The Board of the Charity Commission has decided to add the issue of environmental responsibility to its guidance document “The Hallmarks of an Effective Charity (CC10)”.
The inclusion of environmental responsibility and sustainability in Charity Commission guidance is particularly relevant for facilities managers. It is good that the Charities Facilities Management Group has been looking at sustainability almost from when we started 10 years ago. We had Charity Commission speakers give a presentation on charities and environmental responsibility at our last conference, and hopefully we had some influence on them! The board decided that the subject of climate change should not be addressed the guidance. It will refer only to environmental responsibility and action to promote sustainability. The Commission said it was keen to reflect the “existing good practice” already being adopted by many charities.
The Commission said the board had decided that any guidance should not dictate how charities fulfil these aims, as “charities are themselves best placed to decide what their response should be”. The board wanted to ensure that smaller charities did not feel they were having a new burden placed upon them.
