Resources / What the Charity Commission is, and when you will deal with it
What the Charity Commission is, and when you will deal with it
The Charity Commission is the regulator for charities in England and Wales. It registers them, holds the public register, and steps in when something goes wrong.
What it is
- An independent, non-ministerial government department. Its functions are performed on behalf of the Crown, and in exercising them it is not subject to the direction or control of any minister (Charities Act 2011, section 13). No minister can tell it what to decide about your charity.
- It is accountable to Parliament, and its decisions can be challenged at the First-tier Tribunal (Charity).
- It regulates England and Wales only. Scotland has the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, and Northern Ireland has the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland. A charity working across the UK can end up registered with more than one, and answering to each.
What the law tells it to do
Section 14 of the Charities Act 2011 gives it five objectives.
- Increase public trust and confidence in charities
- Promote awareness and understanding of the public benefit requirement
- Promote compliance by trustees with their legal duties
- Promote the effective use of charitable resources
- Enhance charities' accountability to donors, beneficiaries and the public
Read that list again and you can see the Commission's job is not to run charities. It is to keep the public able to trust them.
How it decides when to act
Regulation is risk led. The Commission publishes guidance and expects trustees to follow it. Most of what it does is advice and information. It saves its stronger powers for cases where there is a real risk of harm to people, to charity money or to public trust.
That has a practical consequence. Getting in touch early, being straight about a problem and showing you are dealing with it is treated very differently from being found out later. In inquiry after inquiry, the finding that does the damage is not the original mistake. It is the failure to keep records, to report, or to comply with what the Commission then asked for.
What it can do if it has to
- Order you to produce information and documents
- Issue an official warning, or an action plan you must follow
- Freeze bank accounts, or stop the charity entering into transactions
- Open a statutory inquiry, and publish the report
- Suspend or remove a trustee, which disqualifies them from any charity
- Appoint an interim manager to run the charity instead of the trustees, at the charity's cost
Interim managers are expensive and the charity pays. In published inquiries their costs have run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
When you will actually deal with it
| Moment | What you do |
|---|---|
| Setting up | Apply to register, if your income is at least £5,000 or you are a CIO. |
| Every year | File your annual return, and your accounts and trustees' annual report if your income is over £25,000. The deadline is 10 months after your year end. |
| When trustees change | Update the register. It has to reflect who your trustees actually are. |
| When something serious happens | Report it as a serious incident, straight away. Fraud, significant loss, safeguarding harm, or serious damage to your reputation. |
| When you want to change your objects | Ask for consent. Most changes to purposes need it. |
| Paying a trustee, or a deal with a connected person | Check whether you have the authority. If not, apply for it before, not after. |
| Selling or leasing land | Follow the rules on disposals, including getting the right advice first. |
| Winding up | Tell the Commission, and apply the remaining funds as your governing document requires. |
The one thing worth remembering
The Commission is not looking for reasons to intervene in a small, honestly run charity. What it acts on is drift: filings that slip, meetings that stop happening, records that were never kept, and money nobody can account for. Those are all things you can see coming, if you are looking.