Charity Commission Releases Updated Guidance For Fee-Charging Educational Charities

Following the defeat in the House of Lords of a proposed new clause in the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill 2015 enforcing certain public benefit obligations on independent schools, the Charity Commission has updated its public benefit guidance for fee-charging educational charities (including charitable independent schools, universities and colleges).

Peers had questioned the public benefit of charitable independent schools and argued that many of them could do more to share their facilities for sports, music and the art with maintained schools. An amendment was proposed which would require the Charity Commission to publish statutory guidance on the minimum that charitable independent schools must do. Nevertheless, the proposed amendment was defeated after the Charity Commission gave assurances that it would take a non-legislative approach. Lord Bridges for the government also highlighted that if particular duties in relation to public benefit were placed on one type of charity, it could lead to the same for other types of charities.

Following the defeat of the amendment, the Charity Commission published a letter to the Independent Schools Council (the 'ISC') stating that, whilst it disagreed with placing additional duties on particular types of charities, it did 'recognise the spirit of these proposals and the intentions behind them.' Accordingly, the Charity Commission promised to revise its guidance and publish independent research a year later to assess the impact of the guidance in increasing partnerships between charitable schools and the state sector.

The revised guidance encourages trustees of independent schools to comment on...