Charity Commission addresses Kids Company judgment

The collapse of Kids Company remains a pivotal moment in discussions surrounding charity governance and public trust. Today’s High Court judgment has upheld our finding of mismanagement of the charity’s finances and has confirmed that it was based on “ample evidence”. Furthermore, the judgment firmly rejected allegations we predetermined the outcome of the inquiry, stating the threshold for this was “not met in this case by a wide margin”.

The court has confirmed it was entirely reasonable for the Commission to have drawn independent regulatory conclusions on the demise of Kids Company, based on all the evidence available, in keeping with the role Parliament has set us. In its judgment, the court noted that the inquiry report took care to point out areas in which the charity’s trustees were acting within their duties, as well as identifying where external criticism lacked foundation. Our inquiry report stated clearly there was “no dishonesty, bad faith or inappropriate personal gain in the operation of the charity”.

Although the court dismissed the challenge on all but two grounds, and affirmed that the comprehensive findings of our report were not ‘irrational’, it also acknowledged that we made significant errors concerning two specific paragraphs. We are committed to acting on this finding to ensure the integrity of our processes moving forward.