Our weekly round up of news and updates from across the sector.

Charity Commission

Inquiry report – Care4Calais

The Commission has published an Inquiry report into Care4Calais. The Commission reports that it opened a statutory inquiry in 2020 following some years of engagement over compliance and safeguarding issues and later concerns about financial and governance issues. The inquiry found that there had historically been inadequate internal financial controls, a lack of appropriate governance structures, and poor management of complaints – although it also noted improvements made by the charity since the circumstances underlying those findings had arisen. One aspect of the report which is relevant to the wider sector is commentary from the Commission about the trustees' decision to judicially review the Government's scheme to deport people seeking asylum to Rwanda. The Commission found that the legal action was acceptable political activity in furtherance of the charity's charitable purposes, and that the decision to pursue the legal action was properly made.

Inquiries opened

The Commission has opened an inquiry into The Schwarzschild Foundation, a charity which provides education and the relief of poverty for women and girls in the orthodox Jewish faith. Their main concern is whether charitable funds and other charity assets have been used as intended.

The Commission is also opening an inquiry into Dalaid, a charity that aims to relieve poverty and advance Jewish education, for concerns around general trustee mismanagement and/or misconduct.

MyCharityCommissionAccount

According to Civil Society Media, 79,000 charities have so far successfully set up on the new Commission portal. This means over 100,000 registered charities have yet to do so.

Community interest companies

The CIC regulator has updated these forms:

  • CIC36 Application to form a CIC
  • CIC37: application to convert a company to a CIC
  • CIC14: altering the objects of a community interest company

Sector General

Charities in communities across England can now apply for the latest round of funding from the Suicide Prevention Grant Fund.

Civil Society Media reports Kerry Palin, a woman who raised £34,000 for victims of the Australian bushfires in 2020, has been sentenced to one year and four months in prison after giving only $20 AUD (£10) to charities and spending the rest on clothes and beauty treatments for herself.

Charities and banking

This is an interesting report from Civil Society Media about the National Trust coming under pressure to stop banking with Barclays. Last month, CSM reported that Christian Aid is to stop banking with Barclays, over concerns about the bank's financing of fossil fuels.

Climate change

See above under Charities and banking.

Diversity and inclusion

Bond's People of Colour in Development Working Group has published this update "Three years on from the murder of George Floyd: where are we now?".

Fundraising

Civil Society Media reports JustGiving has started offering generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology to its users and says it is the first major fundraising platform to do so in the UK. The platform introduced a function last week to allow fundraisers to using AI to generate a personal story as part of their pages encouraging donations.

Funders

In this blog, NPC explores why the closure of Lankelly Chase has got the sector talking, and specific issues that arise from closing a foundation.

Data protection

The Information Commissioner's Office and eleven other data protection and privacy authorities from around the world have published a joint statement calling for the protection of people's personal data from unlawful data scraping taking place on social media sites. The joint statement sets expectations for how social media companies should protect people's data from unlawful data scraping. It also recommends steps people can take to minimise risks when sharing information online.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has launched a call for victims of so-called 'text pests' to come forward to help the regulator gather evidence of the impact of this illegal behaviour. Text pests are individuals who use personal information, such as a phone number or email address, given to them in a business context for "romantic" or sexual propositions – for example, asking a customer out on a date after they ordered a takeaway. The call for evidence comes as new research commissioned by the ICO reveals that nearly a third of 18-34-year-olds who responded to its poll had been victims of this practice. The ICO call for evidence will be open until 15 September.

Northern Ireland

CCNI has updated the list of organisations it hopes to call forward for charity registration in the coming months.

Health and social care

See above under Sector General.

Housing

The Children and Families Minister, Claire Coutinho has written to housing associations, social landlords and developers to urge them to allow childminders to work from their rented properties.

International development

See under Equality and diversity above.

Bond reports over 100 NGOs have called for Rishi Sunak to attend the SDG Summit in September and re-new the UK's commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Education

Schools

A DfE press release shows that 'results are back to pre-pandemic levels as grading returns to normal' and top grades and standard passes are back in line with what they were in 2019.

The DfE has confirmed more support for children with special educational needs, with a £70 million programme improving the educational standards and services for young people with SEND alongside seven new special free schools to be built across the country.

The Department for Education has updated its guidance, Securing developer contributions for education, and published a new pupil yields dashboard to allow councils to calculate the likely student numbers arising from proposed housing schemes.

The Welsh Government has made the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Act 2018 (Amendment of Commencement Orders No 5, No 6, No 8, No 13 and No 14) Order 2023 (SI 2023/932)., which extends the third year of implementation of the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Act 2018 by one year.

Further Education

The DfE has approved the opening of three sixth forms proposed by a partnership between Eton College and Star Academies, which will open in Dudley, Teesside and Oldham. FE Week reports that "this is part of a government effort to push up education standards and get more pupils from the Midlands and north into Oxbridge."

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