The Charity Commission is the sole organisation charged with regulating more than 180,000 registered charities in England and Wales. We also regulate many thousands of small community organisations, which are not legally required to register but must comply with charity law and still require advice and support to operate properly and efficiently.

Charities sit at the very heart of British life, ranging from small local groups with few resources to the well-known major charities with budgets of millions. Attracting high levels of public trust and confidence, their independent role and work defines our communities and makes a crucial contribution to building civil society and addressing social, environmental and economic challenges.

The charity sector has an annual income of around £52 billion and holds over £120 billion of assets, representing around 4% of the UK’s GDP. Registered charities employ around 780,000 paid staff and are run by almost a million - mainly voluntary - trustees.

Why regulate charities?

A strong civil society needs a dynamic charity sector which ensures:

• active citizens are supported in creating and running charities;
• the public have access to information about charities and data about their performance is easily accessible to help the general public make choices;
• the public and donors are confident that charitable donations are spent appropriately and charities act effectively and independently; and therefore they are willing to give freely of their time and money

Our role

The Charity Commission’s statutory objectives, duties and functions are prescribed by Parliament and set out in the Charities Act 2006. Our objectives are to:

• increase public trust and confidence in charities;
• promote awareness and understanding of the operation of the public benefit requirement;
• promote compliance by charity trustees with their legal obligations in exercising the management of the administration of their charities;
• promote the effective use of charitable resources; and
• enhance the accountability of charities to their donors, beneficiaries and the general public.

What we do

Broadly, our regulatory work falls into four areas.

Assessing whether organisations can be registered as charities and maintaining a public Register of Charities
We determine which organisations are eligible to be registered as charities according to the law. We maintain an up-to-date public Register of Charities and as part of this we publish key information and data about what they do and how they spend their money.

Explaining the legal and regulatory framework within which charities must operate
We provide a range of helpful and clearly signposted advice and guidance to help charities operate confidently within the legal framework and take responsibility for managing their affairs efficiently. We provide bespoke advice for charities that can be used for legal purposes.

Helping ensure that charity law is fit for purpose so that charities can develop within a changing world
We help charities to modernise their legal documents, make legal schemes and give legal consents to charities so that they are in step with current needs. We save on Court costs through the legal decisions we take.

Applying and enforcing charity law so that charities and charitable resources are protected from fraud and abuse
We investigate charities when things go wrong and have a wide range of powers we can apply in serious cases to ensure they are better run, and prevent abuse. We have powers to intervene to protect charity assets, which we can use if our formal investigation establishes serious mismanagement or abuse.

Our approach

Detailed individual scrutiny of every charity is neither possible nor desirable. The Commission’s approach is risk-based and proportionate: we know that excessive regulation and bureaucracy could hamper innovation and prevent charities making a real difference. Therefore, we target our help and resources at the highest risks to charities' beneficiaries, services, assets and reputation and where we think our intervention will have the greatest impact. We follow the principles of best regulatory practice, ensuring our actions are proportionate, accountable, consistent, transparent and targeted.

We work closely with regulators, law enforcement and other government agencies to share intelligence and coordinate action. A key regulatory tool is the publication of information on individual charities and on the sector as a whole. This also helps to improve charities’ accountability to beneficiaries, donors, and funders and strengthens public trust and confidence in the sector.

Ultimately, we strive to take the least intrusive approach, and allow charities to get on with their good work. We always prefer to work with trustees to prevent problems, and put charities back on track when they arise. But when serious issues arise we intervene firmly, effectively and swiftly.

Our status and accountability

We are a non-ministerial government department, part of the civil service but independent of Ministerial direction. We are also independent from the sector we regulate. Our independence means making objective decisions based on public interest and the facts of each individual case, and we have a number of quasi-judicial functions where we use powers similar to those of the High Court.

We are accountable:

• to Parliament for decisions we make and resources we use, and to HM Treasury for the effective use of these resources - we are scrutinised by and report annually to the Public Administration Select Committee;
• to charities and the public through open Board meetings, publishing the findings of our investigations and how we go about making decisions; and
• to the Charity Tribunal and the Courts for our legal decisions.Top of page