The Charity Commission has handed a global youth charity, whose high-profile supporters include the Duchess of Sussex, an official warning after finding governance failings and “breaches of trust”.

Concerns around the running of One Young World Limited focus on “unauthorised payments” made to senior figures at the charity.

It found that bonus payments made to the chief executive Kate Robertson, who had also been a trustee until she stepped down from her board level role last year, had been unauthorised. This is because these payments were not covered by an earlier permission to compensate a trustee for their employment, found the regulator.

The regulator also found that payments made to a “connected” senior executive were unauthorised. This is understood to refer to Robertson’s daughter, managing director Ella Robertson McKay.

Other concerns include “poor minute taking” as well as “a lack of evidence that conflicts of interest have been effectively managed”.

Alongside the official warning trustees at the charity are required to tackle “these governance and administrative failures”. This includes ensuring conflicts of interest are effectively managed, payments are lawful, and it appoints “additional, unconflicted trustees”.

The regulator first began investigating the charity in September 2022 after concerns were raised in the media around senior staff salaries and bonuses, as well as conflicts of interest.

“Our engagement with One Young World uncovered governance errors that every charity should take care to avoid, especially in relation to executive pay and conflicts of interest,” said Charity Commission assistant director for casework Tracy Howarth.

“We welcome efforts the trustees have made so far in addressing past failings and making improvements to the charity’s administration and governance.

“The official warning sets out the further improvements we now expect the trustees to make. We will continue to monitor their progress.”

‘Trustees acted in good faith’

The charity said it is “naturally disappointed at The Charity Commission’s findings”.

It added: “The Commission’s decision was a consequence of two particular, historic mistakes in legal processes, originally dating from 2015, which were – unfortunately – the result of the Trustees’ placing reliance on their former professional advisers, which they did entirely in good faith.

“Even so, the board of trustees do, of course, regret these issues in process ever arose. However, there is no suggestion whatsoever that any senior executives nor trustees did anything wilfully wrong or untoward in either case - and the Commission recognised senior executives and trustees acted in good faith.”

It said that it has appointed new legal advisers and made improvements to its administrative and governance processes “to make sure these technical errors do not happen in the future”.

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