Delivering the opening address at ICAEW’s Charity Conference, David Holdsworth said increases in demand for services provided by charities was putting the Charity Commission under increasing pressure.

In the year to April 2025, the sector’s net income grew to just under £100bn and the Commission received a record 9,836 applications to register charities, up nine per cent on the previous year. This highlighted resilience of the sector even though pressures including increased demand for services, the rising cost of employing staff, and the impact of inflation on the value of funding had not eased in the last 12 months.

“We will be recruiting 80 new officials into the organisation over the next 12 months. That's about a 23% uplift in our headcount, so it will make a difference.” However, he warned that the complexity of charity law meant it will take a while to get those new recruits up to speed and train them, “so there won't be an immediate impact.” 

Holdsworth said an exponential increase in headcount was not enough. “We have to use technology to improve our capacity and our capability. So there will be investment in our technology and our digital services over the next three years as well.”

The regulator is already trialling the use of AI in analytics. Holdsworth said proposals for the use of AI for automatic assessment of data to flag anomalies would be issued shortly. The mass capability of AI would allow the Charity Commission to interrogate and flag data at a macro level, allowing the regulator to intervene proactively and support charities “before it starts to go horribly wrong.” 

The Treasury’s most recent spending review settlement included a 27% rise in the Charity Commission’s budget in 2026-27 to £37.9m from the £29.8m earmarked for the current financial year. “The funding we have got, although small in the scheme of government funding, will make a massive difference to us and to the sector,” Holdsworth said.

However, Holdsworth warned that the complexity of the charity landscape meant many charities faced existential challenges. The Commission’s first ever charity sector risk assessment, published in September, highlighted risks to financial resilience as the most pressing concerns facing the sector. 

To help charities respond to these pressures, Holdsworth said the next wave of the Commission’s Trustee Finances campaign is due to launch next month. And following publication of the new Charities SORP 2026 for reporting periods starting on or after 1 January 2026, template guidance for charities is being worked on and should be made available “in the coming months.” 

Meanwhile, Holdsworth said plans were afoot to consult with the sector for further ways to reduce the burden on smaller charities. In particular, although the SORP consultation showed sector support for the concept of tiering and thresholds, there was no agreement on how they should work in practice. “We're going to work with you over the next 12 months to see how we can carry on that journey of reducing the burden in a sensible and proportionate way,” Holdsworth said.

Holdsworth also confirmed that the Charity Commission is currently engaging with government on a trustee verification process – although he warned that it remained a long way off from coming into force.

“I'll be frank, if we don't introduce some form of trustee verification, we leave ourselves open to fraud and abuse. We are now the only part of government where you can set up a corporate entity without having your identity verified. That comes with all sorts of risks.”

Banking challenges consistently emerge as an issue facing charities and Holdsworth said he recognised that trustee verification was part of that challenge. He said the Commission wanted to learn from the lesson of Companies House. But it was important to introduce a process that was robust and that didn’t put trustees off. 

“We don't have the legislation to be able to mandate [trustee verification], so we're a long way away from being able to introduce it, but we are starting that thinking.”