Charity

The social care charity PSS UK has appointed Jill Sheldrake, deputy chief executive and director of services at the care and education charity the Together Trust, as its next chief executive.  Sheldrake will take up the top job at PSS, which supports adults with learning or physical disabilities, older people, those facing mental health challenges

A Christian charity breached the Code of Fundraising Practice during a campaign to fundraise for a new building, the Fundraising Regulator has found. St Thomas Mar Thoma Church, based in Bristol, “failed to achieve its objectives” during its Agape Project fundraising campaign to raise £150,000 for the new building. The regulator found the charity failed

Charities have cut ties with the former BBC News presenter Huw Edwards.  At Westminster Magistrates’ Court today, Edwards pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children.  The charges relate to 41 images that were shared on a WhatsApp chat between 2020 and 2022. The National Churches Trust said it had dropped Edwards

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants has called for the Scottish government to increase the audit threshold for charities.  Charities in England and Wales with annual incomes of £1m or more are required to complete an audit but the threshold is £500,000 in Scotland, and has not been updated since 2005.  The ACCA said audit

Trustees of a charity-run leisure centre have said it can no longer afford to remain operational. Folkestone Sports Centre Trust has run the Kent leisure centre of the same name since 1967. The charity promotes, organises, manages and assists with leisure activities in the Folkestone area. The charity said its staff had battled and made

Charities have reported significant difficulties in finding operational space, data from a new survey shows. The survey by Temporary Use Aid, a company that helps charities find vacant properties, found 73 per cent of respondents said it was moderately or extremely difficult to secure spaces. The research gathered insights from more than 200 charities, volunteer

The National Lottery Community Fund is offering £20m of grant funding to support projects that connect communities with climate action.  The funder said it would offer the funding, which comes from its Climate Action Fund, for schemes that aim to “involve more people in climate action and to inspire bold and exciting change”.  The NLCF

Charity Commission staff in the Merseyside area have been “deeply affected” by the knife attack in Southport, its chief executive has said, as the regulator published joint guidance on giving to charities supporting those affected. Merseyside Police reported three girls had died from injuries sustained in a knife attack on 29 July. The commission and

The culture secretary has said charities are among the industries that need to be “the beating heart” of the government’s renewal plans.  Speaking at an event in Manchester bringing together leaders from the industries under her brief, including civil society, sport, media, youth and the arts, Lisa Nandy said theirs were “sectors that are some

Tax reliefs for charities in 2023/24 were £4.46bn, up 3 per cent year on year, new figures show. HM Revenue & Customs’ latest annual update of UK charity tax relief statistics, published today, shows total tax reliefs for UK charities have increased every year since 2022. Overall, tax reliefs for charities and donors last year

A charitable think tank rebranded a trading subsidiary, changed its publication process and rebalanced its website content during a Charity Commission compliance case.  The regulator said it had concluded its case into the Global Warming Policy Foundation after the charity was accused of breaking lobbying and finance rules. The regulator started investigating the charity in

The chief executive of the social care charity the Together Trust is to retire in December.  Mark Lee, who has led the charity for 11 years, said he wanted to spend more time with his family after a 30-year career in the social care sector.  Before joining the Together Trust, Lee spent six years as

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust has reiterated its commitment to it grantees “at a time when many of the important causes we stand behind have been weaponised for political gain”. Helen Moulinos, interim chief executive of the grantmaker, has published an open letter setting out its approach to the organisations it supports in 2024. “As

Four Islamic charities are being assessed by the Charity Commission after hosting a preacher who “condones sexual slavery”, the National Secular Society has said.  The NSS said it had referred the charities to the Charity Commission after social media posts indicated they had hosted Ibtisam Elahi Zaheer, an Islamic scholar from Pakistan, during his visit

A carers support charity has announced its closure due to “severe ongoing financial challenges” that have made it impossible to continue operations. Southend Carers has provided information, advice and support to carers in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, for almost 23 years. The charity said it has been unable to secure the necessary funding to continue operating, despite

