The Charity Commission has closed its regulatory case into HOPE Unlimited Charitable Trust, formerly the Hope Not Hate Charitable Trust, after the trustees finally separated the charity from the campaigning company Hope Not Hate Limited. The regulator was openly unimpressed with how long that took.
The Commission’s case, opened in July 2025, came out of “repeated complaints across several years” that it was unclear whether the activities of Hope Not Hate Limited, a separate non-charitable campaigning organisation, were connected to, or endorsed by, the charity.
The trustees had already been told once. In 2024 the Commission gave them regulatory advice setting out a clear expectation that they separate the charity from the company with which it shared a name. Fresh concerns about the actions of Hope Not Hate Limited followed, and the regulator opened its latest case in July 2025.
According to the Commission’s closing statement of 22 January 2026, the charity eventually:
- changed its name to HOPE Unlimited Charitable Trust
- recruited three new independent trustees
- reviewed its website to remove unclear references to Hope Not Hate Limited
- appointed a new charity secretary, and assured the regulator it would appoint a paid administrator and grants manager with no existing role at Hope Not Hate Limited
The Commission did not sugar-coat the pace. “The regulator is critical of how long it took the charity to take these steps,” the statement reads. Joshua Farbridge, Head of Compliance Visits and Inspections, put it more gently in public: “We have been critical of the time it has taken for legitimate concerns to have been addressed by the charity but it has since made positive steps forward.”
The Commission also set an expectation that the charity can evidence its grant-making decisions when called upon, and reminded all grant-making charities that they “must apply its policies fairly and consistently when considering recipients”.
Let’s be clear about what this is and isn’t. This is a regulatory finding, not a criminal conviction, and the difference matters. Nobody is saying Hope Not Hate defrauded anyone. What the record shows is an organisation that sat on repeated complaints about its charitable status for years, needed the regulator to push it, and only separated its charitable and campaigning arms after the Commission demanded progress. That pattern is documented in the Commission’s own words, and it is a fair thing to ask questions about.
The right to campaign is not in question here. The Commission was explicit that charities “must not be party political” and that it “will robustly defend a charity’s right to campaign and engage in political activity where that helps it to achieve what it was set up to do”. What was in question was the transparency of the funding arrangements, and on that, the regulator’s conclusion was that things took far too long to fix.
Sources
- GOV.UK / Charity Commission — “Hope Not Hate Charitable Trust addresses concerns following intervention by regulator” (22 January 2026)
- Charity Commission register — HOPE Unlimited Charitable Trust (charity no. 1013880)
All sources accessed 15 August 2026.