Our weekly round up of news and updates from across the sector

Charity Commission

Inquiry opened – The Cat Survival Trust

The Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into The Cat Survival Trust, a charity advancing education and research into, and preservation of, wild cats. The charity has not submitted annual accounts since 2011, leading the inquiry to investigate trustee management and governance.

Board member reappointed

The Secretary of State has reappointed Will Lifford, an experienced Chartered Accountant, as a Commission board member for a second three-year term. More information can be found here.

Sector General

Civil Society Media has a new podcast series, starting with "A rough history of the UK charity sector". You can listen to the podcast here or read an AI generated transcript.

Climate change and environmental

On 28 February, NPC is running a seminar, Embedding the social impacts of the environmental crises into your strategy. Speakers include Disability Rights UK's CEO, Kamran Mallick, and Director at Friends, Family and Travellers, Sarah Mann. They will explore how to embed the social impacts of the environmental crises into your strategy. For more information about cost and bursaries, and to book a place, see here.

Staffordshire Wildlife Trust has received £14,700 from an enforcement undertaking against Swanline Print Limited. The undertaking was offered by the company for its failures in relation to packaging recycling obligations.

Diversity and inclusion

The Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament has opened a call for views on the proposed removal of the definition of "woman" from section 2 of the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. The call for views closes on 29 January 2024. Bates Wells senior associate, Mindy Jhittay, notes, "The existing definition includes transgender women, whether or not they have a gender recognition certificate. In the case brought by For Women Scotland Ltd in 2022, the Inner House of the Court of Session decided that this definition goes beyond the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament because it is broader than the definition in the Equality Act 2010 and impinges on a reserved matter. Scottish Ministers have since produced revised statutory guidance which confirms that the Equality Act definition still includes transgender women who have a gender recognition certificate. The proposal seeks views on the best way to reflect these decisions."

Funders

In this blog, NPC's Development Executive, Alfie Vaughan, reflects on being a first-time 360Giving publisher, gives some advice to funders wanting to publish their grant data for the first time, and explains why NPC advocates for publishing open grant data.

Advertising

The ASA has ruled that a poster from the charity GIRLvsCANCER was likely to cause serious or widespread offence and inappropriate for display in an untargeted medium. An outdoor poster for the 'Smash the Stigma' campaign, seen in October 2023, featured a close-up image of a woman's torso, with her arm and hand obscuring her breasts and the top of her other hand between her legs. Large white text the length of the image stated "CANCER WON'T BE THE LAST THING THAT F*CKS ME". The ASA's ruling concludes that certain language is so likely to offend that it should not generally be used or alluded to in advertising.

Data protection

Our head of Data and Privacy, Eleonor Duhs, has recently been published in the PDP Journal, one of the UK's leading journals on practical data protection compliance issues. Her article, Fundamental changes to the UK GDPR – what they mean in practice, explores the changes to data privacy legislation as a result of the coming into force of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 at the end of last year.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has fined HelloFresh £140,000 for sending 79 million spam emails and 1 million spam texts in seven months. The ICO states that the messages were sent based on an unclear opt-in statement, which did not make reference to the sending of marketing by text. There was reference to marketing by email, but this was included in an age confirmation statement, which the ICO has stated was likely to unfairly incentivise customers to agree. Further, customers were not given sufficient information that their data would continue to be used after they had cancelled their subscription.

Freedom of information

The ICO has published a blog about clarifying requests under the Freedom of Information Act or the Environmental Information Regulations.

Company law

Company Names Tribunal

The exempt charity, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, applied for a change of name of the company registered as Imperial Education Ltd. The application was undefended and an order made for the company to change its name within a month and for costs to be paid by the respondents.

CIC Regulator annual report

We reported last week that the CIC Regulator had released its annual report for 2022-23. Here are some highlights:

  • A record 6,065 new CICs were incorporated during the financial year 2022-2023, a 12% rise from the previous year.
  • CIC conversions from limited companies totalled 2,892, a 3% increase compared to 2021-2022.
  • There was a rise in dissolutions – 3,169, which represents 11% of the total number of CICs on the register and a 3% increase from the previous year. Reasons given include the impact of Covid-19 and increases in both inflation rates and the cost of living.
  • 28,878 CICs on the register – double the number from 5 years ago.
  • Louise Smyth is in her 3rd year as the Regulator of CICs and is excited by the increasing vision and ambition of CICs, including thinking internationally, not just locally, in terms of their plans for and growth for the future.
  • The Regulator did not use her powers to investigate any of the CICs last year, which they describe as a fantastic achievement.
  • Priorities include providing access to all services digitally and it is working with Companies House (where it moved from BEIS this year) to achieve this.
  • This is a great sentiment from Hey Girls CIC, which tackles period poverty, "We share a collective belief that the power of a united community is stronger than one profits could ever create."
  • Responding to the question 'what has being a CIC meant to us this year?' Horses Helping People CIC wrote, "How about common sense, inquisitiveness, compassion? A common sense structure with minimum red tape, so when we know what needs to be done there is nothing to hold us back." We think our former Senior Partner, Stephen Lloyd, credited as the creator of CICs, should be proud of that as a legacy.

