With an increasing focus on public trust in charities and a need to justify the tax breaks that charities can take advantage of, charity regulation is often in the spotlight. We provide charities with specialist legal advice and support on the full range of governance, regulation and safeguarding issues that they face.
We understand charity governance from the perspective of trustees and senior management. Our team supports charities with the challenges they face in ensuring they take the right decisions, at the right time, based on all relevant factors. Many members of our team are themselves trustees and understand the trustee's perspective on their charity's issues and opportunities. We believe that this makes them better lawyers, and better advisers to the charities that we work with. We are trusted legal advisers and friends to many trustees who we have supported through challenging times and who use as a sounding board.
Trustees need to have a thorough understanding of the way in which their charity is regulated to ensure good governance. Many charities are regulated (for charity law purposes) by the Charity Commission, but others have a principal regulator including the Office for Students or the Education and Skills Funding Agency. Some charities may also be regulated by another regulator as a result of the charitable work they carry out. For those providing care, they will be regulated by the Care Quality Commission or for those providing accommodation, by the Homes and Communities Agency. Almost all charities will be regulated by HM Revenue and Customs in relation to their tax affairs, and by the Information Commissioner in respect of their use of data.
The Charity Commission considers that the concept of safeguarding as it applies to charities relates to the protection from harm of all persons who come into contact with a charity. The Commission expects all charities to have appropriate safeguarding arrangements in place to ensure good safeguarding governance, including adopting and regularly reviewing a safeguarding policy and code of conduct, as well as ensuring that current and relevant safeguarding training is provided.
We believe that a well informed and well trained trustee body is the starting point for good governance. We can support good governance in your charity through our email bulletin, Charities Law Brief (subscribe) and with bespoke training for your trustee body and senior management team to keep you up to date with the latest law and best practice.
We also provide support via our leading publication "Charity Governance" (published by Jordans) and our contributions to Jordans' Charities Administration Service.
Our charity lawyers have a broad variety of legal expertise and offer a full legal service to the charity sector.
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