Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): I welcome to the meeting Frances McCandless, chief executive of the Charity Commission; Ainslie McMullan, head of legal services in the Charity Commission; and Fiona Muldoon, monitoring and compliance officer in the Charity Commission. We are delighted to have you here. We speak about you frequently, but we do not get the opportunity to talk to you much. We are delighted to have you with us today to talk about this important legislation and your important perspective on it. Go ahead. Is it you, Frances, who will be making an opening statement?

Ms Frances McCandless (Charity Commission for Northern Ireland): Yes, Chair. Thank you very much. We are delighted to be here this morning. I will give you a brief overview of what we have told you in our submission, and we will be happy to take any questions to expand on it.

We really welcome the introduction of the Charities (Amendment) Bill. It represents a significant package of reforms to Northern Ireland's charity legislation. As the Committee knows, it is the culmination of a substantial body of work that came out of the independent review of charity regulation that the Minister commissioned in 2021. There was a lot of engagement with stakeholders, including us, so it is a very well-evidenced package of changes. We are really supportive of the overall policy intent of the Bill. I will highlight some of the things that we are not so keen on, but I stress that, overall, we are very happy with it. We really welcome the measures that are aimed at strengthening our ability to intervene proportionately where misconduct, mismanagement or risks to charitable assets arise. We are extremely keen on the measures that reduce administrative and reporting burdens for smaller charities. The Bill manages to do both of those things. Some of the things in the Bill are things that we asked for to close loopholes and bring us into line with England and Wales. As you know, our law closely mirrors that in England and Wales on charities. We asked the review for those things, and the Bill is enacting them.

We particularly draw your attention to the requested changes to section 24 of the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008, which concerns our power to share information. That is a two-way gateway: a power for other bodies to share information with us, and a power for us to share information with other bodies. We have hit problems with that. For example, when you all write to us and ask for information, we do not know whether we can legally share that with you, because the legislation does not contain a definition of "office-holder". We referred that to the Charity Tribunal, but its judgement did not give us certainty, so we had to appeal that to the High Court. We have not yet received that judgement — we will let you know when we do — so we do not know whether it will give us certainty. We want certainty in the legislation itself. The wording as initially drafted was quite broad. Post consultation, the wording in the Bill is quite narrow. We would like the wording that has been tried and tested in England and Wales. We know that it works. There have not been problems with it. Although that would give us the sharing abilities that we need, they would be well constrained to bodies with public functions, and we would not need to use the term "office-holder". We need to communicate with the Fundraising Regulator, but we cannot do so under the existing wording. We really want to see the wording from England and Wales being imported into our section 24.

The Bill strengthens enforcement powers in a proportionate way and closes the loopholes that I referred to. The powers to issue an official warning and to direct not to take action are extremely welcome. One thing that I want to get across to you this morning is about managing expectations here and in the sector about how quickly we will be able to deliver some of those powers. Some of them will be commenced immediately upon Royal Assent. Some of them, such as the changes to section 24, are fine to be commenced immediately, but, when it comes to things like the direction not to take action and the official warning, it will take us some time after that to work out the procedures and policies, build the IT systems and consult the sector on the detail of how those powers will work. We do not want people here or out in the public to expect that those things will happen next spring. It will take us a while.

We welcome the removal of section 167. We have looked at it for years and taken multiple pieces of legal advice on it. It was not capable of delivering any of the things that we and the sector thought it would deliver. It was not going to make organisations that operate here but are not Northern Ireland charities into charities. It was not going to give them a charity number or make funding available to them that was not previously available to them. It was not going to solve any of those problems, but it was going to create more bureaucracy for charities; create a list, which was not a register, of organisations that are not Northern Ireland charities; and potentially confuse the public. Therefore, we are very glad to see the removal of that section.

