At Blake Lapthorn our Charities group can advise you on all
aspects of charity law. Please view the links below for further
information or on the left hand side for other areas of law that we
can advise charities on.
constitutions and governance
For many charities their vision and values demand that they have
an effective constitutional and corporate structure and that they
maintain the highest standards of corporate
governance. Our experienced team of charity
lawyers provide constitutional and governance advice of the
highest standards for a wide range of charities including
organisations such as The Mary Rose Trust, Portsmouth Diocese,
Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution, RNLI, Mission to
Seafarers, Sailors' Society, a number of Oxford Colleges, Thames
Valley Hospice, Rainer Crime Concern, the Royal Navy Submarine
Museum, the General Optical Council and HMS Trincomalee.
Our charity lawyers have substantial experience in advising
chartered and other large charities in work involving large scale
reviews and restructuring of their constitutional and governance
arrangements, advising and briefing trustee bodies on changes to
law and practice affecting governance, and advising on specific
constitutional and governance issues.
In our experience, a constitutional review can
be expensive and protracted if it is not well managed. We provide a
fresh thinking, efficient service to achieve the highest quality
outcome. We offer a specially developed project management tool for
reviewing your charter and bye-laws and other governance documents.
This provides an organised framework for setting timescales,
milestones, and benchmarks, implementation and cost
control.
back to top>>
legacies
Legacy income is an ever
increasing source of funding for charities. Securing a donor pledge
can be time consuming and requires tact yet it is only the
beginning of a long process to ensure that the full amount left by
the donor is actually received by your charity. Our charity
legacy solicitors are one of a handful of teams in the country
able to offer expertise and advice on a full range of legacy
services including:
- legacy fundraising and charitable giving
- legacy administration and legacy disputes
- problem Wills and estates
- professional negligence
- trust administration
- property issues
- business sales
- foreign estates
- tax.
In addition to the above services, we also use
other advisers within the firm on an ad hoc basis. For example, the
legacy administration team recently called on experts from our
Employment Law team to advise on redundancy and TUPE issues arising
from a probate sale of shares in a private company. Other practice
areas we have used include intellectual property issues (literary
rights are the most common to arise), members of the Pensions team,
the Insolvency team and Corporate team.
Each month, we run, in
conjunction with the Institute of Legacy
Management (ILM), legacy workshops either in London, Oxford
or Southampton providing an excellent opportunity to find out about
the latest hot topics and legal issues, share experiences and draw
insights from other legacy professionals.
back to
top>>
dealing with the Charity Commission
For lawyers working within
the voluntary sector, the primary regulator is of course the
Charity Commission. Our charity lawyers regular deal with the
Charity Commission and we know a number of Commission staff
through our work. This gives us access at a number of levels
to help us achieve results on time or to avoid pitfalls where
necessary. We are fully familiar with the Senior Liaison
officer role in the Charity Commission's Large Charities Unit.
We strive to achieve a
businesslike but respectful relationship with the Commission staff
in order to achieve our clients' objectives. We have found a
straightforward approach that sets out the requirement clearly,
indicates when and why timescales may be tight, and a realistic
understanding of constraints on both sides, is most productive.
Recent examples of our
dealings with the Charity Commission include an application for the
transfer of small trusts and funds into general funds and the
release of permanent endowment under provisions introduced to the
Charities Act 1993 by the Charities Act 2006 and a Section 8
Inquiry into a question of remuneration of a charity Chief
Executive.
back to top>>
trustee issues
The effectiveness and commitment of any
charity's trustee body is critical to its success. Trustees must
have the skills and attributes that will best serve the
organisation. They must be effectively recruited and inducted and
have a framework of training support, accountability, terms of
reference and role descriptions that help them to stay highly
motivated while recognising that their time is voluntarily
given.
If issues do arise in
relation to trustees, our charity lawyers can help. We have advised
on:
- the management of conflicts of interest (and
supporting documentation)
- a trustee performing below standard and the
eventual removal of a trustee
- trustee disagreements as to policy
- governance dysfunction arising from failure to
understand the different roles of the board and the executive
In addition we also provide an on-going programme
of trustee induction
and refresher training designed to help your
charity comply with best practice to induct and refresh trustees.
Informative and interactive, our training courses are run in
Southampton, Oxford and London. For larger organisations, we may be able
to run in-house training. Please get in touch with us to find out
more.
comments about our trustee training
"Thank you very much for Tuesday’s event. It was
expertly arranged, and you did a great job of presenting
complicated material and also handling numerous questions and
comments.
This was time and money well spent, and it
confirmed my impression that you are a seriously good bunch of
people!"
James Heywood, Board Member, Oxford
Overseas Student Housing Association Limited
back to
top>>
benevolent loans
The securing and granting of benevolent loans can be a legal
minefield. We can provide a comprehensive review of a charity's
current lending procedures, practice and documentation to ensure
that loans are properly secured without breaching the numerous laws
and regulations governing this area. We also provide an outsourcing
service that removes the burden of charities having to deal with
payments from beneficiaries and general communication with
them.
back to
top>>
charity shops and trading
Our Charities team
offers a comprehensive service for charity shops and regularly
advise aid charities, hospices, animal welfare charities, student
unions, museums and heritage shops on the following:
back to
top>>
charity property
Our charity clients include organisations with one property and
those with numerous properties. The work our charity lawyers
do centres around property development and construction as well
as the usual sale/purchase/leasing arrangements. Where properties
are investment properties we deal again with sales and purchases
and all the usual management matters of licences to
assign/underlet/alter as well as lease renewals and dealing with
any debt
collection or other landlord and tenant dispute resolution.
back to top>>
funding and tax
Our charity lawyers can help charities and donors to achieve tax
efficiency in their projects and donations.
back to
top>>
