Charity Commission inquiries and comments in 2025 – what is important to them?

The Charity Commission has been active in 2025, issuing news of eight inquiries or similar notifications.

The themes remain the same as many reported before, although there are two that are of particular note to the Christian community. The overall theme is that good governance is critical to charities’ long-term success.

The Commission remain very concerned by charities that fail to get their accounts registered on time. This is the most common reason for the Commission assessing a charity as ‘at risk’ and shows that this simple issue often hides much wider issues below the surface.

Interestingly enough, almost all those being reported for failing in this administrative area also have very small Trustee boards (2 or 3 individuals). It represents the obvious ‘tip of the iceberg’ of weak governance. My personal comment is that this may also demonstrate that there is a possible lack of real charitable achievement in these charities; either there are few people who think it is worth investing their time or they are put off by a ‘closed attitude’ of those that are in charge.

If the Trustee group is small, or dominated by family members, this suggests a ‘risk factor’ over governance, a lack of fresh and independent thinking in the Trustee board. There may be effective executive leadership but there may not be, and the lack of those whose job it is to assess this suggests inherent weaknesses.

The aspects that are of particular relevance to the Christian community are the Commission’s open letter to the Church of England on safeguarding and a widening of their monitoring of the Barnabas Fund.

There are not many direct inquiries started as a result of safeguarding issues, but ‘safeguarding’ remains a very high priority for the Commission, and it is an area in which the Christian church has demonstrated weakness. Local churches and their umbrella organisations should not lose focus on this area, and it should remain a priority for Trustees to be aware of and keep under review; is training happening regularly, are checks up to date, any pressures on staffing that may result in short cuts being taken or changes in what is happening on the ground? This seems like an area where any complacency can catch us out – with all the damage that does!

In October last year, the Commission announced it was investigating Barnabas Fund over serious concerns regarding its compliance with charity law and the use of charitable funds. As part of this, the regulator used its statutory powers to temporarily restrict any transactions the charity intends to make which are over £4,000. The regulator is now again using these powers to freeze the bank accounts of Reconciliation Trust and restrict any transactions above £2,500 made by another three linked charities. Trustees will be required to gain written consent from the Commission for sizeable transactions. This shows that Christian ministry charities which are thought to ignore charity regulations can expect to be placed under closer restrictions to ensure that the basic rules for charity are met.

There have been significant changes at Barnabas Fund in the recent past, but this tight monitoring indicates how much concern there is in the Commission that the governance oversight of the ‘group’ was not adequate. The point that is worth drawing out is around the difference between ‘effective leadership’ and ‘good governance’. A number of what have been known as ‘effective Christian ministries’ have also shown themselves to have had weak governance; meaning that dominant executive teams have ‘got results’ but at cost to trust and wider team working that has ultimately damaged and not supported long term outcomes.