Charities Act 2006 review

In 2011, the government appointed Lord Hodgson to conduct a wide-ranging review of the Charities Act 2006 to investigate whether it is fit for purpose. He was asked to consider if better regulation is needed and whether the existing rules are enabling charities to operate easily.

Lord Hodgson has now published the report of his review, and it has been laid before Parliament.

He has also published the research on public perceptions of charity, commissioned from Ipsos Mori, that has underpinned the review.

The Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd MP, wrote to Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts on 4 December 2012 with an interim response to the recommendations in his report ‘Trusted and independent: giving charity back to charities - a review of the Charities Act 2006’.

Lord Hodgson’s report made over 100 recommendations. These have been carefully considered, with the help of feedback from civil society strategic partners. We propose to accept most of the recommendations. Some will require more analysis and consideration before a final decision can be made on whether or not the recommendation can be accepted. There are very few recommendations that based on feedback from the charity sector we do not propose taking forward.

In particular, based on responses from the charity sector, we do not propose to accept the recommendation that would allow large charities to pay their trustees for acting as trustees.

The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) is undertaking its own inquiry into the regulation of charities, which is expected to report in early 2013. We would like to be able to take PASC’s report into account before publishing the full government response to Lord Hodgson’s review, and will also set out plans for implementation at the same time.