Atoma Union C.I.C. / Atoma C.I.C. and Youthworksunion C.I.C. - fundraising at stations in London and possibly elsewhere

I've been making notes about the various Community Interest Companies (CICs) which are involved in selling magazines or otherwise fundraising outside various stations in London and elsewhere. I've been approached by people from these companies as I pass through Farringdon and have been surprised by the volume of "chuggers" operating there (I counted 11 on one visit). 

These are not charities (so not strictly 'chuggers', a pejorative portmanteau of charity and mugger) but several members of the staff are quite persistent in getting your attention, telling you that you've dropped something (even if only your smile), or complimenting you. Many people find this sort of fundraising makes them uncomfortable. 

This post is about Atoma Union C.I.C. / Atoma C.I.C. and Youthworksunion C.I.C.

Also in this series are posts that are written to try and help me get a sense of the various different organisations under similarly-named umbrellas.

• Inside Success (4 companies)
  
• We R Blighty (2 companies)
• Atoma / Youth Works Union (3 companies) - this post
  

What are the organisations?
1. Atoma C.I.C. (12773310) - incorporated on 28 July 2020 for the purposes of "46180 - Agents specialised in the sale of other particular products". The accounts are delayed (were due on 30 April 2024) though the company is still listed as active. Run by Omokehinde Oreoluwa Aladenola and Ayoola David Osaruwvense Obisesan.

It looks like moves were made to have the company struck off voluntarily in 2024 but there was a court-ordered restoration on 3 February 2025 (PDF).

2. Youth Atoma Enterprise Ltd. (15045868) - this is a private limited company, not a CIC. It was incorporated on 2nd August 2023 for the purposes of "87900 - Other residential care activities not elsewhere classified" and "88910 - Child day-care activities" so may be quite unrelated to the companies above. Its accounts are delayed (due on 2 May 2025) and it's run by Omokehinde Aladenola (Ayoola David Osaruwvense Obisesan resigned in 2024). Formerly named Youth Atoma Enterprice Ltd.

3. Atoma Union C.I.C. (15686104) - incorporated on 27 April 2024 for "47990 - Other retail sale not in stores, stalls or markets", accounts not due until January 2026, run by Omokehinde Aladenola.

4. Youthworksunion C.I.C. (15790735) - incorporated on 20 June 2024 for the purposes of "47990 - Other retail sale not in stores, stalls or markets", run by Kenny Aladen.

Companies 2 and 3 both operate from a CV2 company address post code (#1 from DA8) and there are quite a few other companies operating from that address including #4, run by someone else with a slightly different surname. 

The website for Atoma Union says that "We are currently undergoing a name change from Atoma Union to Youth Works Union. This is to clear any misunderstanding if you see a representative of ours using a different logo . We are just currently in a transition period.". 

Alamy has a photograph purporting to be someone from Youth Works Union selling Uplifterz magazines (I'm not sure how the two companies are related), also Alamy has mis-labelled them as a charity.

Appointments records
Because each company has its own correspondence address (this is completely normal) it means that the records of the officers can too so there are multiple appointments records for Mr Aladenola.  

Omokehinde Aladenola aka Omokehinde Oreoluwa Aladenola has three appointment records: this record lists two appointments including Atoma Union C.I.C., this record lists one appointment for Youth Atoma Enterprise Ltd and this one (which includes his middle name) lists one appointment, for Atoma C.I.C. 

Misc
There is also a seemingly unrelated company (dissolved) called Union Atoma Ltd (14405810), included for name-search completeness.

We R Blighty C.I.C. now has its own subreddit

I've not actually encountered We R Blighty C.I.C. (14349080), a Community Interest Company (CIC), which is unusual as they seem to be everywhere in London and in other cities raising funds to support homeless veterans. Their record on Companies House says that their next accounts are due on 30 June 2025.

They came to my attention solely because of news articles, and later information on Reddit, expressing concerns about the organisation. Having never met them I've no particular beef with them but am currently making a note of the various CICs that operate at London's stations.

There has been a bit of a proliferation of these CICs and I've encountered Uplifterz, Atoma Union / Youtth Works Union and Safehaven Initiative (new kid on the block, one of the two Savehaven CICs having been incorporated only on 2 June 2025). I've also encountered Inside Success at Stratford and Mile End.

