The Charity Commission has launched a statutory inquiry into The Order of Friars Minor Conventual.
The charity was registered in 1966 to carry out activities which advance the religious and other charitable work delivered by the Order of Friars.
The Charity Commission has escalated its engagement with the charity to a statutory inquiry after trustees repeatedly failed to file accounts or conduct a review of the charity's accounting processes. The Commission exercised its powers to direct the charity to complete these as part of a double defaulter class inquiry which the charity entered into in January 2023.
While the charity did submit overdue accounts for Financial Year Ending (FYE) December 2020 and 2021 this year, accounts for 2022 and 2023 remain outstanding.
The inquiry will examine the following charity regulatory issues:
the extent to which the trustees are complying with their legal duties in respect of the administration, governance and management of the charity with particular regard to:
their statutory accounting and reporting responsibilities and financial management
the adequacy of the trustees' oversight of the charity's operation and activities.
The Commission may extend the scope of the inquiry if additional regulatory issues emerge.
It is the Commission's policy, after it has concluded an inquiry, to publish a report detailing what issues the inquiry looked at, what actions were undertaken as part of the inquiry and what the outcomes were.
