Charities SORP

Meeting of the Charities SORP-making body

Conference call - 8 January 2021

Present:

Joint Chairs:
Laura Anderson, Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR)
Nigel Davies, Charity Commission England and Wales (CCEW)
Damian Sands, Charity Commission for Northern Ireland (CCNI)

In attendance as observer(s):
Jenny Carter, Financial Reporting Council (FRC)
Jelena Griscenko, Charities Regulator (CR)

Purpose of the meeting:

The meeting was convened to consider some matters of administration in maintaining the SORP site, the constructive challenge from the trustees strand to sense check how best to analyse the feedback, agree the next steps in taking forward the engagement process and consider the time and resource implications for 2021. The second part of the meeting considered matters regarding the CIPFA contract.

Agreed actions from the meeting:

• Having considered the points raised by the trustee strand, the approach taken by FRS 102 and the original recruitment pack, agreed to continue with our original approach to analyse the feedback by general purpose reader of the reports and the accounts separately from the preparers and users of the SORP.
• Agreed not to constrain the engagement strands with a particular format for their feedback but for framing the two reports summarising the feedback from the engagement process we do need a framework to assist both the convenors and the SORP Committee consider the next steps (CCNI to consider initial headings).
• Agreed to schedule two calls, one to settle the headings for the two reports and a second to consider the first draft prior to sharing with the engagement strands (CCEW to arrange).
• Recapped on meeting planned: Engagement convenors 4 February (to settle feedback), SORP Committee 16 February (reader perspective), SORP Committee 23 February (preparer perspective), SORP Committee- convenor call 8 March (to settle topics for the reflection stage).
• To inform a joint meeting of the charity regulators a briefing paper on the progress so far and the resource ask based on our experience of the new development process (OSCR to draft).
• SORP site updates in hand to clarify handling of subject access requests. Outstanding are the SORP site reprogramming, archive review, and posting the research papers. COVID examples are also in hand.
• CIPFA contract considered and the decision was made to approach CIPFA regarding our exercising the option under the contract to extend the contract term.