We R Blighty personnel

• Benjamin William Mills - active (2 appointments, We R Blighty C.I.C. and Veterans in Need Ltd, 14955871)
• Danielle Jane Vidler - active (3 appointments)
• Benjamin Mills - resigned (1 appointment) and 
• Sally Ann Mills - resigned (1 appointment).

 

Further reading

We R Blighty subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/werblighty/

Do those ‘We R Blighty’ fundraisers outside stations really deserve your cash? (22 May 2025) The Londoner

Revealed: Armed forces fundraiser We R Blighty that collects thousands to 'get veterans off the street' is subject of TWO investigations by police and watchdog over its conduct (9 November 2024) Daily Mail 

Cash collections for homeless veterans probed by police (8 November 2024) The iPaper

We R Blighty - Forces Charity Scam (27 May 2023) Walter Mitty Hunters' Club HQ

Trying to get my head around "Inside Success" (station magazine sellers) and their various companies

Inside Success is a Community Interest Company (CIC) which has attracted a lot of attention for both the way some staff have behaved towards the public and the way in which staff have been treated by the company. They have been investigated twice by the Fundraising Regulator in March 2023 (1) and January 2024 (2) for pressurised fundraising and for not having the relevant licence to accept donations. ITV did a piece on them (3) which indicated that some of their staff had not been paid. Barking Council (2019) and Manchester City Council (2023) fined them for collecting money without a permit (4) and the Daily Mail drew attention to the large sums of money being collected (5).

As far as I'm aware CICs can ask for donations publicly if they have been given a permit to do so by Metropolitan Police (in London) or the local council. That doesn't appear to be the case here. (Companies don't actually have to be registered with the Fundraising Regulator to fundraise however; registration is voluntary).

I think that without such collecting permits in place they are only allowed to sell magazines.  

There are a lot of different companies operating in a similar way in London and elsewhere and I've itemised the ones I know about here (6).

How many Inside Success companies are there?
I think it's four; two active, two dissolved.

Active
Inside Success Union C.I.C. (10174759) is the one investigated by the Fundraising Regulator. It was incorporated on 11 May 2016 (previously known as Inside Success Union Ltd) and its accounts are currently delayed (should have been published in February 2025). The company is run by Darren Olawale and David Sonowo. 

There's also Inside Success Ltd (15932606) which is not a CIC but a private limited company. It was incorporated on 3 September 2024, its accounts aren't due until next year and it's run by Darren Olawale.

Dissolved
Inside Success LLP (OC357911), a limited liability partnership, was incorporated on 15 September 2010 and dissolved on 26 February 2013. It was also run by Darren Olawale and David Sonowo.

Inside Success UK CIC (08237681) was incorporated on 2 October 2012, dissolved on 20 December 2016 - five months after it was supposed to have submitted its accounts. It was run by Darren Olawale, David Sonowo and Cecil Hugh Quartey.

How many correspondence addresses?
All of these companies have different company addresses (perfectly reasonable!) which also means that the officers and directors etc also have different addresses and consequently different appointments records. This does make it a bit harder to keep track of things and as far as I can tell there are four records for Darren and three for David (there may be others).

Darren Olawale has one appointment here (for the dissolved Inside Success UK CIC [08237681]), seven appointments here (for Inside Success Ltd (15932606) active, Inside Success Union C.I.C. (10174759) active and, Inside Success LLP (OC357911) dissolved), and several unrelated companies - see more in reference (7). 

There's also a Darren Ola who has one appointment for an unrelated company. I think it's the same person because the other officers for the company are David Sonowo (and Anthony Sinclair Greenidge). I also found a record for a Darren Olawalw (typo) with one appointment for another unrelated company. The company's correspondence address was changed from an WC2H address to an SW8 one in 2021; both of those addresses are used by other companies Mr Olawale runs too.

David Sonowo has three appointments here (for the two dissolved Inside Success companies and an unrelated company), five appointments listed here (for Inside Success Union C.I.C. and four unrelated companies) and one appointment here (unrelated to Inside Success companies).

