Charities Breakfast Briefing: Serious incidents and Data Protection
February 12, 2025 @ 9:00 am - 10:30 am
Serious incidents are reportable to the Charity Commission and cover a range of issues where there is a harm (or risk of harm) to the beneficiaries, staff, volunteers as well as loss of the charity’s assets, damage to property or harm to the charity’s reputation. Serious incidents can happen by mistakes made by trustees, employees, or volunteers or because of external or unforeseen factors.
The Charity Commission expects trustees to self-report and take steps to mitigate and prevent serious incidents and this series will consider what serious incidents look like, how to mitigate them and what governance issues can lead to serious incidents. The series will then look at averting incidents from a governance perspective, how compliance with data protection laws can prevent serious incidents from occurring and positively focus on what steps that can be taken in relation to avoiding serious incidents arising from an employment law perspective.
Part Two: Why Data Protection is important and the consequences of data breaches
In the second part of the series, Gerry Morrison and Harriet Wheeldon will be joined by James Peel, Data Protection Partner, where the session will focus on trustees’ duties in respect of charities and data protection.
All charities are involved someway in relation to controlling or processing personal data either in relation to their beneficiaries, the trustees, their staff, or volunteers as well as other third parties.
James will discuss through the key aspects of data compliance, keeping data safe whilst Gerry and Harriet will discuss the steps for the trustees to take where an incident has occurred to comply with their trustee duties and maintain a charity’s good reputation.
Meet the speakers
Gerry specialises exclusively in charity law and has significant experience of advising charities and not-for-profit organisations. She is passionate about the charity and voluntary sector and enjoys engaging with charity trustees and CEOs to help them to fully discharge their legal duties and to fulfil their organisation’s charitable purposes.
Harriet specialises in charity law advising a variety of organisations in respect of their governance and regulation. She is very experienced in delivering trustee training to charity trustees and contributes to workshops and seminars to promote best practice in governance alongside Gerry Morrison at a range of sector conferences.
A key member of the firm’s Charity team, James specialises in commercial law. He also advises clients in relation to data protection issues such as policies and procedures and responding to subject access and freedom of information requests.
