The purpose of our regulatory work is to ensure that charities comply with their legal obligations. If something does go wrong in a charity we expect the trustees to take responsibility for putting things right and if necessary, to work with us to achieve this.

In some instances, where we have regulatory concerns and need to take action, we may achieve the best impact by providing corrective regulatory advice and guidance to put the charity back on a secure footing. In the most serious cases of abuse we may open a statutory inquiry.

We publish the results of our Inquiries and some of our Regulatory Cases.  We also make clear what information we provide about live investigations.

Publishing the outcomes and wider lessons from our investigations and other regulatory work is an important way of helping trustees to comply with their legal obligations and helping them to protect their charities against abuse. Themes and lessons learnt from our regulatory compliance work contains our Charities Back on Track reports which summarise, on an annual basis, the themes and wider issues for charities arising from our regulatory compliance work. The case studies can help improve trustees' awareness of the common problems that can arise in charities, and provide guidance on how to avoid similar situations from happening in theirs.

We raise awareness of particular risks facing charities as they come to our attention by publishing Alerts and Warnings on our website.

When using our legal powers as regulator, we make a wide range of decisions.  These decisions can range from whether or not to register an organisation as a charity, through to decisions about making legal Schemes and exercising our remedial and protective powers when dealing with cases of suspected abuse or mismanagement in charities. You can view details of certain decisions which we publish because they concern points of law, are novel, significant or otherwise of wider interest.