Northern Ireland

The Charity Commission for Northern Ireland is urging charities to double check they have submitted the right annual reporting documents, as there have been recent instances where the wrong documents (bank statements, drivers' licenses, passport photos, etc.) have been uploaded by the charity and subsequently published onto the register of charities.

Health and social care

The Department of Health and Social Care has published Dealing with requests for assessments of previously unassessed periods of care from 1 April 2012. The guidance sets out how individuals can make a request for a previously unassessed period of care assessment and how an integrated care board should approach and address such a request.

The Care Quality Commission is consulting on its proposed guidance to help providers and other stakeholders understand and meet the new fundamental standard on visiting and accompanying in care homes, hospitals and hospices. Its consultation is open until 20 February 2024.

The UK Health Security Agency has published Positive Voices survey 2022, the largest UK survey of people living with HIV. Findings include that whilst people living with HIV reported a high level of satisfaction with their HIV care service and treatment, stigma surrounding their HIV status still remains a concern.

NPC has published a report, Closing the Gap, highlighting what an effective system of child poverty prevention looks like. They will be having a launch event and other events to discuss the report.

The government has launched a new national Start for Life 'Little Moments Together' campaign, with this report providing details of the local family hubs which are operating in each local authority.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has set out a new roadmap for regulations for medical devices in the UK. The regulations will be delivered by a series of statutory instruments and cover areas such as healthcare AI and software.

The government has announced additional funding towards a fund which helps victims of domestic abuse. The fund works by giving one-off payments which can be used towards essential items to assist them in leaving their abusers and to help secure a sustainable future, such as towards a rental accommodation deposit. The fund will continue to be delivered by Women's Aid alongside domestic abuse services across England and Wales.

Immigration

There are many changes coming into play for several immigration routes in 2024. Chetal Patel, Partner and Head of Immigration has summarised some key points to consider when looking to apply, extend or switch immigration status once the new rules come into force.

Social enterprise

See above under Company law re the CIC Regulator's annual report.

Several UK impact community members are awarded for public service in the UK 2024 New Year Honours List. This Pioneers Post article unpacks some of the standout social changemakers who were awarded at the beginning of December.

Law Commission wholesale review of co-operative law. Co-operatives UK (Co-ops UK) announced that it is working with its members and stakeholders to co-ordinate a sector response to the Law Commission's review of co-operative law in the UK, which was requested by the Government last summer. Co-ops UK outlines its view that the review's recommendations should aim to better enable co-ops and other societies to form, innovate, grow and reach their potential, and remove unnecessary or disproportionate costs, burdens and complexities. Co-ops UK indicates how its members can get involved.

Social investment / social impact investment

British International Investment (BII) commits $40m to Apis Growth Markets Fund III, a UK-based private equity firm investing solely in fintech. This is the third time BII has backed an Apis fund, and BII said it has a "proven track record of delivering impact by supporting fintech." This investment aims to support Sustainable Development Goal 8.10 – improved economic opportunities for consumers and businesses through improved ability to manage liquidity, investment and risk.

New work programme funded by Sorenson Impact Foundation. The Impact Investing Institute has announced a new programme that aims to identify the factors slowing decision-makers within capital markets, as well as policymakers and media professionals, from embracing impact investing to its full potential.

Education

Schools

The Department for Education (DfE) has announced new measures intended to boost teacher recruitment and retention. These include:

  • £1.5m investment into a mental health and wellbeing support package.
  • New guidance for schools to prevent bullying and harassment of staff, expected this spring.
  • Recommendations from the Workload Reduction Taskforce aiming to reduce teachers' working week by five hours within three years, and scrap performance-related pay.
  • This Schools Week article reports Ofsted will start recording when inspections are paused in an attempt to increase transparency, after admitting it had no evidence that inspectors had paused visits due to school leader distress. This is particularly relevant following the suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry last year, which a coroner ruled was caused in part by an Ofsted inspection of her school.

Higher Education

Office for Students have published findings from an independent review of their 'short courses' trial which aimed to open up flexible learning and skills development. See this blog post for a summary of their findings – in short, they were disappointed in the take-up of the courses, as many courses were not launched due to lack of demand. However, the students who did enrol reported positive experiences.

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