The Office of the Third Sector is a division within the Cabinet Office dedicated to leading and co-ordinating work across government that relates to the sector.
The OTS was created in May 2006 in recognition of the increasingly important role the third sector plays in both society and the economy. It claims that its work helps the sector to campaign for change, deliver public services, promote social enterprise and strengthen communities.
It also dishes out the government’s funding to the sector and during the 2008-9 year is overseeing a £515m funding programme. Some 45 civil society organisations are strategic partners to the OTS and receive an annual grant.
The OTS is led by the minister for the third sector, currently Angela E Smith MP.
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The Charity Commission spent nearly more than £445,000 on recruitment advertising and services in the last financial year, and has budgeted to reduce the figure to £200,000 for the current year.
Catholic Care (Diocese of Leeds) will today appeal to the High Court as it seeks exemption from equality laws which require it to allow homosexuals to use its adoption services.
The Charity Commission's implicit approval of charity accounts by virtue of posting them on its website without checking them first, is a threat to public trust in charities, says Dorothy Dalton
Charity Commission staff are set to strike next week after union members from across the civil service voted in favour of industrial action.
From 1st October 2009 every director must provide the registrar of Companies House with both their usual residential address, and for each directorship they hold, a service address.
The Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in the UK and Ireland will launch its manifesto Making Good Society next month.
An Islamic charity has opted to dissolve itself following a Charity Commission investigation into its poor management and unaccounted-for income.
Islamic Help, a poverty relief charity in Birmingham, has ditched plans to build the UK’s biggest boarding school after an intervention by its local MP and a visit by the regulator. But an appeal for donations for the school is still on its website today.
The Charity Commission board has agreed to add the issue of environmental responsibility to its guidance documents the Hallmarks of an Effective Charity and, when next updated, the Essential Trustee.
Academy schools will not now become exempt charities after the government took heed of lobbying from the Charity Commission.
Andrew Malin explains the background to changes in the regulation of exempt charities in England and Wales, and offers an early insight into the approach of the Higher Education Funding Council for England to its new role as a principal regulator.
Thirty-three charities have been caught misapplying funds or acting outside their purpose over the last year, according to the Charity Commission.
The existing model of charity governance that gives non-executive trustee boards authority over executive staff is bust and cannot be sustained, the chair of RNIB told an audience of charity chief executives last week.
This is the full text of RNIB chair Kevin Carey's speech to the Acevo annual conference on Thursday 5 November 2009.
The First-tier Tribunal (Charity) has overturned the Charity Commission’s decision to remove Nagendram Seevaratnam from his trustee position at the South London-based temple Sivayogam. In its second case, the Tribunal (presided over by Alison McKenna, pictured) found that none of the Commission’s seven grounds for dismissing Seevaratnam were sufficient to justify the decision.
Charities that opt to become a Charitable Incorporated Organisation will follow the same accounting requirements as other unincorporated charities, after most respondents to a consultation on the detail of the new legal form supported this approach.
Several years ago I was involved with a charity that discovered that formal advice given by the Charity Commission was wrong. After legal arguments, the Commission agreed it had made a mistake and withdrew its advice. What if we had followed the incorrect advice and something went drastically wrong – would trustees still be liable or would we have been protected because we had, in good faith, followed the regulator’s advice?
It is two and a half years since the charity commission published its research report Stand and Deliver and guidance on Charities and Public Service Delivery. Both reports were controversial at the time. The guidance pointed out that it is legal for charities to further their aims by undertaking government contracts (and conversely for government to set up new charities); the research showed the extent of the gap between aspiration and reality in the funding relationship between government and the charitable sector.
The Charity Commission is to produce a checklist of issues that trustees of smaller charities ought to be considering to help ensure their organisation survives the recession. The checklist will be presented in the format of an interactive model board paper and the Commission hopes it will be available to download from its website within a few weeks. A draft is expected to be presented to the next Commission board meeting in May.
The Charity Commission is to produce a checklist of issues that trustees of smaller charities ought to be considering to help ensure their organisation survives the recession. The checklist will be presented in the format of an interactive model board paper and the Commission hopes it will be available to download from its website within a few weeks. A draft is expected to be presented to the next Commission board meeting in May.
The charity will have a turnover of just over £750,000 this year. It is a charitable company and the directors are the sole company members. It was founded three years ago. Two thirds of this year's income comes from a newly won local authority contract for services which are to be delivered through the charity's subsidiary, a community Interest company. When the charity was founded it had four trustees but its Memorandum and Articles of Association allow up to five. A quorum for trustee meetings is three. There are no sub-committees of the board. Two of the original trustees resigned soon after joining, leaving the chair and his wife as the trustees.
The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 will have a major impact upon the way that those working with children and vulnerable adults are vetted. The Act came about as a result of the Bichard Inquiry, following the Soham murders. It seeks to address two of the main problems identified by the Inquiry:
The Companies Act 2006 sets out seven ‘general' duties owed by directors to companies. The seven general duties under the Act are, the duty to: * act within powers; * promote the success of the company; * exercise independent judgement; * exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence; * avoid conflicts of interest; * not accept benefits from third parties; * and declare an interest in a proposed transaction or arrangement.
Rodney Buse, author of the report that paved the way for the establishment of the Fundraising Standards Board, has come out firmly against any form of sector self-regulation for the Code of Good Governance. Self-regulation is one option outlined in a review of the Code published last month by the Governance Hub. The review was launched to assess the success of the Code after it had been in place for more than two years, and to recommend how it might develop in future.
The Charity Commission is monitoring the performance of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), though it has stopped short of opening a formal investigation into the troubled organisation. The healthcare regulator, which became a charity in 2002, was criticised in a performance review by the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE) in June, a report which the Charity Commission says raised “significant and serious issues” about its governance and strategic leadership.
The Charity Commission, the independent regulator for charities in England and Wales, and the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) have jointly prepared new conflicts of interest guidance for arts charities.
The new chief executive of the Charity Commission on the need for proportionality
Don Bawtree challenges the view that the Charity Commission regulates charites
Increasing the administrative burden?: how charities are responding to the summary information return
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