The changes to accounting and reporting will bring a lighter touch for smaller charities. We have been asking for that for a long time. We have very little leeway within the current regulations to disapply things for small charities. The Bill gives us that opportunity, and we really welcome it. I know from previous sessions that the Committee has questions and concerns about doing that through regulations, but actually that allows it to be more responsive without having to change primary legislation all the time as the situation involving charities changes. One thing that I want to say about that and timelines is that the Department is keen to timetable those regulations and get things moving, but we need to be part of that conversation, and we are flat out. We have a massive backlog in our inquiries team. We are trying to build a new IT system that will underpin all of that, and we have been asked to deliver a registration threshold. Part one is to be delivered in the autumn, but we have not yet got regulations on that, and part two is due next April. We are absolutely beyond maximum capacity, and we have no new resourcing for the Bill yet. I hope that we will get it. The Department has told us that it is working to address that. We do not even have the capacity to talk to the Department about those regulations. Designing them without us and without knowing what our systems can handle would be problematic.

The current drafting of the Bill in relation to the dispensation for accruals accounts and the statutory time limits for taking decisions on that is now not the Department's intention, and we are very glad of that. We are now talking about a smoothing mechanism that will not require charities to send us an application or us to make a decision on an application. Charities will be able to manage it themselves. That needs to be removed from the legislation. There is no point in legislating for something that we do not intend to do. It would be redundant. We want to see the removal of the provisions relating to the dispensation application and the statutory time frame for us to make a decision on that.

Finally, on costs, the Bill is not currently funded. We will need investment to deliver it. We are already under-resourced, and we do not have the capacity to deliver it as it is. Even if we got those resources tomorrow, they would go towards people, by and large, apart from the capital, which would go into IT. We would have to recruit and train people. It is very specialist work. People do not come off the street and start discussions about charity law and its regulations. Our understanding of the costs of the Bill has evolved over time, in relation to not only what the market can deliver and will charge for IT systems but the staffing that we will need, depending on whether the Bill says one thing or another. There is a difference between the costs in the explanatory and financial memorandum (EFM) and the costs that we have given you. Those are different costs that we have given to the Department at different times. It is not that the Department and the commission are at odds on any of it. Those were early costs from us, and these are final costs from us. That explains that discrepancy. Thank you, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): Thank you. I will be as brief as possible. You have outlined clearly and starkly your concerns about the implementation and resourcing, Frances. That is a concern for us. You regulate more than 7,000 charities and 50,000 trustees. You state:

Given your existing backlog of 600 cases and current staffing pressures, what additional resource do you regard as the minimum necessary to implement the reforms without detracting from your regulatory work?

Ms McCandless: The minimum capital necessary is around £270,000 and the minimum resource necessary for people is around £387,000, depending on the exact wording of the final Bill. That is only to deliver this Bill. It will not cover our inquiries backlog. We have a separate business case in with the Department to pay for additional inquiry staff to try to bring down that backlog. Historically, the commission has been underfunded, and we move resources from one place to another. We were told to focus on registrations, and an inquiries backlog built up. We have now stolen staff from registrations and put them into the inquiries team. Now, registrations and casework are going to start building up. We are always plugging a hole somewhere, so the costs that we are giving you are for delivering the Bill, and we are talking to the Department separately about those other costs.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): What would the consequences be if that funding is not secured?

Ms McCandless: We will continue to have backlogs. We will not be providing the service to the public that they require. We will not be giving charities the decisions that they need in a timely fashion. Risks will open up with safeguarding and other issues that are happening in charities that we will not be able to cover, and the great intentions in the Bill simply will not happen in real life, which would be a shame.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): I note your concern around the discretionary dispensation system. You have argued strongly against that, and you favour a rules-based multi-year threshold. What is the practical difference for charities and the commission, and what if any disadvantages or regulatory risks would arise from adopting your preferred approach?

