Transparency data

Whistleblowing disclosures made to the Charity Commission for England and Wales 2019 to 2020

Published 30 September 2020

Applies to England and Wales

1. The statutory framework

The Charity Commission is a ‘prescribed person’ under the Public Interest Disclosure (Prescribed Persons Order) 2014, making it the regulatory body for appropriate disclosures on matters relating to ‘the proper administration of charities and funds given, or held, for charitable purposes’.

Whistleblowing law is located in the Employment Rights Act 1996 (as amended by the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998). This provides the statutory framework for employment protections for workers who make a qualifying disclosure (or ‘blow the whistle’) to us about suspected wrongdoing in charities, including crimes and regulatory breaches by their employer.

2. Our functions, objectives and powers

The Charity Commission is the registrar and regulator of charities in England and Wales. Parliament has given us 5 statutory objectives which are to:

• promote compliance by charity trustees with their legal obligations in exercising control and management of their charities
• enhance the accountability of charities to donors, beneficiaries and the general public
• increase public trust and confidence in charities
• promote awareness and understanding of the operation of the public benefit requirement
• promote effective use of charitable resources

Our Risk and Regulatory Framework explains our functions and powers.

3. Our approach to whistleblowing disclosures

Whistleblowing disclosures help us to detect serious problems such as fraud, safeguarding concerns and mismanagement in charities. Whistleblowing therefore plays a valuable role in our regulation of the charity sector. We continue to review and improve our approach to encouraging, receiving and handling disclosures.

In doing so, we take account of Whistleblowing: prescribed persons guidance from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the approach taken by other prescribed persons, specialist guidance and our own experience.

We are likely to treat charity workers and volunteers (including trustees) who raise serious concerns with us about their charity as whistleblowers. Their role within a charity can mean they are well placed to identify and report serious problems.

While volunteers do not have any statutory protections if they report serious concerns to us (unlike workers), we recognise that in other respects they face many of the personal challenges and risks experienced by workers and therefore may require the same sort of engagement from us.

We assess disclosures in line with the regulatory approach set out in our Regulatory and Risk Framework.

This helps ensure that the Commission’s regulatory engagement with charities is proportionate, accountable, consistent, transparent and targeted as required by the Charities Act 2011.

While the framework is written for the wider public, it may also be useful for charity workers and volunteers when considering whistleblowing disclosures to the Commission.

When we receive a whistleblowing disclosure, our assessment depends on what we are told and the severity of the matter. We consider the information disclosed to us, then decide and prioritise what action, if any, to take according to the nature and level of risk.

4. Whistleblowing facts and figures 2019 to 2020

We received 247 whistleblowing disclosures in 2019 to 2020. This is a continuing increase compared with previous years as shown below.

-	Total	% increase year on year
2019/2020	247	33.5%
2018/2019	185	83.2%
2017/2018	101	14.8%
2016/2017	88	1.1%
2015/2016	87	0%

Key findings from 2019 to 2020 disclosures:

• there has been a 33% increase in the number of disclosures compared to the previous reporting period
• there has been a significant increase in disclosures from volunteers and individual trustees (36.8% compared with 9.7% in 2018-19)
• the majority of disclosures are from employees (63.2% compared with 90.3% in 2018-19)
• the primary issues raised were governance, safeguarding or financial management concerns
• the Commission’s revised handling approach has enabled us to contact whistleblowers much sooner. This has helped us action and close 91% of these cases this year, compared with 47% in 2018-19

4.1 Source of whistleblowing disclosures

We continue to receive the majority of disclosures from employees (156, 63.2%), which includes current employees and ex-employees. The remaining disclosures are received from non-employees (91, 36.8%), which includes volunteers, ex-volunteers, ex-trustees and trustees. This is a change from last year when 90.3% of disclosures were from employees and 9.7% from non-employees.

Source of Disclosure	Number
Ex-Employee	80
Employee	76
Volunteer	31
Ex-Volunteer	29
Ex-Trustee	18
Trustee	13

4.2 Charity classification

Each registered charity has a particular classification code to identify its purpose. Where a charity has more than one classification, the primary classification is used in this instance.

The charities we received disclosures about varied across 16 different classifications of which the top six are:

Charity classification	Number
Education/Training	136
Advancement of Health or Saving of Lives	70
Disability	62
General charitable purposes	61
Economic/Community Development/Employment	47
The Prevention or Relief of Poverty	47

As more than one classification can be attributed by a charity this means that the numbers shown in these tables will be larger than the overall number of individual disclosures (247) that we have received.

