Whistleblowing reports on governance failures have doubled in two years, new data from the Charity Commission has shown.
According to the data, published yesterday, 303 governance failures were reported to the regulator in 2024-25, almost double the total of 152 reported in 2023-24.
This follows a general pattern whereby the number of governance failures reported has increased year-on-year except for 2021-22. They have also remained the most reported issue over the last decade.
After governance failures, the other two issues reported most to the regulator were financial harms, and safeguarding and protecting people, which the regulator said was “consistent with the trends seen in our regulatory compliance casework overall”.
In contrast to governance failures, both of these issues saw declines in the number of reports, from 128 in 2023-24 for financial harms to 96 in 2024-25, and from 104 in 2023-24 for safeguarding and protecting people to 84 in 2024-25.
The regulator said: “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.”
Charities operating in the education or training sector had the highest number of issues reported (267), followed by organisations with general charitable purposes (167) and those dedicated to the advancement of health or saving of lives.
Action taken by the commission
Across the board, the commission decided to open a case in response to 363 of the 546 reports of issues.
Of these cases, it decided that for 210, it was not proportionate to take further action following enquiries, while regulatory advice and guidance was provided for 84 cases.
The regulator added: “We focus on dealing with concerns which may cause the greatest impact or harm to charities and public trust and confidence in charities.
“We are unable to take forward every concern about a charity. Where we assess that a concern will likely have low impact on a charity, we will not take it forward, but we will still keep a record of it.”
Reacting to the data, a spokesperson for the whistleblowing charity, Protect, which works in partnership with the Charity Commission to support whistleblowers, said: “At Protect we speak to thousands of whistleblowers every year with almost a quarter of our calls coming from people working in charities.
"Issues surrounding governance and staff conduct are the most common, making up 29% of calls to our whistleblowing Advice Line in the 2024/25 period in line with the statistics published by the Charity Commission.
"Sadly, third sector organisations are not immune from bullying, harassment and toxic work cultures, and people working in charities are often motivated by ethical matters and can be more likely to call out wrongdoing than people working in other sectors."
