18 | REPORTING SERIOUS INCIDENTS | LEGAL ADVICE Read a related story: click here G


overnors and senior management teams in schools will have seen the regulatory role of the Charity


Commission change quite radically over the last couple of decades. Many changes have been imposed by a succession of Charities Acts that create a regulatory regime based on filing documents with the Commission each year. Charities have to file annual returns that collect certain information about charities to enable the Commission to carry out a basic health check and to spot any significant compliance issues. One feature of this regime is that the


Commission can decide each year what information it will ask for in the annual return. The Commission has used this to focus its monitoring activities on those aspects of charities’ operations that it considers are likely to represent a risk. Thus, in some years, there has been a focus on benefits received by trustees or on whether charities with vulnerable beneficiaries have appropriate policies and procedures in place to protect them from harm. The Commission’s role is not simply


to protect individual charities, but also to increase public trust and confidence in charities – indeed this is now one of the Commission’s formal objectives under the Charities Act 2011, alongside identifying and investigating apparent misconduct or mismanagement in charities. This is a rather broader remit than schools will have been accustomed to and the way in which the Commission pursues it raises some interesting practical issues for schools, in particular since the Commission adopted its current policy on the reporting of what it calls ‘serious incidents’. The reporting of serious incidents is


not a new requirement, but it is worth rehearsing the mechanism that the Commission has used to make it a serious compliance issue for schools and other charities. The Commission takes the view that it is not just breaches of charity law that are of concern to it, but that many other types of incident can present a real risk to the beneficiaries, assets and reputation of a charity and to the reputation of charities generally. It has a regulatory interest in being informed of any incidents that present such a risk and has published guidance on reporting serious incidents (see htps://www.gov. uk/how-to-report-a-serious-incident- in-your-charity) which sets out the sorts of incidents that it considers it should be told about, how the report should be


ABOVE: "Because it is a criminal offence ... to make a false or misleading declaration in the annual return, the [Charity] Commission has something with which to threaten governors..."


This is geting serious


Governors and staff at independent schools need to be fully aware of the Charity Commission’s policy on reporting serious incidents, advises Paul Ridout


made and what might then happen. The guidance is not in itself legally


binding, and the Commission has no direct means of ensuring that it hears about all incidents about which it might be concerned. The Commission has therefore devised an indirect means of ensuring that incidents are reported to it: the annual return now requires the charity to confirm that no serious incidents have occurred that have not been reported to the Commission. Because it is a criminal offence knowingly


or recklessly to make a false or misleading declaration in the annual return, the Commission has something with which to threaten governors who might not otherwise regard filing a report with the Commission as a top priority. This also means that a failure to report


an incident becomes, in its own right, a cause for concern. We have seen, both from the Commission’s website and from our involvement in advising schools on such maters, that the Commission is taking a hard line where they learn about


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