Charity Commission Cases Show Cost of Poor Speaker Vetting

Why this matters now

In the space of a few weeks in 2025, the Charity Commission for England and Wales issued formal interventions against three separate charities over their handling of speakers and public statements at events. Taken together, these cases mark the clearest signal yet that the regulator sees speaker vetting not as good practice but as a core trustee duty — and that failing to have a policy in place is, in itself, a governance failure the Commission will act on.

For charities that regularly host talks, panels, community events or conferences, the message from these cases is consistent: know who you are putting on a platform, have a documented process for deciding, and be prepared to show your working if asked.

Islamic Centre of England: from warning to a Section 84 order

The most serious and longest-running of the recent cases involves the Islamic Centre of England (ICE) in London. According to the Charity Commission, the charity hosted events in 2020 eulogising Major General Qasem Soleimani, an individual subject to UK sanctions. The Commission issued an Official Warning that year.

A follow-up review in 2021 found only partial compliance, prompting the Commission to issue an Action Plan that also flagged website content and trustee conflicts of interest. When ICE continued to fall short, the Commission opened a statutory inquiry under section 46 of the Charities Act 2011 on 14 November 2022. An Interim Manager was appointed in May 2023, and the charity's premises were temporarily closed for several weeks that year.

The inquiry escalated further: on 16 May 2025, the Commission issued a direction under section 84 of the Charities Act 2011 requiring ICE's trustees to "provide rigorous oversight of future speakers and online activity" and to ensure that "all religious services, speakers and events further the objects of the charity." According to reporting by the Jewish Chronicle and Third Sector, this followed continued online material praising Ayatollah Khamenei and events involving speakers reported to have made statements sympathetic to sanctioned or extremist figures. The inquiry remains open as of the most recent Commission update.

This is, on the public record, the clearest example of the regulator formally and legally mandating speaker oversight at a named charity.

Two mosques warned over unvetted speeches in 2025

In May and June 2025, the Commission issued Official Warnings to the Mosque and Islamic Centre of Brent and the Central Oxford Mosque Society, in both cases citing a lack of effective speaker or content policies.

At the Brent charity, the Commission reviewed five speeches delivered between November and December 2023 and found four contained content it described as "inflammatory and divisive," with two allegedly encouraging support for Hamas, a proscribed organisation, and one discouraging democratic participation. The Commission's finding, according to its own published statement, was that the charity had no effective speaker-management policies in place.

Separately, Central Oxford Mosque Society was warned over social media content posted in October and November 2023, around the time of the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, which the Commission judged "divisive and inflammatory" and outside the charity's stated purposes. The Commission noted the charity had no social media policy at the time.

Both Official Warnings — issued 7 May 2025 for Brent and 13 June 2025 for Oxford — required the charities to adopt and implement speaker-management and social media policies, which both reportedly did. Stephen Roake, an Assistant Director at the Commission, was quoted in the regulator's statement saying: "Charities are expected to bring people together, not to stoke further division."

An older but instructive case: Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh UK

A 2015 ITV documentary, Charities Behaving Badly, filmed a speaker at a Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh UK youth camp for beneficiaries as young as 13 making remarks the Commission later described as "particularly objectionable and anti-Islamic." The Commission's subsequent inquiry found that trustees had "failed to follow their own procedures and had not properly screened speakers."

The inquiry concluded there was insufficient evidence the views expressed were endemic within the charity, and it closed without formal sanction after trustees reviewed and strengthened their policies. It remains one of the earliest documented examples of the Commission treating unscreened speakers as a governance failure in its own right, distinct from the content of what was said.

What the Commission's own guidance says

The relevant official guidance sits in Chapter 5 of the Commission's compliance toolkit, "Protecting charities from abuse for extremist purposes," updated in November 2018 specifically to help charities that regularly host events. It sets out that trustees should have clear risk-assessment and decision-making policies for inviting speakers, with defined criteria for flagging a speaker as a cause for concern.

The guidance specifically directs charities to carry out due diligence checks on speakers and partner organisations, including checks against the Home Office's list of proscribed organisations and the OFSI list of designated persons and entities subject to financial sanctions. In higher-risk cases, it recommends obtaining and assessing the content of a speech in advance, and documenting the reasoning behind speaker decisions, particularly where a booking is controversial.

The Commission also maintains a regulatory alerts collection on GOV.UK, where it flags emerging risks to the sector, alongside the wider compliance toolkit covering due diligence, monitoring of funds, and fraud.

• Chapter 5: Protecting charities from abuse for extremist purposes — GOV.UK compliance toolkit
• Chapter 2: Due diligence, monitoring and verifying the end use of charitable funds
• Regulatory alerts collection — Charity Commission

The practical takeaway for trustees

Across these cases, the common thread is not the content of any single speech but the absence of a documented process. The Commission has repeatedly found charities at fault not solely for what a speaker said, but for having no policy, no screening step, and no record of due diligence having been done at all.

For event organisers and trustees, that means a written speaker policy, a documented decision trail, and basic checks against sanctions and proscribed-organisation lists are no longer optional extras — they are what the regulator now expects to see as a matter of course. Structured screening tools such as CharityScreen can support that process by providing a documented, repeatable check against exactly this kind of risk.