UK Stewardship Code updated

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has responded to the criticisms of the UK Stewardship Code levelled by Sir John Kingman.  The revised Code incorporates environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors for the first time, encouraging signatories to take material ESG issues, including climate change, into account when fulfilling their stewardship responsibilities.

Deterioration in quality of charity accounts

The Charity Commission has reported a continued deterioration in the quality of charity accounts. 

Board evaluation forms a part of an underpinning governance process for which we use the acronym BREAD!  That is:

Board;
Recruitment;
Evaluation;
And
Development.

The board, its composition and evaluation of performance is central to excellent governance.  The evaluation component of this process is there to ensure that four key objectives are met:

  1. Board members views are sought on where they feel they have knowledge gaps and how these can be filled;
  2. How the Board works collectively.  A Board of individual great people does not necessarily make a great Board;
  3. Determining if there are any barriers to performing well and how these might be removed;
  4. Establishing the basis of any future recruitment to ensure that the Board has the right balance of skills to fulfill its obligations.

There is an increased focus on Board performance, particularly on those organisations operating in regulated sectors, with many regulators now insisting that a regular evaluation is carried out.

We assist clients with Board evaluation in a number of ways:

  • Design questionnaires using a pool of questions we have developed and provide access to participants through our online portal;
  • Support Chairs in facilitating 1-2-1 interviews with evaluation participants;
  • Undertake training needs assessments;
  • Operate an end to end evaluation and development process;
  • Develop and operate a Board induction process.

The accounting services offer to charities represent value for money and offer functionality often found only in larger organisations or with in-house teams. 

Our offering is straightforward and is based on the two factors: scale of operations and scope of service.  All accountancy is undertaken in Xero, our accounting system of choice.  Should you require direct access to Xero, we would require to add in the cost of a Xero subscription.  Our basic service includes:

  • Processing of all bank transactions;
  • Production of management accounts;
  • Timely reporting; where data is received by the 7th calendar day following the end of the reporting period we will report by the 14th calendar day.

We operate in tiers representing an average number of bank transactions:

Number of bank transactions

0-50 

51-100 

101-150 

151-200 

200+ 

Cost (plus VAT)

£110 

£135

£155

£175

By quotation 

We also offer the following add-on services:

  • Purchase invoice collection and scanning;
  • Purchase ledger;
  • Income invoicing;
  • Time recording;
  • Production of statutory accounts.

We have all observed or taken part in strategy days which are mechanical, non-yielding and dull. 

Strategy days, to deliver value, need to be insightful, interesting and be good fun.  We believe our approach delivers the right balance of seriousness and good humour to help you develop a strategic plan which within a matter of hours sets out where you are, where you wish to be and in broad terms how you will get there.  As a part of the process you will develop analysis of your organisation strategic and operating environments together with an appraisal of the principal risks to achieving your newly honed objectives.

This is your strategy.  We are there to facilitate its development, and although we will run the session and prepare much of the paperwork, we need you to do the thinking.  Our approach to strategic planning follows a tried and tested method using:

  • group games;
  • breakout sessions; and
  • individual work,

which are based around:

  • celebrity pitches;
  • perfect endgame and black swan scenarios;
  • brainstorming; and
  • analytical techniques. 

The output from the session(s) will be a short, up to 12 page, editorialised document which will set out the fundamentals of your strategy which can be used with principal stakeholders without further change.

Subcategories

Business Support

Investigations