Corporate report

Charity Commission Business Plan 2021 to 2022

Updated 14 December 2021

Applies to England and Wales

Introduction

The Charity Commission’s clear purpose is to ensure that charity can thrive and inspire trust so that people can improve lives and strengthen society.

In 2020-21, we set ourselves two overarching areas of focus: being open for business and becoming a better, more professional organisation. The global health emergency has presented unprecedented challenges for us as a regulator and as an employer, requiring us to set a third priority of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of COVID-19 has only served to emphasise the importance of our work to secure the bond between the public and charities and support the resilience of the sector.

Despite the uncertainty and disruption the pandemic has brought, the aims and ambitions set out in our 2020-21 business plan remained highly relevant. We stayed ‘open for business’ in the most trying of circumstances, both for us and for charities, ensuring they got the help and support they needed to continue to operate. We continued our programme of change, becoming a more effective and efficient regulator. We invested in new approaches to data and intelligence to support evidence-based regulatory and operational decisions. Alongside more robust and proactive enforcement, and calling out poor practice where we saw it, we also delivered improvements in our guidance and engagement with the vast majority of charities and trustees who are trying to do the right thing. We established more professional internal support functions so that we are better equipped to deliver on behalf of the public.

We are now part-way through our investment in being a better, smarter, more targeted, and sure-footed regulator. We have made significant progress against our five-year strategy, but there is more we need to do.

Our Strategic Objectives

To achieve our strategy, we set 5 strategic objectives which were based on what success would look like to the public we serve; recognising that the public is not homogenous, but made up of groups of people with different attitudes and backgrounds.

For each of the strategic objectives we set an ambitious vision, set out in the following statements.

Holding charities to account

The charity sector is more respectful of, responsive to and in tune with public expectations because they are living up to their purpose and values, behaving with integrity and using their resources responsibly.

Dealing with wrongdoing and harm

Charities are better able to show they can be trusted and are better able to apply their know-how, because we are better at detecting, deterring and preventing wrongdoing and harm, and charities are better informed and more effective at protecting themselves.

Informing public choice

People have greater confidence that charities are making a real difference, including those who stand up for the most vulnerable in society, because they have easier access to the knowledge and understanding they need to be able to trust the charities they support.

Giving charities the understanding and tools they need

Charities are better able to make a real difference and help more people join together and contribute to their local communities, because there is increased professionalism in trusteeship which allows charities to innovate safely within the framework of charity law.

Keeping charity relevant

Charities are maximising the benefits they bring to society, because they continue to evolve and grow, demonstrating to everyone that charity is sustainable, resilient, influential and credible.

As we have identified our priorities for the year ahead, we have made sure that we have linked them back to our strategic objectives, demonstrating how what we are doing in year three, intrinsically links back to our 5-year journey.

Our Priorities for year 3

In year 3, we will continue to help charities to meet public expectations in the way they do their work, and to support them to maximise their impact in society. We will further promote the public interest by holding charities to account and supporting them to be more effective. Finally, we want to help ensure that the sector is resilient and able to play its part as the country recovers from the impact of the pandemic.

We will build on what we have achieved so far to cover more ground and increase our reach, not by growing in size as a regulator, but by amplifying our impact – enabling us to fulfil our purpose and be the effective, sure-footed regulator that the public deserve and that charities need. We will begin to reshape our relationship with trustees so that we reach more trustees directly, helping to ensure they are equipped to run their charities effectively, releasing greater impact to society. We will also reach more of the public, so that they know we are regulating with their interests front and centre, including by holding those who do wrong to account.

These priorities are set within the context of the strategic shifts we need to make to achieve our strategy, and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Priority one: We will help charity to deliver impact, as the country recovers from the pandemic

To help charities deliver impact that supports the country in its recovery from the pandemic, we need to improve our services to trustees and build stronger relationships with them. We will improve the channels that people use to contact us and to receive help and support. Whether members of the public, existing trustees or those looking to establish charities, we will aim to ensure that everyone who wants to speak to us, through any channel, receives a timely and effective response that answers their query first time.

Over the next year, we will develop a programme of work to engage trustees on a one to one basis to support their compliance with legal requirements. We will also reach out to trustees through sustained and targeted campaigns with messages that help them to understand their responsibilities and engaging them with our improving suite of accessible guidance.

