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

Charity Commission

New guidance collections

The Commission has amalgamated existing guidance into "collections" to make it easier for trustees to find relevant information – the collections are:

Charities and social media – the new Charity Commission guidance. If you weren't able to attend last week's Bates Wells webinar on charities and social media then you can contact Bates Wells senior associate, Suhan Rajkumar, to access the recording.

Charity law cases

A team at Bates Wells led by Laura Soley and Jaqui Symcox recently supported the Friends of the Victoria Hall (FoVH), a community group representing local residents and organisations of Ealing, in the First-tier Charity Tribunal. FoVH was appealing against a scheme allowing Ealing Council, as trustee of the Victoria Hall charity, to sell the historic Victoria Hall to a private hotel provider for development.

While disappointingly, the Tribunal found that the case for a scheme had been made out, the Tribunal rejected the scheme on the basis that it did not protect the interests of the Victoria Hall charity and has remitted the matter back to the Charity Commission, directing the Charity Commission and the Council to consult with FoVH on the new scheme.

While this is good news for the residents of Ealing, the rights of local inhabitants to challenge sales of community property in future will be jeopardised when the new Charities Act provisions come in in late 2023. From then, the Charity Commission will be able to authorise disposals under a new power, in relation to which there is no right of challenge by local inhabitants to the Tribunal, so rights of local inhabitants to protect their community property may be lost.

Names

The High Court recently upheld a Company Names Tribunal decision requiring AXA Wholesale Trading Ltd ("AWT") to change its name on the grounds that it was sufficiently similar to the name of the French insurance and financial services group AXA (AXA Wholesale Trading v AXA [2023] EWHC 1339 (Ch) 11 May 2023). Bates Wells partner, Catharina Waller, comments, "The Company Names Tribunal mechanism for objecting to company names can be difficult to apply, largely because there are a number of defences available to the company that adopted the name. However, if you get the objection right – as the insurance company AXA did in this case – it is likely to stick. The High Court has confirmed that it treats appeals from a decision of the Company Names Tribunal in the same way as appeals from a trade mark registration decision of the UK Intellectual Property Office: it will only allow an appeal if there was an error of law – an appeal is not a chance for a complete re-hearing of the case."

Sector general

Research from Enthuse, a digital fundraising platform, shows that younger people are more likely to support charities campaigning on political issues. 26% of the under-45 bracket said they had donated to a charity in support of a political issue, compared to 9% in the older group.

This Guardian article reports on the Labour Party's announcements in relation to private schools – the Labour Party no longer plans to strip private schools of their charitable status, but has indicated it will still remove the 80% charitable tax relief, and aim to reinvest the money gained back into the state education system.

The University of Oxford has opened a new research institute, 'The Gradel Institute of Charity', dedicated to charities. Its work will include research into sustainability in the voluntary sector.

Dormant Assets Scheme

The government has announced the purposes for the English portion of the Dormant Assets Scheme. It is expected to release £350 million for England over 2024 and 2028 and will be split equally between youth, financial inclusion and education, social investment wholesalers and community wealth funds. The government has also launched a new technical consultation following the commitment it made in response to its earlier consultation on the English portion of dormant assets funding. This confirmed that community wealth funds would be the fourth cause to receive dormant assets funding in England. The government is now seeking people's views on the principles that will underpin the design of the community wealth fund. The current intention is that the fund will target places that are experiencing high levels of deprivation and/or low social capital, initially directed at small towns of fewer than 20,000 residents. The consultation document can be accessed here and responses must be submitted by 11:55pm on 19 October 2023.

Diversity and inclusion

As you may have seen, NCVO has adopted the term "Global majority" to refer to all ethnic groups except white British and other white groups, including white minorities. Global majority is a shortened version of the term 'people of the global majority' and NCVO will use it in place of other terms such as BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic), BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour), and ethnic minorities.

Safeguarding

See the item on Bond's safeguarding case studies at 'International Development' below.

Fundraising

Lotteries

Back in July we flagged this Gambling Commission consultation on proposed changes to Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP). Much of the consultation isn't relevant to society lotteries/ charities but we are concerned about proposed changes around direct marketing which require consent for each gambling product. Bates Wells partner, Hannah Lyons, explains, "The Gambling Commission is proposing to introduce a new LCCP requirement to provide customers with options to opt-in to the Gambling product they are interested in and the channels through which they wish to receive marketing. This goes a lot further than the law, ICO guidance and the Code of Fundraising Practice and could have a big impact on how charities communicate with supporters about their lottery. We are drafting a response to this but it would be helpful if any charities who would be affected by this responded to the consultation as well. The consultation closes on 18 October."

