Financial regulator engages with CAF Bank amid ongoing outage
The Financial Conduct Authority is “actively engaging” with CAF Bank amid a major outage after attempted fraudulent activity.
The regulator’s engagement follows a system outage at CAF Bank, which serves more than 14,000 charities and social purpose enterprises, which has prevented many charities from paying staff, suppliers and bills.
The organisation’s online banking system has been down since “suspicious activity” was identified on a “small number of accounts”, the bank’s chief executive told customers.
The outage left many charities struggling to pay their staff, suppliers or bills on time.
Charities also complained of extremely long waiting times to access the bank’s helpline, which customers were told to ring if they had time-sensitive payments to make.
A spokesperson for the FCA said: “We are actively engaging with the firm, alongside other regulatory authorities, while it resolves these issues.
“We expect firms to take the necessary steps to reduce the risk of incidents occurring and, when they do occur, to fix issues quickly, keep their customers informed and minimise disruption.”
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Grantmaker reviews approach after research finds charities spending average of 30 hours on applications
The Paul Hamlyn Foundation has published a report detailing research carried out by the Center for Effective Philanthropy among organisations that had applied for funds from the foundation.
The study, which attracted responses from 360 organisations that had received funding and 384 that had not, showed that the grantmaker “is widely seen as a values-driven and reliable partner”.
Grantees valued the PHF’s multi-year and increasingly unrestricted funding approach, along with its “explicit and courageous commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racist practice”, the report says.
But the feedback “highlights some opportunities for continued improvement”, it says.
The research, which was carried out between October and November 2025, showed that while grantee perceptions of the funder’s practices were improving, there were concerns about the administrative burden of its application processes.
“At the median, grantees estimate that they are spending 30 hours on the application process, and while there is variation on time spent across funds, overall, this figure puts the foundation in the top quarter of the dataset for most onerous application processes,” the report says.
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Major aid charity reports £11m rise in income
Unicef UK recorded a total income of £146.7m for the year ending December 2025, an 8 per cent increase on the previous year’s £135.3m.
But the charity’s 2025 income still failed to return to 2023 levels, following a year-on-year decline of more than £25m in 2024, mainly due to a fall in emergency donations.
Unicef UK’s accounts say that a key driver of its growth in 2025 was an increase in income from its philanthropy teams and foundation partners.
It recorded £137.5m in income from donations and legacies, up from £126.3m the previous year, which the accounts say was largely driven by growth in both new and existing major partnerships.
The accounts show a further £2.7m came from UK programmes, £176,000 came from other trading activities, £856,000 from investments and £5.3m from other income sources.
The charity recorded expenditure of £145.8m during the year, up from £136.6m in 2024.
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