| TRADITIONAL religious charities will not have to modernise their beliefs to prove that their work is of benefit to the public, the Charity Commission said this week.
On Wednesday, the Commission, the independent regulator for charitable activity in England and Wales, published guidance spelling out what steps charities, including religious charities and schools, must take to show how the public benefits.
Until the Charities Act 2006, religious charities were assumed to be of public benefit. Now they will have to be able to demonstrate that explicitly.
During a three-month consultation, which attracted
more than 1000 responses, the Commission said that religious charities had shown themselves to be particularly concerned about the need to match modern social conditions.
“We have worked hard to emphasise that it is not in the remit
of the Commission to look into traditional, long-held religious beliefs or to seek to modernise them,” the guidance says.
Instead, a charity might have to consider altering the wording of its objects “so that they have relevance for today”, says the guidance. For example, it might agree to change “established for the provision of marriage portions for poor maids” to “for the relief of poverty of women”.
The guidance lays down the principle of public benefit: it should be identifiable, clear, related to each of the charity’s aims, and not just a by-product. It should be balanced against any detriment or harm, such as the encouragement of hatred of others, damage to the environment, or damage to people’s mental or physical health. (The guidance cites the example of early-20th-century charities that distributed cigarettes to hospital patients.) It should be available to the public or a section of the public.
Public beneficiaries must not be unreasonably restricted by geography, or by other restrictions, or by their ability to pay any fees charged. People in poverty must not be excluded from the opportunity to benefit. It would not be enough to lower fees so that middle-class people could use the charity, says the guidance. It suggests that sponsorship of state schools or academies might be one way to offset the exclusiveness of independent schools.
Although the guidance does not have the weight of law, it nevertheless gives the Commission grounds to withhold charitable status. There is an internal system for appeals, though dissatisfied trustees could also use the courts.
Charities that failed to demonstrate public benefit were not expected to change overnight. The Commission would take “reasonable account” of the time and resources they needed to make the changes. It would also help charities find a way to change their charitable objects to meet the new condition or to set up a new charity as close to the purposes of the original as possible. It might also find that some charities had never been of benefit to the public, and so should not have been called charities.
Detailed draft guidance for religious charities will be available next month.
The guidance can be downloaded from www.charity-commission.gov.uk
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