Northern Ireland’s communities minister, Deirdre Hargey, has commissioned an independent review of charity regulation, after court rulings meant many decisions were invalid.
The Charity Commission for Northern Ireland (CCNI) was established in 2013.
Courts have ruled that only board members, not staff, at the regulator have the power to make key decisions, rendering many of CCNI’s decisions to date invalid.
Last year the Court of Appeal upheld a decision made by the High Court last year in the case of McKee & Others v Charity Commission for Northern Ireland. This declared that the CCNI board could not delegate decision-making to members of staff.
Since then, interim arrangements were put in place at CCNI, but the regulator warned that it could not process the same volume of work now that board members needed to be more involved.
It also meant the regulator had to remove decision reports from its website and the register of removed trustees “for consideration”.
The review began this week and runs until the end of this month. It will look at Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008 and the roles of the Charity Commission and the Department for Communities.
The panel comprises of professor Oonagh Breen, University College Dublin, Dr Lesley Carroll, Prisoners’ Ombudsman NI and Noel Lavery, former permanent secretary, most recently at the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland.
They are inviting people to attend webinars and fill out an online survey sharing their views on charity regulator.
The review will then make recommendations about changes to the regulatory framework to the minister this summer.
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