Ms McCandless: The difference is that charities would have to make an application to us under the dispensation. They have 10 months after the end of their financial year to get their accounts into us, so we are talking about a short window. They are going to see what is in the accounts, and they are going to think, "Right, that pushes us over the accruals threshold". If any of you have an accountancy background, you will know that the difference between a set of receipts and payments accounts and a set of accruals accounts is day and night. You do not want to bounce into an accruals threshold as a one-off and come back down again. You would have to look at your amount and see that you are over the threshold. You would have to fill in a form and apply to us, and we would have to give you a decision in a very short time, because you will then be too late to submit your accounts if you miss that 10-month threshold. We would have to take the resources from Fiona's team and point them almost completely towards that. Those are largely low-risk cases, and we will take all that resource away from our risk-based work.

Our smoothing mechanism allows trustees themselves to say, "Right, we've breached it in one year. If we breach it a second year, it's up to us to make that change". Lots of other parts of the legislation work like that. With registration, for example, it is up to trustees to say, "We meet these criteria. We have to come forward and register". That is how the legislation operates: it trusts trustees. There is, of course, a risk that trustees will simply ignore that obligation and continue to prepare receipts and payments accounts. Hopefully, we will pick that up eventually through checking, but we may not do it immediately. Our checking resources are minuscule — I have to be honest about that — for 7,000 charities. In a good year, we might check 150 or 200 sets of accounts. AI will help us in that. We are in a time when things are really going to make a step change, but we are not quite there yet.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): In practical terms, my own community development association received funding for a large project. It probably pushed it over, but it is not related to what its general income would be. That is a clear case in point. OK, thank you for that.

Miss Brogan: Thanks, the three of you, for your presentation. Your responses will be helpful as we go through the Bill and scrutinise it. Frances, you made it clear in your opening remarks and in the paper that you submitted that you welcome the ability to intervene in cases of misconduct or mismanagement. Are those prevalent, and do you feel that you do not have the power to address them? Why do you welcome it so much?

Ms McCandless: The sector is, by and large, run by extremely well-intentioned people, so "prevalent" is far too strong a word. Does it happen? Yes. We would encourage the public to trust the vast majority of the sector and have confidence in it, but there are always things that go wrong, by design or ignorance, and we have to be careful that what we do is proportionate. If it is by ignorance, we can work with trustees, and at a very low level, usually without invoking statutory powers, we can fix things. We then hit a gap between their working with us to we need to open a statutory inquiry, and that is a big gap. A warning gives us a proportionate power in the middle that will stop some charities from ever having to have a statutory inquiry opened on them. Take accounts, for example. Say that a charity has failed to submit its accounts to us. Sometimes, that can happen for one, two or three years. That is mismanagement, but the charity ignores us. It will have had plenty of warnings and opportunities. The public do not have the transparency that they are entitled to in this legislation. We do not have a big stick for that. We are not like Companies House. We cannot fine them. They just ignore us. A warning is very different. It gives us evidence to open a statutory inquiry. It is genuinely proportionate, and it stops us having to use the big tool because it gives us that intermediate step.

Miss Brogan: It gives you a few more levers in between time.

Ms McCandless: Exactly.

Miss Brogan: It is good to understand that. You also mentioned the benefits of the legislation to smaller charities. There were fewer responses to the public consultation from smaller charities. Maybe that was because it was only a four-week consultation period.

Ms McCandless: Capacity as well. Small charities are just trying to survive day to day. Responding to policy consultations is not always their priority.

Miss Brogan: It is a big job in itself. Do you think that the four-week consultation period was too brief? Do you think that their views have been heard? Since you think that there will be benefits to smaller charities, maybe your view is that it was enough time. Can you outline some of the benefits that smaller charities should see from the legislation?

Ms McCandless: Fiona, do you want to answer that?