Former employees of a group of charities that closed abruptly last year have expressed disappointment after the organisation’s websites were relaunched on social media.  The Cares Family group of five local charities plus its national body shut at the end of October, with staff told about its imminent closure on a hastily arranged Microsoft Teams

Charity Finance Group has rebranded to reflect its commitment to supporting a diverse, vibrant and growing community in a changing world, the membership body has said. The organisation for charity finance professionals has introduced a new logo and strapline, which it said signified the CFG’s “collective strength”. It said the strapline, “Leading the way for

Voluntary sector leaders have welcomed Stephanie Peacock’s appointment as the new charities minister, hoping to build a “collaborative partnership” between the government and the voluntary sector.  Peacock, who is the MP for Barnsley South, was appointed as a parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on 9 July, but the

The British Dyslexia Association has appointed Ellen Broomé, former managing director of two Coram Group organisations, as its next chief executive. Broomé will take up the top job at the BDA, which advocates for people with dyslexia and related learning difficulties, on 1 October. She succeeds Chivonne Preston, who is stepping down after two years

The trade union Unite has criticised Oxfam GB’s “woeful” attitude as a petition called for the charity to honour its improved pay agreement after strike action last year.  More than 500 Unite members working at Oxfam voted to walk out for 17 days in December but agreed to return to work after two days. In an

Judi Rhys is stepping down as chief executive of Tenovus Cancer Care after more than five years in the role, the charity has announced. Rhys is expected to leave the Wales-based cancer support charity at the end of the year. The process of recruiting her successor is due to begin next month (August) and she

Police are investigating threatening graffiti against workmen repairing a fire-damaged charity building. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said that in the early hours of Wednesday morning a wall in west Belfast was daubed with threats to shoot workers repairing the Welcome Organisation’s building. The homelessness charity’s building had been heavily damaged by a suspected

A conservation and wildlife charity, responsible for the operation of two UK zoos, has announced plans for redundancies following a “series of crippling challenges” that negatively affected its finances. The Wild Planet Trust, a conservation and wildlife charity that operates Paignton Zoo in Devon and Newquay Zoo in Cornwall, said it would be making an

A wildlife conservation charity will stop running a council-owned visitor centre because it can no longer operate its facilities profitably, the charity said. Staffordshire Wildlife Trust announced it will leave Westport Lake Visitor Centre in September. The centre, which the charity has leased from Stoke-on-Trent City Council since 2009, is located alongside the Trent and

The average growth of legacy income for arts charities is twice as much as the growth of the top 1,000 charities overall, new research has found. The Art of Legacies, published by Remember A Charity last week, says data from the legacy fundraising consortium Legacy Foresight shows 34 arts, culture and heritage charities were in

A landmark tribunal case could result in whistleblowing protections being extended to cover charity trustees, lawyers have said.  Nigel MacLennan, former trustee and president-elect of the British Psychological Society, was expelled from the charity in 2021 amid “persistent bullying” allegations, which he strongly denied.  MacLennan claimed at an employment tribunal that he should have been

Dominic Reid will step down as chief executive of the Invictus Games Foundation after next year’s games, saying he has “delivered the 10-year vision” he set out.  Reid has been chief executive of the charity since it was founded in 2014. The charity facilitates and supports the Invictus Games, an international multisport event  first held

ActionAid UK has seen its income fall by more than 10 per cent after a spike in funds raised due to the war in Ukraine. The charity’s latest accounts, for 2023, show the charity had an income of £53.3m, down from £59.6m in the previous year but higher than the £49.6m recorded in 2021.  The

Comic Relief is the charity that people identify as seeing the most in the news, according to new data. Third Sector’s Charity Brand Index 2024 shows that the proportion of people who agreed they see Comic Relief “in the news a lot” was 69 per cent, three percentage points higher than BBC Children in Need

Charities that hold official meetings online should draw up a policies covering how people can participate and what to do if technical problems strike, new guidance from the Charity Commission suggests.  The regulator has today published updated guidance on charities holding meetings, also known as CC48, which takes into account the fact increasing numbers of