4.3 Type of issues raised

When we open a case, we record the type of issue raised with us. The top three reported issues in 2019 to 2020 are governance failures, safeguarding and protecting people and financial harms. Please note, where disclosures include more than one type of issue, we base the type of issue on the primary issue reported.

The predominance of these three types of issue follows a similar pattern to previous reporting over the last five years.

Last year saw safeguarding and protecting people as the prominent issue, which was a change from governance in the preceding four years. However, this year governance is the predominant type of issue. Although we have seen increased reporting for all types of issues there has been a significant increase in reports of a safeguarding nature since 2018.

Type of Issue	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	Total
Governance Failures	63	57	60	72	109	361
Safeguarding & Protecting People	10	15	24	89	72	210
Financial Harms	0	11	8	18	46	83

Safeguarding and governance issues cover a wide range of situations and are often linked: for example, governance issues can be significant contributory factors to safeguarding incidents, most specifically when the safeguarding issue concerns a risk to beneficiaries.

The other types of issue raised in 2019 to 2020 are: other - impacting on trust and confidence (12), conflicts of interest (7) and terrorism or extremism (1).

The top three types of issues reported by employees are:

Nature of Issue	Employee	Ex-Employee
Governance Failures	30	35
Safeguarding and Protecting People	20	28
Financial Harms	16	11

The other types of issue disclosed by employees and ex-employees in 2019 to 2020 are: other – impacting on trust and confidence (9), conflicts of interest (6) and links to terrorism (1).

4.4 Action we have taken

The action we take is guided by our Regulatory and Risk Framework.

Our assessment of the nature and level of risk of the 247 disclosures led us to:

• open a case in response to 239 (96.8%) of the disclosures, so we could consider further regulatory engagement
• take no further regulatory engagement in 8 (3.2%) of the disclosures we received

218 (91.2%) of the 239 cases were closed by the end of the reporting period. When a case is closed, we record what we have done by allocating outcome and impact codes. Please note, more than one outcome or impact code can be applied to an individual case.

The outcome codes recorded in closed cases broadly fell into the following categories.

Action taken	Number
* Advice given and trustees to consider further	100
* General advice given	100
No issues to take forward	90
Verified that trustees were dealing with the incident	36
Signposting	32
Corrective advice/plan issued	7
Outside the Commission’s remit	6
Other regulator/agency engagement	3
Charity removed from register	3
Charity issued apology	2
No decision made	1

All the advice we provide is of a regulatory nature appropriate to the nature of the issue raised.

The impact codes recorded in closed cases broadly fell into the following categories.

Result of our actions	Number
Actions led to improvements in area of charity’s work	185
The charity’s beneficiaries, reputation and/or public trust (including the sector) was protected	130
Trustees are aware of their responsibilities/duties	99
Concerns looked into and not substantiated	45
Reassurance received that trustees are dealing with or have resolved issues	40
Contributed to other regulator	17
Improved accuracy of register	4
Charity on notice to improve	2

5. The impact of whistleblowing disclosures on our ability to perform our duties

The disclosures we have received from whistleblowers this year have helped us to detect and prevent concerns in a number of charities and take steps to put these right.

Our impacts include:

• opening compliance cases and investigations into charities that have been identified in these disclosures as being at serious risk
• using our powers to protect charities’ beneficiaries, assets, work and reputations and, more widely, public trust and confidence in charities and the charity sector
• identifying other governance issues not directly raised by the whistleblower and ensuring these are addressed
• ensuring charities are complying with their safeguarding duties
• giving regulatory advice to trustees to make them aware of their duties and responsibilities, and ensure they make significant and necessary improvements to their charity’s governance

6. Our service improvements

We have continued to develop the service that we provide for whistleblowers. Our aim has been to put in place a structured, supportive and personal approach which is appropriate to the needs of whistleblowers who can face risk and challenge when they speak out.

After a review of all aspects of our approach in 2018-19, we created a new end to end service which we have been piloting from June 2019. This has included:

• a widening of our service to encourage reports from volunteers and trustees, where appropriate
• a clear and straightforward process for those that contact us, with
  • guidance that is more focused and easier to read
  • a revised case handling approach; where we aim to call each whistleblower directly
  • an independent advice line run by whistleblowing specialists Protect

We have also continued to provide our staff with training in the skills needed to receive and handle whistleblowing reports.

The pilot has brought us a number of benefits and we are now adopting this service within our business areas. We aim to make sure that the whole process of making disclosures gives confidence to those who are thinking of raising their concerns with us. This approach allows whistleblowers to talk to us, or other specialists, much sooner. It means we are better placed to support and encourage those that want to come forward and provide us with information which can help us fulfil our regulatory role.