Ms Fiona Muldoon (Charity Commission for Northern Ireland): As Frances has outlined, all charities, including the very small charities, have to prepare accounts and reports annually and submit them to the commission within a 10-month time frame. They have to prepare a set of accounts and a trustee's annual report, which is the narrative to the account, stating what they have done during the year. The legislation sets out what needs to be included in that. They must have an independent examination, which means that they have to pay for the accounts and the trustee's annual report. They might be able to pull it together themselves if they have the expertise in-house, but it must be an independent person. There is also a cost associated with that. Those three reporting documents need to be prepared and submitted to the commission, alongside an online annual return form. That asks them questions about their activities, governance and finances, and they upload that as a PDF and publish it to the register.

The intention is that secondary legislation will determine the details of template reporting through consultation, but the intention is that it will be completely streamlined for small charities. The independent examination requirement is removed completely at clause 8 in the Bill, so they will not have to pay for an independent examination. They will not have to prepare accounts, but the basic financial information will be embedded in an online form, and there will be a question around their activities. As I said, we will consult on the details, because there will be some things that people will say that they need to know about for charities. There is a safeguarding question currently in the basic requirements of the form. It will be one form annually that they will have to prepare and submit.

Miss Brogan: That should be a good benefit to them. Finally, I have a technical question. Frances, you mentioned that you welcome section 167. How will that affect your relationship with charities that work across Ireland?

Ms McCandless: I do not think that it will change it at all. It will remain as it currently is. Charities that work across Ireland are either registered here or in Dublin, or in both places, depending on how they are structured. We have very good relations with the Charities Regulatory Authority in Dublin, and we will continue to have that. If we encounter a problem with a charity that works here that is registered with it, we will talk to it about that, and vice versa. Therefore, removing that from the Bill will simply recognise where we currently are.

Miss Brogan: Thanks very much. We will probably be in touch again as we go through the scrutiny of the Bill. I appreciate your expertise.

Ms K Armstrong: Thank you very much, guys. Having been through the registration of some charities, I hope that this will make it a lot easier for them and for you.

In section 17 of the paper that you forwarded to us, some of the costings have been laid out. Can I just double-check that I am right in thinking that we will need to consider every one of those costs together for the commission to take forward the legislation? It comes to just under £1·5 million to get this running.

Ms McCandless: The lower figure for the people, so not the £621,000 but the £387,000, is closer to where we will end up if the Department is serious about the smoothing mechanism, because that was the expensive bit. That is why we would like to see it nipped out of the draft. It does not need to be there if we are all serious about going with that option. It is cheaper for charities, and it is cheaper for the public purse.

Ms K Armstrong: My other concern is that, in your response, you highlighted that, without appropriate investment, if the Bill were to go through as it currently stands, you would not be able to deliver that. I am thinking about what position the legislation could put the commission into legally if resourcing is not provided to match this.

Ms Ainslie McMullan (Charity Commission for Northern Ireland): It will put us in a difficult position. A lot of the powers that are being introduced are discretionary, so the commission would choose whether to use them. That might have an impact on how we regulate the sector. On the accounting, however, if there are provisions that would make life easier for charities and we do not bring them in, we can anticipate challenge, and quite rightly so. It is very difficult to predict that at this stage. We would choose what we would be able to implement within our powers and how we would be able to implement that. We may need to put a stop on that. It is about where the clauses that benefit charities come into it and how we develop our processes and IT. If that is not there, it leaves us in a bit of a limbo and it leaves charities in the same place.

Ms McCandless: If we cannot design and build the template that we are talking about — that very straightforward form for small charities — this will not be effected in real life. The regulations will be there saying, "This is what you're required to do", but, if we cannot build it, it will not work.

Ms K Armstrong: I will move on to something slightly different. Have you spoken to the Department about using the England and Wales definition in clause 2? Has the Department mentioned anything about amending that?

Ms McCandless: It has known our preference since day 1: we want to lift that language. We were close to doing that in the initial draft, but it was slightly broader. We have tightened it a lot more but are still left with the problematic language. Yes, the Department knows our view; we have certainly spoken to it about that. We think that the simplest thing to do would be to lift that wording. It is tried and tested.

Ms K Armstrong: It could be a straightforward enough amendment.

