The Charity Commission, the regulator for charities in England and Wales, has escalated its intervention at Barnabas Fund, known as Barnabas Aid, by appointing Edwina Turner and Catherin Gibbon of Anthony Collins LLP as interim managers. According to the Commission’s published notice dated 18 June 2026, the appointment was made to the exclusion of the charity’s trustees, transferring day-to-day authority away from the board. This is a significant regulatory step. The interim managers now hold control over the charity’s administration, assets, records, banking and governance while the statutory inquiry remains open.
The Charity Commission first opened that statutory inquiry in September 2024. The regulator said at the time that it was examining serious governance and financial concerns, including allegations of unauthorised payments to some current and former trustees and to related parties. The latest announcement does not publish final findings on those matters. What it does show is that the Commission considers the case serious enough to justify direct external control rather than continued trustee-led management while the inquiry proceeds.
In its notice, the Charity Commission set out four tasks for the interim managers. They are to take full control of the charity’s administration and records, investigate historic decision-making and related-party arrangements, protect and recover charity assets where necessary, and regularise governance before reporting back to the regulator. Set out in plain terms, that gives the appointees both a stabilising function and an investigative one. They are there to keep the organisation operating, secure information and property, and test whether earlier arrangements were compatible with charity law and proper trustee decision-making.
The legal basis matters. The Charity Commission said the order was made under section 76(3)(g) of the Charities Act 2011, a power available within a statutory inquiry. The wording used by the regulator is also important. An appointment made “to the exclusion of any trustees” means the trustees do not continue to share authority alongside the interim managers. Operational control now sits with the appointed managers for as long as the order remains in force.
This June 2026 intervention should be read alongside the Commission’s earlier action in the same case. In a previous public statement, the regulator said it had already restricted the charity’s spending while the inquiry was under way. Taken together, the sequence shows a clear tightening of oversight. The case has moved from spending controls to a transfer of governance and administration into the hands of external managers appointed by the regulator.
For donors, staff, suppliers and grant partners, the immediate effect is practical rather than abstract. Decisions on payments, access to accounts, use of assets and handling of internal records now rest with the interim managers, not with the existing trustee board. For the wider charity sector, the case is a reminder that concerns around trustee payments, related-party arrangements and weak governance can move quickly into formal enforcement territory. Once a statutory inquiry is open, the Commission can intervene directly where it believes charitable property or proper administration requires protection.
The Charity Commission has said only that the inquiry remains ongoing. No final report has yet been published, and the present notice is focused on control, asset protection and governance repair rather than a concluded finding on every allegation first raised in 2024. That distinction is important for readers following the case. Barnabas Aid is now subject to one of the Commission’s most serious regulatory tools, but the public position remains an active inquiry and an interim manager order under charity law, not a final enforcement outcome.