Posts Tagged: Charity Commission

A full-on fortnight for the commission

As a professional commission watcher, it’s been a bit of a full-on fortnight what with all that’s been going on with the Charity Commission. Headlines have been the release of the National Audit Office report on the commission and its resulting analysis by the sector, the appearance by Paula Sussex, chief executive of the regulator,… Read more »

Check the Green Cross Code before considering a tribunal

The Green Cross code – that’s ‘Stop, Look, Listen, Think’ for the daredevil types among you – has served me pretty well in life. I wonder if the same maxim could stand charity trustees considering a charity tribunal appeal in good stead. The First-tier Tribunal (Charity) in England and Wales, and its Northern Irish and… Read more »

Transparency and trustworthiness are not the same thing

Apparently there’s some sort of teacake and dog festival starting in Scotland this week – but the big north of the border event as far as I’m concerned has been the publication of the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator’s annual report. The most significant announcement in the report is the news that the OSCR… Read more »

Late filing: excuses, excuses…

The Charity Commission’s class inquiry into ‘double defaulters’, charities who have failed to submit their annual accounts two or more times in the last five years, rumbles on. Various reasons were given by the dozen charities whose non-compliant behaviour has been outlined in the reports released so far, in three batches of four; the first… Read more »

Paula Sussex and the bed of nails

The Charity Commission offered the job of chief executive to Paula Sussex at the end of February, and finally got around to announcing it yesterday. The delay is officially explained as “normal processes of appointment and resignation.” Being translated, this tends to mean various kinds of horse-trading, to-ing and fro-ing with the Cabinet Office, and… Read more »

My battle with the Charity Commission

Last September, Third Sector reported how Southwark Council had been forced to write off almost £70,000 awarded to a defunct drug and alcohol charity. I was struck not only by the council’s lax checking procedures but by the fact that the federation had remained on the Charity Commission register until 2010, some eight years after… Read more »

Let charities run local newspapers

This week, a group of academics, journalists and charities proposed that charities should run local newspapers.At the moment, it’s far from clear whether a newspaper can be a charity. Many legal experts think so. The Charity Commission is sceptical. The new proposals ask the government to make it easier for them to do so.Providing a… Read more »

They’ve all got it in for Dame Suzi

‘Axe hovers over quango queen,’ squeals the Daily Mail, in response to a Sunday Times piece headlined ‘Quango queen faces sack for attack on private schools.’ It’s unusual for the Telegraph not to be in there too. It’s not the first time the right wing press have had a go at Dame Suzi Leather, chair… Read more »

Was the Charity Commission right not to publicise the findings of its investigation into the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative?

The long-awaited verdicts from the Charity Commission on the last two of the charities it investigated over political activity during the pre-election period are out.  Both the employment charity Tomorrow’s People, which was probed over the appearance of its chief executive in the Conservative Party’s election manifesto, and the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative, which… Read more »

Should think tanks be charities at all?

There are some senior figures in the Conservative Party who are not very keen on campaigning charities. Oliver Letwin, now Minister of State at the Cabinet Office with the role of providing policy advice to the Prime Minister, was more vocal than most about this before the election. There is a certain irony, then, surrounding… Read more »