Ms McCandless: Absolutely.

Ms K Armstrong: The last one that I have is something that I have raised in previous conversations. Has the commission ever had to remove someone from employment?

Ms McCandless: We have never done that, for the reasons that you outlined in a previous session, and neither has it ever been done in England or Wales, although they have the same power to remove an employee.

Ms K Armstrong: I wonder whether there is any point in putting into law something that has not been used and that could end up putting the commission into difficulty with employment law and things such as that.

Ms McCandless: We are not putting anything into law. We already have that power. It is in the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008. It would mean making a further amendment to that, and there would be consequential changes — a ripple effect. What is being done in this Bill does not change the power that we already have, which we do not use and possibly will never use. You might need to do slightly bigger surgery if you were going to do away with that power. It is nothing that we have gone towards.

Ms K Armstrong: We would not want to touch it with a 10-foot bargepole, I think. Thank you very much.

Ms Mulholland: Thank you very much for coming along. One of my questions was going to be on that. It is one thing to be dealing with trustees, volunteers or board members, but the HR complications relating to employees are difficult. It is interesting that you have never used that power and that it has never been used in England and Wales.

I have a question on clause 8 and the Department's removal of the asset threshold. Can you think of any examples of charities that have an income of under £20,000 but assets significantly over that threshold? Why do you think that the Department has taken that element out? What is your assessment of that?

Ms McCandless: Only the Department can answer the last bit of your question, but, yes, there are organisations that have an income of under £20,000 and very large assets that would, under these arrangements, disappear from view in an audit or any kind of independent scrutiny. Fiona, will you give some more detail on that?

Ms Muldoon: Yes. There are probably a few examples, but not lots. The majority of charities have incomes, but there have been examples, however, of trusts that perhaps hold a building that is very valuable but do not have a lot of income. That is possible. Those charities are still required to report; they do not disappear from the register. They will still have to fill out basic financial information, but they will not have to have an independent examination. It is about striking the balance. There is a risk in not having the asset. Originally, it went out with the asset threshold to align with the registration threshold. The preference is that there would be a balance, because charities that have income below £20,000 and assets below £100,000 can opt to deregister with the separate registration legislation.

Having a reduced regime is really attractive, and that promotes transparency and compliance. From that perspective, it is better to have them on the register and reporting less, even if that means that there is no independent scrutiny, because the public can be the armchair auditor for you in some scenarios. However, yes, there is a risk with removing the asset threshold.

Ms McCandless: There is a risk with any of the changes. The more you simplify and reduce requirements, the more risk there is, but the balance is that small charities can get on with their work. There is always a bit of give and take with these things. On the one hand, there is a risk; on the other hand, there is a benefit. It is about the balance.

Ms Mulholland: We might have to tease that out with the Department to find out about its approach. I absolutely understand the balance. At the end of the day, the crux of this is trying to simplify processes, particularly for charities that are potentially at full capacity and are just trying to get on with, as you say, well-intentioned good work. We will maybe tease that out with the Department. Most of my other questions were covered by Kellie. Thanks so much.

Ms Muldoon: It might be worth noting that England and Wales operate similar reporting rules. That recently changed, but, previously, if income was under £25,000, you just had to submit an annual return. You did not have to have an independent examination or accounts and reports. England and Wales has recently increased all its thresholds so that, now, a charity with income under £40,000 does not have to do that. The model is elsewhere, and it is about striking the balance between reducing burden and accepting that there is some risk with that.

Ms Mulholland: Thanks.

Mr Allen: I will jump back to clause 2 and the issue related to the term "office-holder". You said that other jurisdictions do not currently have that in their legislation.

Ms McCandless: That is right.

Mr Allen: If the High Court does not provide sufficient clarity, what is the rationale for maintaining it?

Ms McCandless: I am not sure. That is a question for the Department. That is the problematic bit that we could easily change. There does not seem to be much of a rationale for retaining it when we have other options.

