Serious Incident Reporting for Charities

Serious incident reporting is the duty on charity trustees to tell the Charity Commission, promptly, when something serious has gone wrong, or is alleged to have gone wrong, in their charity. It sits alongside dealing with the incident itself, not instead of it.

The Charity Commission regulates charities in England and Wales, and it expects trustees to be open with it when serious problems arise. Reporting shows that trustees are managing the situation responsibly and lets the regulator decide whether it needs to take any action.

The headline point is simple. If an adverse event causes, or risks, significant harm to people, significant loss of money or assets, or significant damage to property or reputation, the trustees should report it promptly and explain how they are handling it.

Getting this right protects the people connected to your charity and protects the trustees too.

The Charity Commission sets out the duty and the process in its guidance on how to report a serious incident in your charity, which trustees should read before they need it.

What counts as a serious incident

A serious incident is an adverse event, whether actual or alleged, that results in or risks one of three things. It can be significant harm to beneficiaries, staff, volunteers or others who come into contact with the charity through its work.

It can also be significant loss of the charity's money or assets, for example through theft, fraud or a major financial error. Or it can be significant damage to the charity's property or to its reputation.

The word that matters throughout is significant. Trustees have to judge whether an event is serious enough to report, and that judgement should consider the size and nature of the charity as well as the event itself.

Allegations count, not only proven facts. Trustees should not wait for an investigation to conclude before deciding whether something is reportable, because the risk of significant harm can be present from the start.

The duty to report promptly

Trustees should report serious incidents to the Commission promptly. Prompt reporting means as soon as is reasonably possible after the trustees become aware of the incident, not after it has been fully resolved.

A good report does two things. It describes what happened, and it explains how the trustees are handling the incident, including the steps they are taking to protect people, recover assets or limit further damage.

Trustees remain collectively responsible for this duty even where day to day management is delegated to staff. Having a clear internal route for raising concerns to the trustee board helps make sure incidents reach the people who must decide whether to report.

Who can report

The responsibility to report rests with the charity's trustees, because trustees are responsible for the charity's governance and for compliance with charity law. In practice a report is often submitted by a trustee, a senior member of staff or a professional adviser acting on the trustees' behalf.

What matters is that the report is made promptly and accurately, and that the trustees are satisfied it has been made. A named lead, such as the chair or a designated safeguarding trustee, can take ownership so nothing falls between roles.

Safeguarding incidents and the crime reference number

Trustees have a duty to take reasonable steps to protect from harm everyone who comes into contact with the charity. Safeguarding incidents are among the most important to handle correctly, and they often need to be reported to more than one body.

Where a safeguarding incident may involve a crime, it should be reported to the police as well as the Commission. The trustees should obtain a crime reference number from the police, which records that the matter has been reported and can be referenced in the serious incident report.

Reporting to the police and the Commission does not remove the need to support the people affected and to follow the charity's own safeguarding procedures. These steps run together, not one after another.

Quick reference: who and where to report

Situation	Report to	Note
Significant harm or risk of harm to people	Charity Commission	Report promptly and explain how you are handling it
Safeguarding incident that may be a crime	Police and Charity Commission	Obtain a crime reference number from the police
Significant loss of money or assets	Charity Commission	Include theft, fraud and major financial error
Significant damage to property or reputation	Charity Commission	Judge significance against the charity's size and nature
Personal data breach	Information Commissioner's Office	UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 apply separately

What trustees must do

1. Recognise what counts as a serious incident, so the board knows the threshold before an event occurs.
2. Act first to protect people, secure assets and limit further damage as soon as an incident comes to light.
3. Report promptly to the Charity Commission, describing what happened and how the trustees are handling it.
4. Contact the police for any safeguarding incident that may involve a crime, and obtain a crime reference number.
5. Record the incident, the decisions taken and the dates of reporting, so the trustees can show what they did.
6. Review what went wrong afterwards and update policies and controls to reduce the chance of it happening again.

Common mistakes

• Waiting until an investigation has concluded before reporting, when the duty applies to alleged incidents too.
• Treating reporting as an admission of failure rather than a sign that trustees are managing the situation properly.
• Reporting a safeguarding matter to the Commission but not to the police, or failing to obtain a crime reference number.
• Leaving the decision to a single staff member without bringing it to the trustee board.
• Having no written procedure, so staff and volunteers do not know how to escalate a concern quickly.
• Forgetting that personal data breaches engage separate rules and a separate regulator.

How Policy Pros can help

We write bespoke charity policies that make serious incident reporting straightforward, so trustees know the threshold, the route and the records they need before anything goes wrong. Our charity policies and procedures service sets up a clear escalation process tied to your charity's activities and size. The wider set of trustee duties is covered in the Charity Commission's guidance publications.

A serious incident procedure works best alongside the policies that prevent incidents in the first place. We can pair it with your charity safeguarding policy and your charity risk management policy, and with your dedicated serious incident reporting policy.

If you are setting up your governance from scratch, our charity policies and annual return guide shows how serious incident reporting fits into the wider compliance picture the Charity Commission expects. Speak to us about a tailored policy pack for your charity.