Charity Commission Business Plan reveals priorities for 2023-24
Melanie May | 23 June 2023 | News
The Charity Commission has released its Business Plan for 2023-2024, shaped around four key priorities.
According to the Commission, the plan is a ‘transition plan’, and aims to deliver against the commitments made in the last year of its current strategy, while setting it up to deliver a new strategy from 2024.
The four priorities are:
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- Regulating effectively, being clear about its role and decision-making
- Strengthening its support and interventions to ensure charities are run well
- In challenging times, improving how the Commission uses its voice, data and intelligence to help charity deliver impact
- Investing in its people and systems
Priority 1
Under priority 1, the Commission’s work will include a review of its risk assessment model, further work on making its charity registration processes more digital, efficient, and effective, and the implementation of a new writing style to improve communications with those involved in its casework. It will also do more work to ensure its role is understood by trustees, the public and other stakeholders.
Priority 2
Work under priority 2 will include the delivery of the next phase of its awareness campaigns and online improvements and further steps in its programme of guidance redesign. New guidance will underpin the delivery of the second and third phases of the Charities Act 2022, which will also require updates to internal processes and digital systems. And, with the launch of its ‘My Charity Commission Account’ this year, it will start work to help its relationships with trustees.
Priority 3
Under priority 3, the Commission states that while it reports to Parliament, it ‘will be beholden to no-one in applying the law, continuing to put the public interest front and centre of our regulatory approach.’
As such, it says, it will speak out on issues that matter, and work to reinforce its independence to the public and trustees. It also aims to be more proactive in anticipating wrongdoing and faster in dealing with it. This will include improving how the Commission uses data and intelligence to inform its work.
This, it says, will be supported by the introduction of its improved Annual Return 2023 question following consultation last year, as well as by making the changes to its current system for the classification of what charities do so that it is better able to understand the charity sector through segmentation.
It will also continue to progress the redevelopment of the SORP accounting framework, and its long-term work ambitions for the digitisation of charity accounts.
Priority 4
Under priority 4, the Commission will focus on developing its offering for staff and how it communicates with them. It will also be working on improving casework processes.
This year will also see the Commission develop its five-year strategy, which will be published in 2024.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.