Corporate report

Charity Commission Business Plan 2020/21

Published 20 July 2020

Introduction

Our purpose is to ensure charity can thrive and inspire trust, so that people can improve lives and strengthen society. We have committed in our strategy to being driven by that purpose in all we do. Our purpose is bold, confident and reflects our commitment to represent the public interest to charities.

Our strategic objectives

To achieve our purpose, our Statement of Strategic Intent 2018-2023 laid out 5 strategic objectives.

For each of the strategic objectives we have set an ambitious vision of what success will look like to the public we serve, recognising that the public is not homogenous, but made up of groups of people with different attitudes and backgrounds.

Holding charities to account

The charity sector is more respectful of, responsive to and in tune with public expectations because they are living up to their purpose and values, behaving with integrity and using their resources responsibly.

Dealing with wrongdoing and harm

Charities are better able to show they can be trusted and are better able to apply their know-how, because we are better at detecting, deterring and preventing wrongdoing and harm, and charities are better informed and more effective at protecting themselves.

Informing public choice

People have greater confidence that charities are making a real difference, including those who stand up for the most vulnerable in society, because they have easier access to the knowledge and understanding they need to be able to trust the charities they support.

Giving charities the understanding and tools they need

Charities are better able to make a real difference and help more people join together and contribute to their local communities, because there is increased professionalism in trusteeship which allows charities to innovate safely within the framework of charity law.

Keeping charity relevant

Charities are maximising the benefits they bring to society, because they continue to evolve and grow, demonstrating to everyone that charity is sustainable, resilient, influential and credible.

The priorities we have set and our commitments for the year ahead will ensure we advance delivery of our strategic objectives.

Our priorities for 2020/21

In this, the second year of delivering our strategy, we will focus on ‘being open for business’ and ‘being a better, more professional organisation’.

Being open for business means that we will be a more confident regulator, giving voice to the issues which we know are of public concern. We will make it easier for the public and for trustees, who are trying to do the right thing, to contact us and to know that we are listening and responding to their concerns. Trustees will also find it easier to get the help they need, either from our contact centre or our guidance, in a format that they can understand. In our casework, we will become more agile, data driven and proactive. While we will continue to deliver service improvements, we will also focus on proactively identifying areas of concern and responding to them quickly, so that as we become better at detecting, deterring and preventing wrongdoing and harm, charities are better informed and more effective at protecting themselves.

Alongside this we will seek to become a better, more professional organisation; focusing on being better aligned with our purpose and strategy, with a stronger internal support function under a new Chief Operating Officer that delivers the improvements needed to match the operational improvements we have already achieved. We will continue to build staff capability and capacity, giving them the tools they need to deliver.

In support of these priorities we have identified the following 5 key deliverables to which we commit for 2020/21:

1. We have delivered further improvements to the effectiveness of our regulatory work and have met our customers’ expectations through new service standards.
2. We have made full use of our regulatory powers to protect what makes charity special, and developed proposals for new powers to address deficiencies in the current legal framework.
3. We have delivered revamped core guidance and an improved website, making it easy for Trustees to access what they need.
4. We have defined, scoped and begun to build new digital services to support Trustees better in their work.
5. We have implemented our new organisation design and delivered the improvements in infrastructure that are required to enable us to deliver our strategy and purpose.

COVID-19

Our year 2 business plan was developed before the pandemic, which has had a major impact on the charity sector, placing great strain on its sources of income at the same time that demand increased for many of its services.

This changed environment only emphasises the importance of our purpose and strategy in helping ensure that charity thrives, to strengthen the bond between public and charities, and encourage the development of a more resilient sector better able to serve the needs of its beneficiaries and which has a better understanding of wider public expectations.

The demands placed on the Commission by the pandemic will inevitably cause some reprioritisation of activity – for example, during first phase of lockdown we responded with substantial regulatory advice and support for the sector and acted to ensure our own business continuity. At the time of publication of our plan, it is still too early to say how COVID-19 will reshape our activities for the remainder of the year, and therefore what impact this will have on our delivery, but we will make adjustments as that picture becomes clearer. Overall, however, we continue to regard the broad plans outlined as appropriate if not exhaustive in the new circumstances.

Our Key Deliverables

Key deliverable 1:

We have delivered further improvements to the effectiveness of our regulatory work and have met our customers’ expectations through new service standards

What success will look like

By the end of 2020/21 our staff will be even better skilled and we will have launched an IT system that will improve and streamline the internal processing when we open a case to look into matters of potential concern. There will have been tangible shift in emphasis in our casework, with our work being less reactive and more proactive, increasing the efficacy of our casework, with the outcomes of our regulatory activity much more closely linked to our purpose. Our risk operating model will have been embedded as the way we calibrate our response to issues that come into us so that no complaint is overlooked, our actions are relevant and our casework is proportionate and targeted according to risk. Our proactive work will be more fast-paced, dynamic and driven by intelligence. The implementation of year one of our data strategy will have driven these developments and ensure that there is a clear vision of how we use data in the organisation. We have clear customer service standards in place, against which we are actively monitoring our performance.

