Don Bawtree, head of charities at BDO UK, has launched an independent 'shadow' committee to contribute to discussions on the forthcoming Statement of Recommended Practices (SORP) for the charity sector.
The new SORP will provide a comprehensive framework of best practice for charity accounting and reporting, and will be the most important change to financial reporting in the sector for a decade.
The official SORP committee is expected to issue a draft SORP for consultation in the next few weeks. The shadow committee will issue an initial briefing on the draft SORP and then invite responses from everyone affected by the proposals. Towards the end of the process, the shadow committee will issue a more complete assessment of their considerations, which will aim to inform the debate over the shape of the final SORP.
Updates from the shadow committee will be published on the charities pages of BDO's website.
The independent, cross-discipline shadow committee comprises members from charities, professional advisers, commercial organisations, and academia. As Scotland has a different regime, a separate group has been established in Scotland, led by BDO partner Martin Gill.
Don Bawtree, head of charities at BDO and chair of the shadow SORP committee, said: "The new SORP will have far-reaching effects on how charities present financial information and how stakeholders perceive the sector. The shadow committee therefore has an important role to play in scrutinising the proposals and helping to ensure that the regulations fulfil their objectives.
"We strongly encourage everyone involved in the charity sector to contribute to the shadow committee. Our objective is to provide the opportunity for a balanced response reflecting no single agenda."
The shadow SORP committee comprises: James Brooke Turner, finance director at the Nuffield Foundation; Gary Carpenter, CFO of Control Risks Group; Gareth Morgan, professor of charity studies at Sheffield Hallam University; Paul Bannon, finance director of Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland; Charles Scott, executive director of corporate shared services at Action for Children; and Julian Smith, head of the higher education group at Farrers.