Mr Allen: At the moment, you get enquiries from office-holders, predominantly elected representatives, and you feel that you do not have sufficient clarity when it comes to the level of information that you can or cannot provide.

Ms McCandless: That is correct. There is a big risk of challenge to us in sharing information. We are very vulnerable in that regard. There is no need for it, because we could have certainty in the legislation.

Mr Allen: OK. When do you expect to have further clarity from the High Court?

Ms McCandless: We do not know. Ainslie wrote this week to the court office to say that the Committee is undertaking its deliberations now, and the judgement might be extremely beneficial for its consideration.

Mr Allen: It would be.

Ms McCandless: We have alerted the court to that.

Mr Allen: OK. I am seeking a point of clarity on official warnings. You specifically cited the failure to provide annual returns on time. There are challenges with that, and I am aware that it is notified on the commission's website. Can you talk me through this, if you have given thought to it? The legislation specifically references "duty" and "misconduct", but that would specifically be a duty on the trustees to file that annual return. Do you foresee there being a process that underpins that? Do you foresee an official warning being triggered automatically because that duty has not been fulfilled at the outset, or would you take a different approach?

Ms McCandless: No. Absolutely not. At the minute, we usually wait for multiple years. Fiona, do you want to talk about our process for that? We chase people, but they still ignore us for long periods.

Ms Muldoon: We do a lot of engagement because, sometimes, it is not as straightforward as that. The charity may have closed and not told us, so it is showing as being in default, but it is actually closed. We have to do a lot of work on the ground, and then it is about engaging. There may have been a change in trustees. Any use of powers for a default notice where there is an official warning will go through an escalation process. The charity will get reminders and default notices, and it then gets regulatory guidance, where we write to all the trustees in a hard copy, posted letter to say, "Do you know that you have not filed your accounts and reports?". Ultimately, the decision to issue a warning is for the commissioner, but there would be a risk framework and procedures developed, and we will do all that in consultation with stakeholders as we develop the secondary legislation [Inaudible.]

Mr Allen: An official warning that is published could have a profound impact on a charity, so we want to be satisfied that the process is clearly understood by charities and that the information is there so that individuals can be cognisant of the fact that, if they do not fulfil a requirement, they could end up with a warning, which could have a profound impact on the organisation. That is appropriate if we get to that stage, because the public need to have confidence that the commission can hold charities and trustees to account if they are not operating as they should.

Ms McCandless: That is it. It is visible on the register at the moment. You could be in default —

Mr Allen: It is in green or red on there.

Ms McCandless: — for 900 days or something, which is hugely damaging to the reputation of a charity. It is not the warning that is going to do the damage there but the public knowledge that that charity has been ignoring its legal obligations. However, we would never jump straight to that. It is good that the warning is structured in such a way that we have to tell the charity what we are going to do, and it gets the opportunity to tell us why we should not do it, or what it is that we do not know, even though, potentially, it will have had years of opportunity to do that, in the example that we are using here. There will always be that to and fro, however. We could decide not to go ahead with the warning, or we could change it. In this process, we have to set out our reasons and give the charity time to come back with its thoughts on that. There is a good safeguard built in, but you would never even be starting there; you would have had a whole process beforehand, whereby you have gradually been engaging with the charity. You would not be using the warning unless you had got to the point of non-cooperation.

Mr Allen: Perhaps the failure to consistently provide the annual return on time is something that is easily understood. Are there any other circumstances or situations where an official warning would be an appropriate tool?

Ms McCandless: Yes, definitely. In an investigations capacity, we get to a point, sometimes, where we escalate through self-regulatory guidance. We will investigate, and we will say to a charity, whose trustees largely want to get things right and want to work with us, "Here is what you need to do; go away and do it", and we will put it right. The next level up in seriousness is regulatory guidance, where we will say, "These are the things that we need you to do, and we will be coming back to check", and we will want to see evidence of what the charity has done. As I said earlier, there is a big gap, after which there is a statutory inquiry, which is a big test to meet and is damaging for all concerned. It uses up resources and can be damaging to the charity's reputation. In those instances, we have a warning power, which allows us to say, "You have not done any of the things that we have asked you to do, and this is what we are proposing". The charity has the chance to come back and engage with us yet again, but there will have been a lot of engagement before we ever get to that stage.

