Thanks, Howie for posting this. Glad to see an experienced and trustworthy hand at the wheel during a difficult time.
A bleg I have would be for some EA with a bit of time on their hands to take a look at the publicly available UK charitable inquiry incident reports to see what % result in regulatory action (and/or findings of wrongdoing) as well as other useful details as precedent. I think this would be helpful in giving a sense of what to expect for EV UK going forward and what steps should be taken in advance. Based on my very quick and rough perusal of the first five reports listed on the site, it looks like all five inquiries identified misconduct and resulted in regulatory action.
It looks like the Commission does have an ability not to publish finished reports, so it’s possible those are an unrepresentative sample of inquiries, but (on a very very preliminary glance) the outlook does not seem especially promising.
The annual report suggests there are 45 to 65 statutory inquiries a year, link below (on mobile / lunch break, sorry!). So maybe a half to slightly less seem to end up as public reports.
I skimmed the oldest ten very quickly and it looks like four subjects were wound up / dissolved, and four more had trustee-related actions like appointment of new trustees by a Commission-appointed Interim Manager, disqualification from being a trustee, etc. One organization had some poor governance not rising to misconduct/misadministration (but some trustees resigned), one had Official Warnings issued to trustees, one got an action plan.
Pending more careful and complete review, most inquires that result in public reports do seem to find substantial mismanagement and result in significant regulatory action.
I think it is also worth checking what the reason was why the inquiries where opened and how this correlates with the outcomes. I only looked at a few but lots of them starts with quite obvious wrongdoings or mistakes by the trustees already and these are of course much more likely to end negatively.
Agreed. My guess is that (a) the bar for opening a statutory inquiry of a larger charity like EVF is practically lower than for the significantly smaller charities who make up most of the reports; and (b) the CC will hold EVF’s trustees to a higher standard than significantly smaller charities. I think both would be appropriate -- (a) as a matter of enforcement priorities, and (b) because I think the minimum acceptable level of performance should rise as charities have more resources. If my guesses are correct, they would limit the predictive usefulness of past published outcomes.
Thanks, Howie for posting this. Glad to see an experienced and trustworthy hand at the wheel during a difficult time.
A bleg I have would be for some EA with a bit of time on their hands to take a look at the publicly available UK charitable inquiry incident reports to see what % result in regulatory action (and/or findings of wrongdoing) as well as other useful details as precedent. I think this would be helpful in giving a sense of what to expect for EV UK going forward and what steps should be taken in advance. Based on my very quick and rough perusal of the first five reports listed on the site, it looks like all five inquiries identified misconduct and resulted in regulatory action.
It looks like the Commission does have an ability not to publish finished reports, so it’s possible those are an unrepresentative sample of inquiries, but (on a very very preliminary glance) the outlook does not seem especially promising.
The annual report suggests there are 45 to 65 statutory inquiries a year, link below (on mobile / lunch break, sorry!). So maybe a half to slightly less seem to end up as public reports.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charity-commission-annual-report-and-accounts-2021-to-2022/charity-commission-annual-report-and-accounts-2021-to-2022
I skimmed the oldest ten very quickly and it looks like four subjects were wound up / dissolved, and four more had trustee-related actions like appointment of new trustees by a Commission-appointed Interim Manager, disqualification from being a trustee, etc. One organization had some poor governance not rising to misconduct/misadministration (but some trustees resigned), one had Official Warnings issued to trustees, one got an action plan.
Pending more careful and complete review, most inquires that result in public reports do seem to find substantial mismanagement and result in significant regulatory action.
I think it is also worth checking what the reason was why the inquiries where opened and how this correlates with the outcomes. I only looked at a few but lots of them starts with quite obvious wrongdoings or mistakes by the trustees already and these are of course much more likely to end negatively.
Agreed. My guess is that (a) the bar for opening a statutory inquiry of a larger charity like EVF is practically lower than for the significantly smaller charities who make up most of the reports; and (b) the CC will hold EVF’s trustees to a higher standard than significantly smaller charities. I think both would be appropriate -- (a) as a matter of enforcement priorities, and (b) because I think the minimum acceptable level of performance should rise as charities have more resources. If my guesses are correct, they would limit the predictive usefulness of past published outcomes.
Thanks for doing that rough perusal! I would definitely be interested in more granular data.