The chief executive of the Charity Commission has launched a fierce attack on warring trustees, telling them not to “weaponise” the regulator as a “tactic to win their quarrel”.
Helen Stephenson also warned that the approach could backfire, leading to the commission taking action after uncovering other governance shortcomings caused by the dispute.
And she said she had ordered work by commission staff, to better understand the scale and nature of disputes in charities – to support trustees to stop “small differences escalating into chaos”.
Stephenson’s speech to yesterday’s Civil Society Trustee Exchange comes in the middle of an increasingly bitter fall-out between two groups vying to be trustees of the Actors’ Benevolent Fund.
Yesterday, former trustees said the current trustees were able to “hijack” the organisation under the noses of the regulator.
They also accused the Charity Commission of “sit[ting] on its hands” since the bitter dispute arose six months ago.
They were responding to the commission’s announcement that the ABF’s existing board would stay in place and must call fresh trustee elections by the end of the year.
Although she does not identify it as the trigger for her comments, it is clear that the regulator’s chief had the ABF conflict in her mind when she penned the speech.
She said: “I see too many cases that revolve, fundamentally, around fractious arguments, often involving two or more warring parties with differing visions for the future of the charity, and often crystallising around disputes as to who the rightly appointed trustees actually are.
“Arguments that might have been settled had trustees shown goodwill and commitment and a willingness to compromise their position.
“These arguments should not land at our front door. We have a role in promoting public trust in charities and upholding the law. But it’s not our job to mediate between, or indeed pick sides between rival groups of trustees.”
Stephenson said such disputes were causing “huge rupture and, frankly, destruction” to the charity and its beneficiaries.
She said she did not want to “dissuade genuine whistleblowers” from reporting wrongdoing.
But she went on: “Please, don’t try to weaponise the commission as a tactic in a quarrel with fellow trustees.
And don’t assume that by coming to the commission as one party to a dispute, you’ll achieve the outcome you hope for. There’s no guarantee that we’ll ‘side’ with you – indeed intractable disputes can cause us to take other types of regulatory action in response to governance failures that arise.”