Charities & Internal Disputes
A serious dispute between trustees or members can disrupt your charity’s work, harm its reputation, and even risk closure.
We help you understand the issue, resolve conflicts, and strengthen your charity for the future - so you can stay focused on making a difference.
Helping charities resolve internal disputes is a key part of our work.
We support trustees, members, and other stakeholders in addressing concerns around misconduct or mismanagement, working closely with our dispute resolution team to find effective solutions.
Where possible, our dispute resolution solicitors help charities and umbrella bodies strengthen governance processes to prevent disputes before they arise. Regular attention to governance can minimise risks, but disagreements are sometimes unavoidable.
Trustees or members may have differing visions, disagree on how best to achieve the charity’s aims, or fail to meet expected standards. Resolving these disputes swiftly and transparently is essential but navigating charity-specific rules and evolving social and cultural considerations can be challenging.
Disputes can also attract regulatory scrutiny. Complaints to the Charity Commission or other regulators are common, and governance failures may trigger formal investigations. We support charities through these complexities, helping to resolve trustee and member disputes while managing any related regulatory concerns, from data subject access requests to Charity Commission inquiries.
With the right approach, disputes can be resolved efficiently; protecting your charity’s reputation, ensuring compliance, and allowing you to focus on what matters most: making a difference.
Our expertise
Our multidisciplinary team regularly helps charities across sectors, from universities to village halls, resolve disputes effectively. We combine in-depth charity law expertise with the resources of a full-service commercial firm, ensuring tailored, practical support that reflects the unique challenges of the charity sector.
We work closely with umbrella bodies, including Gurdwara Aid and the Hindu Forum of Britain, to support organisations facing governance and regulatory challenges. Whether you need to secure ownership of your charity’s name and logo, respond to complex data subject access requests, or seek urgent legal action, we provide the expertise you need.
Strong governance is key to preventing and managing disputes. We help charities review and strengthen governing documents and frameworks, ensuring they are well-placed to handle internal challenges. Where disputes do arise, we provide clear, strategic advice to protect your charity’s mission, reputation, and future.
Our team advises on the following areas:
Regulatory scrutiny can be disruptive and challenging. We help charities respond to charity commission inquiries, minimising the risk of escalation. Where a statutory inquiry is launched, we provide expert guidance throughout the process and, where appropriate, challenge regulatory decisions to protect your charity’s interests.
Charities sometimes need urgent legal intervention to prevent a meeting, stop certain actions, or protect their interests. Our dispute resolution specialists help you assess whether an injunction is the right approach and, where necessary, pursue or defend applications robustly to achieve the best outcome for your charity.
Legal challenges relating to a charity’s internal administration can be complex. We assist in bringing and defending charity proceedings, including securing consent from the charity commission or the court where required, ensuring governance issues are handled lawfully and effectively.
We have extensive experience supporting faith charities, including churches, mosques, gurdwaras, temples, and educational centres. Our approach ensures that disputes are resolved fairly, sensitively, and in line with your charity’s values, helping you maintain unity and purpose.
Good governance reduces the risk of disputes and regulatory challenges. We help charities review and update their governing documents and structures, strengthening their foundations to prevent future issues and ensure compliance with best practices.
The VWV team is knowledgeable and approachable. They are clear in their advice and understand the client's perspective, and are able to offer pragmatic solutions as well as the purely legal view.
Our work highlights
Responding to a Charity Commission inquiry: a place of worship and education centre
We advised the trustees of a place of worship and religious education centre on their response to a Charity Commission inquiry. Our guidance helped them appeal the appointment of an interim manager, protecting the charity’s autonomy and ensuring a well-informed response to regulatory action.
Resolving complex disputes for an international Christian charity
We supported the trustees of an international Christian charity during a multifaceted dispute involving an attempted board takeover, control issues with associated organisations, criminal allegations, and a lengthy Charity Commission inquiry. Our expert advice guided them through these complex challenges, helping safeguard their mission and reputation.
Resolving disputes between trustees and employees
We supported the trustees in relation to the alleged conduct of the chair of trustees and a complaint made by a member of the charity's staff in accordance with the charity's code of conduct. We supported the charity to engage an individual to carry out an independent investigation into the allegations, including to prepare terms of reference and to support in providing information and charity law and governance advice to the trustees.
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