Key tasks

• deliver the initial phases of our Casework Redesign Initiative – an IT system that will improve the way our staff co-ordinate their work
• implement a Technical Competency Programme to improve further our staff’s casework skills
• develop and implement a Quality Assurance Framework to help ensure our casework is of a consistently high standard
• establish a regular intelligence group and increase the proportion of regulatory casework driven by risk-based intelligence and data
• deliver agreed customer service standards – reporting on these annually – and improved operational performance and efficiency
• deliver Year 1 actions from our Data Strategy

Key deliverable 2

We have made full use of our regulatory powers to protect what makes charity special, and developed proposals for new powers to address deficiencies in the current legal framework.

What success will look like

By the end of 2021, we will have continued to articulate what makes charity special, ensuring that we protect the boundary of charitable status. We will have concluded a review of our powers to identify key changes needed for us to regulate effectively and keep pace with the modern world and public expectations of our role. We will have engaged with government and other stakeholders on the gaps in our powers that we believe need to be addressed.

We will continue to ensure that we are focusing our powers and litigation work on the right cases. We will remove organisations that we have identified as no longer being operational or operating for the public benefit from the charity register.

Key tasks

• systematically identify cases that provide opportunities to clarify the boundaries of the legal framework
• remove organisations identified as being no longer operational or operating for the public benefit within 90 days of a case being opened
• deliver a further stage of the Revitalising Trusts Programme to redeploy moribund charitable funds
• deliver a strategy to improve the rate of charities’ annual account filings
• conclude a review of our powers and engage with government and others about our emerging conclusions

Key deliverable 3

We have delivered revamped core guidance and an improved website is making it easy for Trustees to access what they need

What success will look like

By 2021, it will be easier for people to do business with us– improvements to the website will have been made, and we will have redesigned and published the most important and relevant pieces of guidance, improving the tools that charities need to deliver. For the public, we will have developed a better, more adaptive, view of the register to make it easier for people to use and to find the information about charities that they are looking for.

We will have launched a campaign to inform trustees about the most important issues they need to focus on in order to place their charities in the best position to be effective in delivering their purpose and compliant with charity regulations. We will be better at contacting them in a timely way, with the information they need.

Key tasks

• deliver improvements to our website which make it easier for people to find the information they need
• update 25% of guidance to make it more targeted and relevant for Trustees, with outdated and unnecessary guidance removed
• deliver a campaign that helps Trustees focus on four important issues in delivering their charitable purposes
• deliver quarterly publications that reflect our research and casework
• deliver improvements to better manage our mailing processes

Key deliverable 4

We have defined, scoped and begun to build new digital services to support Trustees better in their work.

What success will look like

By 2021, we will have made it easier for trustees who are trying to do the right thing to contact us and to know that we are listening and responding to their concerns. In addition, trustees should find it easier to get the help and information they need in a format that they can understand. We will have begun to plan new digital services to support trustees.

Key tasks

• design and begin to build an online ‘portal’ to service our relationship with charities
• improve the registration process for charities, ready to be made fully digital in the future

Key deliverable 5

We have implemented our new organisation design and delivered the improvements in infrastructure that are required to enable us to deliver our strategy and purpose.

What success will look like

By 2021, we will have delivered a new organisation structure, which aligns to and better enables us to deliver our purpose and strategy. We will have a stronger support function that delivers the organisational improvements needed to match our operational improvements. We will have built our leadership capability, and through our workforce plan we will have ensured we have the right people, in the right numbers with the right skills and expertise to enable us to deliver our purpose and strategy.

Year 2 of our IT roadmap will have been delivered, meaning that we have continued to deliver improvements to mitigate the risk of cyber security and ensured that our people and processes are supported by a modern, fit for purpose infrastructure. We will have made improvements in how we communicate and engage with the sector, the public, and our stakeholders. We will also have strengthened our approach to managing organisational risks and made a compelling submission to the Government’s spending review.

Key tasks

• deliver new organisational design with new structure, including teams and roles, in place and recruitment completed
• deliver the first year of our People Strategy
• deliver year 2 of our strategic IT Roadmap
• deliver identified improvements to our corporate risk management approach
• agree and put into practice a new approach to communications and engagement
• make a compelling Spending Review submission