The Charity Commission and the Independent Schools Council recently returned to the Upper Tribunal after failing to agree how to amend the Commission’s public benefit guidance in the wake of the Tribunal’s initial judgment on the matter.
Although the Tribunal’s judgment concluded that parts of the guidance were wrong and must be changed, it did not state exactly how this should happen, leaving it to the two parties to agree the changes.
An attempt was made by the Commission and the ISC to try to come up with new wording that both sides were happy with, but agreement could not be reached. The ISC wants the existing guidance on public benefit for fee-charging charities to be immediately quashed, while the Commission merely thinks parts of it should just be rewritten. The Commission is in the process of devising new public benefit guidance anyway and says trustees should continue to use the existing guidance, incorporating some changes as required by the Tribunal, until the new guidance is ready.
Consequently, the ISC referred the matter back to the Upper Tribunal for a hearing which took place on 22 November. The Tribunal's decision is still pending.
A spokeswoman for the Commission said: “At the hearing we took the position that all that was required was for the Commission to be directed to bring the guidance into line with the judgment of the Tribunal, consulting on the revised guidance as appropriate. We also advised that we would make any immediately necessary amendments to the guidance on the Commission's website in the interim.”
The ISC's secretary general Matthew Burgess told civilsociety.co.uk that he had expected the Tribunal's decision by now: "We both went into the proceedings with our preferred form of court order and rather expected they would say 'ok it's that one or it's that one'.
"The fact they are taking time over it makes me think they are probably not going either with ours or the Charity Commission's, but with their own. And I think also they may be writing something which explains their reasoning for going with whatever they go with."
