay the outstanding amount was in the members' "best interests".

"We took advice from a solicitor and various people in professional roles and the advice we were given was what we did in the end, to deal with it internally," Mr Rainford said.

"We took the decision that we thought was best for the trust membership in getting the money back."