The Bristol-based charity operates to relieve the needs of disabled people, people with life limiting illnesses and their families through the provision of grants and other financial support for life-changing operations. It was registered with the Commission in 2016 and has not so far filed accounts.

The Commission engaged with the charity in August 2017 following complaints from members of the public. These complainants, who included the families of beneficiaries of the charity, raised concerns about difficulties they had faced in communicating with the charity and accessing funds that had been raised on behalf of their family members to pay for medical procedures.

The Commission says it has also experienced difficulties in communicating with the charity, and has therefore been unable to adequately address a number of regulatory concerns identified through the public complaints and by way of the Commission’s own scrutiny.

The inquiry will examine the administration, governance and management of the charity by the trustees. It will be looking specifically at the extent to which the trustees have acted in the charity’s best interests and in accordance with their duties and responsibilities under charity law; responsibly managed the charity’s resources and financial affairs; and worked to avoid or manage conflicts of interests.

The inquiry will also consider the extent to which the charity operates in furtherance of its charitable purposes for the public benefit, and look at and to what extent any issues or weaknesses in the administration of the charity were a result of misconduct and/or mismanagement by the trustees.

The Commission stresses that opening an inquiry is not in itself a finding of wrongdoing. It will publish a report once its investigation is complete detailing what issues the inquiry looked at, what actions were undertaken as part of the inquiry and what the outcomes were.