The Charity Commission for England and Wales has launched its five-year strategy, setting out its core purpose and strategic priorities for 2024-2029.
The strategy embeds the regulator’s ambition to be fair, balanced, and independent, in setting out five key priorities for the next five years.
The ongoing cost-of-living crisis, and the disruption brought by the pandemic, have tested the resilience of many charities, whilst highlighting their central importance to society – and the strategy says financial resilience will be a central issue in the coming five years. The strategy also anticipates the potential opportunities – and corresponding risks – afforded by rapidly changing technology in the period ahead.
And with social norms shifting and in some cases fracturing, this will present both opportunities and challenges for the future relationship between charities and the public.
The Commission’s strategic priorities have been informed and guided by these challenges. Its five priorities are:
- to be fair and proportionate in its work, and clear about its role
- to support charities to get it right, while taking robust action where it sees wrongdoing and harm
- to speak with authority and credibility, free from the influence of others
- to embrace technological innovation and strengthen its use of data
- to be an expert Commission where its people are empowered and enabled to deliver excellence in regulation
The priorities describe the Commission’s key areas of focus, as well as the steps it will take to fulfil these ambitions.
Charity Commission Chair, Orlando Fraser KC, said:
Charities play a vital role within our society, supporting the most vulnerable, binding communities of place and interest, improving countless lives, in myriad ways.
Their ability to do this rests on public trust and confidence, which in turn requires expert regulation.
We have already publicly committed to be an expert regulator that is fair, balanced and independent. This strategy embeds this commitment in a concrete fashion into the Commission’s future processes and procedures.
Such a regulator is key to the thriving of charities in England and Wales, and I am confident that our new strategy will therefore strengthen our role as an expert, effective regulator.
