Month: April 2024

A crossbench committee of peers has urged the Royal Albert Hall to address the “impasse” with the Charity Commission over its governance arrangements. A special report from the House of Lords Select Committee on the Royal Albert Hall Bill, published last week, says it wants to make the wider house and the government aware of

The Charity Commission has concluded inquiries into two charities where trustees “were responsible for mismanagement” by not submitting annual reports on time. The Islamic Education Centre and Mosque, based in Sunderland, and the Children Care Centre in London were subject to statutory inquiries in February and June 2022 respectively. The IECM submitted its accounts late

Penny Wilson has announced she is stepping down as chief executive of Getting on Board. The charity, which supports people from underrepresented backgrounds to become trustees, initially appointed Wilson as its operations director in 2017. She was promoted to co-chief executive in 2017 and became the sole chief the following year. Wilson will leave the

The Charity Commission has launched a compliance case into allegations a soup kitchen charity supported the political candidate who founded it. Amazing Graze, a soup kitchen in Blackpool that supports homeless people in the area by providing hot meals and shelter, was founded by Mark Butcher, the Reform UK candidate in the Blackpool South by-election

A record more than 38,000 wills included gifts to charity last year, pushing the total donated to a new annual high.  The legacy notification company Smee & Ford said there were 38,178 charitable estates recorded in Engand and Wales in 2023, the highest number since it started tracking sector data in 2012.  The company said

Two women have been jailed for defrauding and laundering more than £634,000 from estates of the deceased, including money intended for charities. Laurna Porter, 69, and Julie Atkins, 68, both of Tamworth, were sentenced at Wolverhampton Crown Court yesterday to four years and 30 months in prison respectively.  Porter admitted fraud by abuse of position

The Royal Albert Hall has withdrawn a controversial proposal to add seats to some of its most lucrative boxes after opposition from peers.  The hall, which was established by royal charter and therefore needs parliament to approve changes to its constitution, wanted permission to add an extra two seats into each of its “grand tier”

The sector leader Simon Blake has been awarded £90,000 in damages after the actor-turned-politician Laurence Fox called him a paedophile on social media.  Simon Blake, chief executive of Mental Health First Aid England, filed a defamation lawsuit in 2021 with the RuPaul’s Drag Race star Crystal after they were subjected to the same slur by

The palliative care charity Sue Ryder has appointed James Sanderson, a current national director for NHS England, as its new chief executive. Sanderson, who has been the national director of community health services, personalised care and palliative and end-of-life care for NHS England since 2015, will take up the reins at the charity in August. 

Charity leaders are facing a sense that they are “on trial just for doing their job”, the chief executive of the Charity Commission has warned.  Speaking at an event for charity trustees in London today, Helen Stephenson said there was a risk that charity leaders are facing “disproportionately intense, unpleasant, and sometimes unfair personal scrutiny

The number of employees donating to charity through payroll giving has declined by 13 per cent since 2020, new research has found. The Charities Aid Foundation has warned that charities are “missing out on millions” through payroll giving, as its new research shows that the number of employees donating through the scheme and the total

A hospice charity is “under threat and in urgent need of a lifeline” due to a £1m hole in its finances, its chief executive has warned. Prospect Hospice, which is based in Wroughton, Wiltshire, said it costs £8.5m a year to run the charity. The charity said it had reduced the number of beds in

Hassun El-Zafar has been appointed director of the educational charity Edinburgh Science, succeeding its current chief who has led the charity for nearly 30 years. El-Zafar is currently the senior producer for public programmes at the science charity the Royal Institution of Great Britain. He is also a non-executive director for the Union of Justice,