Where’s the public benefit of subsidising the education of wealthy children? Asks Nicholas Hancox
The advancement of education has been recognised in statute as a charitable activity since the Statute of Charitable Uses 1601. The Charities Act 2006 (ChaA 2006) is the current incarnation of the 1601 law and what is new in the Act is the public benefit test (expected to be in force in March 2008) under which the “advancement of education” may fail to retain its charitable status if it produces insufficient public benefit as that term is defined, not in ChaA 2006, but at common law. The Charity Commission is expressly charged with a duty to draw attention to the operation of the new public benefit test (ChaA 2006, s 7, prospectively inserting a new s 1B into the Charities Act 1993) and the commission has started already, issuing a full-scale consultation document, Draft Public Benefit Guidance, last year and the first tranche of official guidance, Charities and Public Benefit, earlier this month. More guidance will be issued (after consultation) later in 2008 on charities which
