The Charity Commission’s new public benefit guidance could be used to clamp down on campaigning by charities and inhibit the registration of new charities, law firm Bates Wells and Braithwaite has warned in its response to the draft guidance.
In fact, BWB highlights a number of concerns about the guidance and advises the Commission that the entire document should be withdrawn as statutory guidance and substantially revised if it is to remain as non-statutory guidance.
The law firm complains that the guidance is too long, that its hyperlinked online format is confusing, and that it fails to clearly distinguish between what is a legal requirement and what is good practice. Some parts of the guidance “go beyond what is necessary to promote awareness and understanding of the operation of the public benefit requirement…The Commission's obligation is to issue guidance on public benefit, not to make new rules on public benefit.”
It also disagreed with the Commission’s assertion that in order for a charitable purpose to be for the public benefit, there must be sufficient evidence that it “will” be for the public benefit, as opposed to whether it “may reasonably be expected” to result in public benefit.
“Retention of this statement in the guidance could inhibit the registration of innovative charities undertaking novel activities and existing charities taking a reasonable risk in connection with new activities,” it said.
And there are discrepancies between the sections in the draft guidance on ‘political purposes’ and the Commission’s guidance on campaigning and political activities by charities, CC9, which BWB warns “could be used to clamp down on campaigning by charities as well as inhibiting the registration of new charities”.
