The Charity Commission’s budget will increase by £1.5m next year as part of a new funding settlement announced in Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s 2021 Autumn Budget statement yesterday.
The regulator’s operational funding will rise from £28.3m this year to £29.8m in 2022. It will then dip to £29m in 2023, but increase slightly in 2024 to £29.3m.
Half a million pounds has been added to the commission’s capital budget in 2022, taking it to £2.7m, before it increases to £3m in 2023 and £3.1m in 2024.
Helen Stephenson, chief executive of the Charity Commission, said: “I am pleased that the commission has secured additional operational and capital funding over the next three years.
“This settlement recognises the crucial role the commission plays in regulating charities in the public interest, ensuring charity can thrive and inspire trust, and meet its potential as society recovers from the pandemic.”
In 2015, the commission’s budget was frozen at £20.3m a year until 2020, but in April 2018 it was allocated an additional £5m for the year.
The Autumn Budget included several additional announcements that will affect the sector, including £2.6bn for the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and £850m in spending to protect museums, galleries, libraries and local culture in England.
Sunak also announced £11bn in Overseas Development Assistance and an extension of the Recovery Loan Scheme until the end of June next year.
But sector leaders, charities, unions and the shadow civil society minister had a mixed response to the Budget, with one membership body describing the package as “the good, the bad and the ugly”.