We will automate our processes, where possible, making information more easily accessible and processes smoother, freeing up capacity for more proactive work. We will promote accurate and prompt submissions of annual returns, ensuring the register is up-to-date and helps the public make informed choices about which charities to support.

Deliverables:

• design and deliver the initial phase of a trustee portal, as the first step in building a more one to one relationship with trustees
• complete the discovery phase for a digital-first Registration system and explore opportunities for further automation in other processes
• develop an action plan to improve charities’ compliance in submitting statutory returns, including managing the extensions granted to charities in 2020-21 due to COVID-19
• redesign more of our guidance and deliver a programme of trustee-facing campaigns on key areas of charity governance

Priority two: We will continue to deliver a step change in our robust approach to regulation

We will continue to put the public interest front and centre of our approach to regulating charities. We will strengthen our robust approach, being clear where things have gone wrong and why it matters. We will increase the amount of wrongdoing we uncover proactively, developing our increasingly sophisticated approach to intelligence gathering and data analysis. We will continue to make it more straightforward for the public or people working in charities to raise concerns with us, and we will continue to treat every complaint seriously and sensitively.

Alongside this we will continue to build the skills of our staff to ensure they feel confident in delivering casework, helping them to be purpose-driven, achieving outcomes swiftly and robustly, and ensuring that they have the systems and tools that enable them to identify and tackle harm.

We will also begin preparations for an expanded Register, working with the Church of England to pilot and manage the receipt of applications from cathedrals applying for charitable status and then up to 35,000 excepted church charities over the next decade.

Deliverables:

• set up a training academy to improve the skills, knowledge and capability of our caseworkers
• deliver an action plan to embed our Casework Quality Assurance Framework
• support the passage of the Law Commission Bill through Parliament and prepare for its implementation
• strengthen our legal team’s capability to respond to challenge as well as developments in the regulatory landscape
• start to register Cathedrals and set out our plan for the registration of Churches

Priority three: We will improve how we use data

Over the year ahead, we will significantly improve our approach to data. We will begin a fundamental review of the data we collect from the sector through statutory returns, such as the Annual Return, Register Particulars, and the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP).

We will improve how we use that data and intelligence to inform our work, helping us to identify and address the issues and risks that emerge more proactively. We will deliver further improvements to our Register of Charities.

We will explore how transparency of key metrics and improved reporting of charity impact can contribute to better informed public choices and better, more accountable charities. This will be supported by communications campaigns to help the public engage with information about charities when deciding which to support.

We will deliver the next stages in our data and intelligence strategies and further build our systems and processes in support of them.

Deliverables:

• review the framework for data collection from charities including Annual Return (Financial Year 2023), SORP and Register Particulars
• improve how we use our information and data as intelligence in our casework and decision-making
• deliver further improvements to the Register, informed by our policy framework for transparency and accountability

Priority four: We will create the right environment to enable our people to be more effective and to help make the Commission a great place to work

This year we will set out a clear vision for the future of our workforce – how and where we work, how we support and develop our people, and what we want the culture and ethos of the Commission to be. We will learn from our experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, and from best practice, in making the Charity Commission a great place to work.

We will support the development our people, continuing to deliver our people strategy and working to ensure that every employee feels engaged and has the skills and tools they need to do their job well. We will improve how we engage and communicate with our staff, making use of all the channels available to us.

Building on how we have successfully responded to the challenges thrown at us by COVID-19, we will be a prepared and resilient organisation able to manage internal and external shocks more effectively. We will further improve our IT systems in line with our roadmap.

Deliverables:

• set out what our future workforce will look like; where and how it will work; and the cultural ethos we seek to promote
• deliver a set of initiatives that support the enhanced wellbeing and engagement of our people
• implement a new back-office business system
• complete the rollout of our internal risk management framework
• make a strong Comprehensive Spending Review submission to H.M. Treasury

Tracking our performance

We will report performance against our Business Plan in our Annual Report for that financial year. We will also continue to track our performance against our Strategic Impact Measures and Customer Service Standards, to ensure the public can see how, each year, the Commission is meeting its strategic and operational objectives.