The Charity Commission has received its highest number of whistleblowing disclosures in the last nine years, with concerns of financial harms more than doubling in the past 12 months.
The regulator reported that it received 561 whistleblowing disclosures between April 2023 and March 2024, which was a 72% increase compared to the previous year when it received 327 disclosures.
According to its recently published report, three primary issues this year were governance failures, safeguarding and protecting people and financial harms, which remained the same in previous years.
Reports on financial harms increased the most from 62 last year to 128 this year, while reports on safeguarding came in next with an increase from 81 last year to 104 this year.
Other issues raised this year include conflicts of interest, dispute, reputational damage, GDPR breach and public benefit.
Most of the disclosures, 54%, were from employees and ex-employees, representing 179 and 124 disclosures respectively, while 46% were from non-employees, consisting of 258 disclosures.
The regulator opened a case on 471 out of the 561 disclosures, while the rest of the disclosures were already subjected to an open case in the same period.
Complaints from the public rise by 50%
Outside of the whistleblowing disclosures it received, the regulator also reported that complaints from the public, reports from charity trustees, auditors and independent examiners increased in 2023-24.
Complaints from the public to the regulator about charities increased by 50% in 2023-24, from 2,086 to 3,131 complaints.
Meanwhile, auditors and independent examiners’ disclosures to the regulator rose by 10%, from 431 reports to 475 reports.
The regulator also received 5% more serious incident reports from charity trustees last year, increasing from 2,969 to 3,106 reports.
Commenting on the figures taken together, the regulator said it was unclear why there had been a rise in concerns about the charities registered with it.
“The exact reasons for this are unclear but we know from our own research that in a challenging financial environment post-Covid and with inflation and cost of living pressures all impacting on the sector, this may be why we are seeing more demand on charities and therefore more complaints coming to us as the regulator,” the report states.
Charities urged to invest in whistleblowing systems
Andrew Pepper-Parsons, director of policy and communications at Protect, a whistleblowing charity, told Civil Society: “The fact that staff are willing to raise concerns where things are going on, I think is a really good thing in and of itself.”
But when people are reporting to the regulator instead of raising concerns to the charities internally is a “worrying" sign, Pepper-Parsons said.
Charity leaders need to evaluate whether they have invested enough in their internal whistleblowing system to have a safe environment for staff to raise concerns, he said.
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