Mr Allen: I want to pivot briefly to the point that Kellie raised in the Second Stage debate on the Bill about the removal of an employee. You mentioned that that power is available in other jurisdictions but has not been used. Do you foresee a circumstance, if that power were available to the commission, in which you would use it? What sufficient safeguards would be put in place that it would not cut across employment law inappropriately, as Kellie referred to?

Ms McCandless: We already have that power, but we have not used it because of those complexities. All that the Bill does is to level up the fact that, if we have removed those people as employees, in the same way that we had, perhaps, removed them as trustees, they cannot pop up somewhere else as a trustee in another charity. That is all that the Bill does; it tidies things up and creates a level playing field between this category of removed person and another. The problem that you are identifying is contained in the 2008 Act, which already gives us the power to remove an employee. We have not exercised that because of those complexities.

Mr Allen: OK.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): Very briefly, Andy.

Mr Allen: Do you have any view on the situation as regards employees?

Ms McCandless: You would need to ask the Department about that, I think.

Mr Allen: OK, thanks.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): You came in late, Paul, so you will have to be very brief. We have used up most of our allocated time.

Mr Boggs: I will be very brief. Andy has covered a lot of the points that I wanted to talk about. It is not so much the warning that does the damage, but the length of time that it takes to go through the process. I want to ask you about the publication of warnings. Regardless of the charity itself, do you believe that those warnings are important for all charities across the board?

Ms McCandless: The good thing about actions that the public get to know about is that they help to promote trust and confidence in the rest of the sector. One of the primary reasons for having a regulator is to promote public trust and confidence in the charity sector as a whole. That comes from seeing that somebody is dealing with the bad cases. If that is obvious and is published, and people know that we are taking action — a lot of what we do is under the radar because we do not want to damage charities — it shows that we are willing and able to do so when problems are being dealt with. The promotion of public trust and confidence is absolutely key to setting up a regulator in the first place. That is to the benefit of all charities, because it means that people can trust them to get on with their work in the knowledge that the few bad apples are being dealt with.

Mr Allen: May I ask one more question very quickly? I want to ask you about the commission's regulatory approach to charity trustees. I am not sure whether I am getting the two things mixed up. I know that Companies House requires all current emails to be provided. Does the commission take a similar approach to charities having all of their current email addresses registered? I cannot remember whether I am mixing the two up.

Ms McCandless: On the annual monitoring return and at registration, we ask trustees to give us their individual email address. They used to give us one contact address for the charity, which tended to be a member of staff's address. When that person moved on, we were sending emails saying, "Your annual returns are due now", which were going into a defunct email inbox for two years. We want to be able to contact or talk directly to all the trustees cheaply, without having to post a letter to them, so we ask for those details.

Mr Allen: That is a requirement.

Ms McCandless: If a trustee does not have one, they are allowed to say so and give the charity's email address instead, but we need to be able to talk directly to trustees.

Mr Allen: That would help with communication, especially in writing to people.

Ms McCandless: Very much so.

Mr Allen: The commission can be doubly sure that it is reaching, hopefully, all the individuals who have a role in the organisation.

Ms McCandless: Precisely.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): Paul, I will check back in with you. Andy stole a bit of a march on me. He got out of the traps. That will not happen again if I can help it. Paul, have you finished?

Mr Boggs: Yes, I have finished. I was just going to thank the witnesses for their responses.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): Thank you. That was a really good session. You were really knowledgeable but made the information very accessible for members. It really illuminated the issues clearly. Thank you, and we look forward to engaging with you again.