The Charity Commission

The Charities Act 2006 (2006 Act) created the Charity Commission for England and Wales as a corporate body. It is a non-Ministerial Government Department and part of the Civil Service.

By law, the Commission is independent of Ministerial influence. The Charities Act 1993 (1993 Act) (as amended) underlines this by stating:

‘in the exercise of its functions, the Commission shall not be subject to the direction or control of any Minister of the Crown or other Government Department’.

The Commission is also independent from the sector it regulates. It has some powers similar to those of the High Court. Its decisions may be the subject of appeal to the Charity Tribunal, a new body established by the 2006 Act.

Objectives, functions and duties

The 1993 Act (as amended) sets out the Commission’s five objectives, six general functions and six general duties.

Of the objectives, the compliance objective is of most direct interest to the higher education sector because it will also be given to principal regulators when they are designated. This is:

'to promote compliance by charity trustees with their legal obligations in exercising control and management of the administration of their charities.'

Of the general functions, those of particular interest to the higher education sector are:

  • encouraging and facilitating the better administration of charities
  • identifying and investigating apparent misconduct or mismanagement in the administration of charities and taking remedial or protective action.

The first of these mirrors HEFCE’s existing interest in the effectiveness and development of leadership, governance and management of higher education institutions. The second will be an important, but occasional, element in the joint working of HEFCE and the Commission now the exempt charity provisions of the 2006 Act are in force.

Powers of the charity commission

The Commission has many statutory powers to enable it to carry out its work. With effect from 1 June 2010 most of those powers were extended to exempt charities. Section 14 of the 2006 Act requires the Commission to consult a charity's principal regulator before exercising any of its powers in relation to an exempt charity.

Summary of the Commission's powers

[ Download Summary of the Commission's powers as Adobe PDF 17K ]

Work with other regulators

The Commission and other charity regulators in the UK and Ireland have established the Charity Regulator’s Forum. The Forum meets twice yearly to:

  • encourage co-ordination of, and consistency in, regulatory approaches in the UK and Ireland, accepting that regulators work within different legislative frameworks
  • share information and best practice on charity regulation
  • encourage effective working relationships between the devolved administrations responsible for the regulation of charities.

The Commission expects to agree a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with each of the designated principal regulators. It has already done so with HEFCE. The MoUs will describe how the Commission and principal regulators will work together; they will take account of existing processes and powers available to each regulator, and will be subject to periodic review.

Download the MoU between the Commission and HEFCE

Further information

Last updated 23 June 2010