When did Inside Success begin?
The first Inside Success company (Inside Success LLP) was incorporated on 15 September 2010 but this tweet from November 2009 made me wonder if there might have been an earlier company (if so I can't find it on Companies House).

http://pic.gd/20adf9 Delighted to meet Darren Olawale & David of Inside Success (http://bit.ly/11LfMw) for interview, out January 2010

— King of Shaves (@KingofShaves) November 17, 2009

The links don't work now but point to an earlier version of the Inside Success website which exists on the Wayback Machine - the pic•gd link goes nowhere but the bitly one points to (dead) https://ww1.insidesuccess.co.uk/lander whereas their current website has the insidesuccessuk format.

References

(1) Investigation summary: Inside Success Union CIC (March 2023) Fundraising Regulator
Registered company no. 10174759.

Code themes examined: Pressurised fundraising, dealing with vulnerable donors, fundraising licenses, causing an obstruction.
Code breach? Yes

(2) Investigation summary: Inside Success Union CIC (January 2024) Fundraising Regulator
Registered company no. 10174759.

Code themes examined: Pressurised fundraising, misleading fundraising, fundraising licenses, causing an obstruction, wearing appropriate identification when engaged in street fundraising, complaint handling and learning from complaints.
Code breach? Yes

(3) Anti-knife crime group Inside Success Union accused of harassing public to raise cash (1 August 2023) ITV

(4a) Bosses of magazine Inside Success Union are fined for selling in Barking without a licence (4 February 2019) Barking and Dagenham Post

(4b) Company who illegally 'pressured people into donating' to them on streets of Manchester fined (3 November 2023) Manchester Evening News 

(5) Exposed: Where the £3million we hand over to anti-knife 'charities'' pushy High Street collectors REALLY ends up (25 May 2024) Daily Mail

I hope the writer of this Reddit post, about the company fundraising in Bristol, won't mind me excerpting a bit of their comment as I think it's important - "It's worth noting that a section of the racist arsehole press in the UK (the Daily Mail and GB News) is down on this organisation because it is predominantly run by people of colour. Racists and racism can of course fuck off, this is Bristol after all, but ... I'd encourage everyone to respectfully engage with each of them [IS staff collecting at stations] and encourage them to do something better with their lives..."

(6) Community Interest Companies (CICs) selling magazines, collecting donations ('chugging') at many of London's stations (9 June 2025) Brodiesnotes: Stuff that occurs to me (this blog)

(7) Companies listed are: Inside Success Ltd (15932606) active, My Sounds Global Ltd (15096639) active, U Got Jokes Comedy Ltd (14290194) dissolved, Inside Success Union C.I.C. (10174759) active, Inside Success LLP (OC357911) dissolved, U Got Jokes Limited (07163628) dissolved, Kick Up Academy Limited (10052282) dissolved.

Community Interest Companies (CICs) selling magazines, collecting donations ('chugging') at many of London's stations

The term 'chugger' means 'charity mugger' and refers to people who are either paid by a charity directly to do face to face fundraising or, more commonly, are paid by a third company to which this has been outsourced. There are plenty of complaints to be had about the methods used by chuggers, some of whom even call at people's homes, but they are at least fundraising for a genuine purpose even if they annoy lots of people while doing so.

Community Interest Companies (CICs) are different but have followed a similar pattern. They are not regulated by the Charity Commission and have much less oversight on them. Consequently there are one or two that are or have been under investigation for raising money without a permit or for harrassing members of the public to give them money. They also fall between several regulatory gaps which makes it harder for authorities to do much about them.

Here are some of the CICs I've encountered or heard about.

• Inside Success Ltd Private limited Company 15932606

• Inside Success Union C.I.C. Community Interest Company 10174759 Accounts and Confirmation statement overdue - the Fundraising Regulator investigated people working for this one (in January 2024, and March 2023, they've also featured on ITV news and in the Daily Mail about how they spend their 3 million turnover; Manchester fined them for fundraising without a licence)

• Uplifterz CIC Community Interest Company 15835071- there's also Uplifters Agency Ltd (16102520) run by the same person.
  

