The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into an anti-poverty charity after it failed to comply with the regulator’s official orders to file overdue financial reports.
Destiny Community Services was registered with the commission in 2015. Its listed charitable purposes include the prevention or relief of poverty primarily in Dagenham, Essex.
The regulator first began investigating the charity in February 2024, after it failed to submit its accounts for the financial years ending 31 December 2021 and 2022, as part of a double-defaulter class inquiry.
During the class inquiry, the commission officially ordered the charity to submit its accounts.
However, the order was not fully complied with, with some of the accounts remaining outstanding. The accounts that were submitted were found to be non-compliant with the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP).
Since then, the charity has further failed to comply with accounting requirements and “failed to engage meaningfully with the commission”, the regulator said, resulting in it escalating its intervention to a standalone statutory inquiry.
The statutory inquiry, which opened on 5 January, will examine whether the trustees of Destiny Community Services have complied with their legal duties in respect of the administration, governance and management of the charity.
It will pay particular regard to the trustees’ compliance with their statutory accounting and reporting responsibilities, as well as the operation of the charity, and whether there has been any unauthorised private benefit to the trustees.
Destiny Community Services could not be reached for comment.