Philanthropy

Bates Wells senior associate, Clarissa Lyons, will be chairing a Philanthropy Impact networking event, 'Business Values, Practice and Philanthropy', next Tuesday 10 October. The discussion will centre on the journey from B Corp to a non-profit/charity owned business and includes speakers from Lawyers for Nature, Purpose Lawyers, Coutts and Bates Wells partner, Sung-Hyui Park. Please see the details here on timings and costs of booking a place.

Data protection

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued an advisory note, calling on public authorities to stop using spreadsheets in freedom of information (FOI) responses. In its briefing, the ICO states that it follows a number of recent high profile personal data breaches and stems from the inadvertent sharing of personal data, particularly where hundreds or thousands of rows of data are included in the spreadsheet. Its advice includes investing in data management systems and continual staff training.

The ICO has issued a warning, after it has reprimanded seven organisations in the past 14 months for data breaches involving victims of domestic abuse. The organisations have included a law firm and a housing association, as well as a police service and NHS trust. The breaches have put the victims at risk of further danger, including by revealing their home addresses. The ICO has urged organisations to focus on staff training and putting in place appropriate procedures to handle personal information safely.

Scotland

OSCR has removed 31 charities from the Scottish register, following an effort to identify charities that are no longer operating and which have failed to engage with OSCR, thereby failing the 'charity test'.

OSCR has also published an interim inquiry report into ZesT Football Club, due to concerns that the charity doesn't have the minimum number of trustees required under the constitution, and a lack of financial controls. See OSCR's press release here.

Young people

The government has announced new services to benefit young people including:

Health and social care

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) has published its Review of adult social care complaints for 2022-23. Key points include:

  • The rate of complaints that were upheld was 75%, an increase of 5% from the previous year.
  • The LGSCO upheld 67% of complaints involving failures to provide timely and effective assessment and care planning, 79% of complaints about charging for care services and 78% of complaints about direct payments.

One of the LGSCO decisions published following an investigation highlighted the inadequacy of 15-minute home care calls. The report observed that such calls were seldom adequate to help wash, dress or feed someone. The LGSCO said this highlighted the importance of the commissioner and provider relationship and the critical role council commissioners have in setting and reviewing standards and quality of care with providers they work with.

Homelessness

Funding has been given to 26 night shelters across England to help rough sleepers access a safe place to stay and support. £3.3 million has been allocated as part of the Night Shelter Transformation Fund.

Social enterprise

'Is a CIC right for me?' A Pioneers Post article by Bates Wells partner, Oliver Hunt, gives the pros and cons of the community interest company structure, concluding that they are worth considering when looking to set up a UK social enterprise, but that other structures offer more flexibility for businesses likely to want to take on equity investment.

Big Society Capital has achieved B Corp certification – see this article for more information, including how the organisation scored on different sections of the B Corp Impact Assessment.

Social Enterprise UK has developed a new social enterprise, Telos, which aims to combine the 'Buy Social Europe' procurement programme with advocacy and advisory work to maximise the positive impact of supply chains.

Social Investment Business and Social Enterprise UK have joined the 'Future Economy Alliance', a network of social enterprises, co-ops, mutuals, social investors and more, which is campaigning for an economy where profit also benefits people and the planet. See press releases from Social Enterprise UK and Social Investment Business.

Faith-based organisations

Bates Wells' annual faith-based update has just been published and can be found here.

International development

Bond has produced case studies to support organisations in their safeguarding due diligence. They are aimed at Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) funded INGOs, who are working with local partners, and implementing the FCDO's due diligence guidance. Bond is hosting a webinar on 20 October where you can find out more about these case studies.

Education

Schools

A Department for Education (DfE) press release shows the launch of four more 'attendance hubs' in the latest effort to improve attendance rates in schools.

Ofsted has published an independent review of careers guidance in schools and further education providers (press release). The review assessed guidance given to students on technical and academic pathways, apprenticeships and routes to technical qualification.

Further Education

Minister for skills, apprenticeships and higher education Robert Halfon gave a speech at the Council of Europe conference of education ministers in which he discussed the "renewal of the civic mission of education". He spoke about a "skills revolution", citing further education such as apprenticeships, T Levels and technical qualifications as key to achieving this, and summarising what the DfE has done already to further this aim.

The DfE has launched a consultation on proposed reforms to Initial Teacher Training for the FE sector, including changes to public funding. It closes on 7 November 2023.

Higher Education

The Office for Students has launched a funding competition distributing £40m through a competitive bidding exercise, designed to boost "equality of opportunity" for degree apprenticeships. They have released guidance for higher education providers on how to submit bids for the funding. See FE Week commentary here.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.