Can the Charity Commission remove the Charitable Status of Alternative Health Charities?
23 May 2017
Last update: 23/05/17 16:42
You might have read in the press recently that the Charity Commission has commenced a consultation about the continued registration as charities of complementary and alternative health charities. This raises a question as to whether their charitable status can be removed? It was in response to this question that I wrote my book “The Law of Charitable Status: Maintenance and Removal”. My book explains why the Charity Commission has very limited powers in this respect. Representatives of the Charity Commission have confirmed that they agree with the findings in my book and the book has been cited in Parliamentary debates on the topic.
Crucially the Charity Commission is not a law making body. It has a duty to follow the law. This means when registering and removing charities from the register of charities it must follow the law in the form of legislation and court decisions. Even in rare circumstances where the court decides that a charity is no longer charitable because the purpose has become dated, the court and the Charity Commission have a duty to apply the property of the former charity for charitable purposes. Therefore even if the charity ceases to be charitable its property will continue to be applied for charitable purposes. Again the court has made it clear that this should rarely be the case.
The Charity Commission decided to carry out this consultation due to pressure from the Good Thinking Society which threatened it with judicial review if it did not remove some alternative medicine charities from the register on the basis that they did not provide public benefit. Public benefit is part of the law of charitable status and although the Charity Commission must provide guidance on public benefit it is bound by the law as decided by decisions of the court. Therefore if the Charity Commission does decide to remove charities from the register it must tread carefully as it will run the risk of an appeal to the Charity tribunal.
Share your views with the author of “The Law of Charitable Status: Maintenance and Removal”:
Robert Meakin
Partner
Charity & Social Enterprise Team
Stone King
Telephone: +44 (0)1223 612077
Email: RobertMeakin@stoneking.co.uk
Related Posts
The Meaning of ‘Slavery’ and its Consequences
The 1926 Slavery Convention fixed the definition of the term ‘slavery’ in international law. Article 1 (1) of the Convention states that ‘slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised’. This definition was accepted by the European Court […]
Ecuador’s Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic – Now updated
From time to time, until the crisis has passed, the HEPL blog series authors will be given the opportunity to provide short updates on their country/region’s continuing response to this worldwide catastrophe and their further reflections on those responses. Each update will be labelled accordingly with the original response at the bottom of each post. […]
Harmonious Construction and the International Law Allegory in India
Introduction The debate on whether international law can be considered as true ‘law’ has been unremitting, with no definite answer to the bindingness of international law. This paper analyses a contemporary constitutional practice—and tries to look at the way in which the Indian Supreme Court (“SC”) has applied the doctrine of ‘harmonious construction’ to incorporate […]
Cambridge Studies in Law and Christianity
Over the past two generations, a major new field of law and religion field study has emerged, involving more than 1500 scholars around the globe. They are studying the religious dimensions of law, the legal dimensions of religion, and the interaction of legal and religious ideas and institutions, methods and practices — historically and today. […]
;