• Uplifterz Union C.I.C. Community Interest Company 15944885 (this is run by a different person from Uplifterz C.I.C., but from the same business address or virtual office)
  

• Atoma Union C.I.C. Community Interest Company 15686104

• Atoma C.I.C. Community Interest Company 12773310 Accounts and Confirmation statement overdue

• Empoweryou Enterprise CIC Community Interest Company 15336620 Confirmation statement overdue
  

• Mentor Point Youth CIC Community Interest Company 14795768
  

• Youthworksunion C.I.C. Community Interest Company 15790735
  

• We R Blighty C.I.C. Community Interest Company 14349080 (Kent Police were looking into them for financial irregularities). One of the directors of this also runs Veterans in Need Ltd. Blighty's company records are due on 30 June 2025.

• Safehaven Initiative CIC (16061849) / Safehaven Initiative Union CIC (16490068) I met these today at Farringdon station. I had a pleasant chat with the guy who was not trying to sell me a magazine (only wanted donations) but there was was no pressure. SI CIC was founded in Nov 2024 and SIU CIC onl last week, on 2nd June (!) so I'm not sure yet if this is a new thing that's genuine or just more of the same.

Atoma Union's website says "We are currently undergoing a name change from Atoma Union to Youth Works Union. This is to clear any misunderstanding if you see a representative of ours using a different logo . We are just currently in a transition period." though if it's the same Atoma Union as the one above they have different officers (but who share the same correspondence address).

Plus at least one which has been dissolved.

• Inside Success UK CIC Community Interest Company 08237681

How about an 'easy mode' for people too skittish to enjoy horror films. Peril warnings given in advance, that sort of thing.

Because I would genuinely like this to be a 'thing' this post is Creative Commons and you can repost it with me as author (feel free to edit it but please don't change my meaning). See at the end on how to credit me.

Image credit: Image by KTkato from Pixabay, with added text. (Note that the image is separate from the Creative Commons licence below).

 
The main problem I have with horror films is gore and unexpected jump scares. The jump scares are worse and so I rarely choose to watch horror as I don't enjoy being startled, then shown something unpleasant. 

Sometimes films use music, pacing, cinematography, tropes etc to warn the audience that something unpleasant is imminent and I tend to close my eyes at that point. This has got me through Silence of the Lambs and Pitch Black, both of which I actually enjoyed. Now that I know where the 'eek' bits are in both films I can watch them 'safely'. 

Sometimes films don't use music etc to warn and I do not like that one bit.

For me the ideal would be that thing they use in old silent films where an intertitle card warns "Peril ahead..." or "Watch out for that thing there." 

Accessibility means that it's now possible to watch almost any film with subtitles and increasingly more of them now have audio descriptions to describe to visually impaired people what's happening on-screen. I'd quite like a Timid Setting version of scary films with variable options. E.g. you could have the screen blur when something horrific happens, or an audio or text indicator warns you to shut your eyes.... right about... now. 

Creative Commons Licence

How about an 'easy mode' for people too skittish to enjoy horror films. Peril warnings given in advance, that sort of thing. by Jo Brodie is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Post inspired by my niece who was a professional scarer at a Hallowe'en event.

The bit below isn't part of the CC BY 4.0 licence as I don't own the rights to others' posts so can't grant permission to use.

Examples from other domains

Haunted houses

I remember reading a few years ago a post somewhere (can't remember details sadly) where someone said that they were too feeble to enjoy haunted houses and would like there to be a preview event before it opened properly where you could visit and learn about the story world without any of the actual scaring. The actors could talk about their roles, you could enjoy exploring the experience and no-one would jump out at you. Wish I'd kept hold of that. I found some that are conceptually similar, below.

Wholesome haunted house shenanigans - this Reddit post gives a couple of examples of fairly mundane things where people dropped their spectacles and a scarily dressed zombie helped them then went back to growling at people. Commenters add their stories too.

"I like haunted houses in theory BUT I have no idea how to react when the actors speak to you. They ask me a question and I just… answer it… The scariest part of a haunted house is the unscripted social interaction." - this Tumbler post considers the awkwardness inherent in haunted house events.

Related: Autism Dad Creates Sensory-Friendly Haunted House - inspired by his autistic son a man in Ohio created a quiet, no flashing lights haunted house experience where the actors were friendly not scary.

Gaming

I like this thread from Moose Allain where he mentions that he'd enjoy playing a version of a game where you just get to explore the landscape without any of the jeopardy of meeting with someone or something that might want to harm you.