About us
We are a unique organisation, overseeing the activities of Better Society Capital, Access, Youth Futures Foundation, and Fair4All Finance.
The Oversight Trust is responsible for oversight of the Operating Companies (OpCos) that receive funding from Dormant Assets allocated to causes in England: Better Society Capital (BSC); Access – the Foundation for Social Investment (Access); Youth Futures Foundation (Youth Futures); and Fair4All Finance. Its role is to ensure that they remain true to their objects.The oversight role of the Oversight Trust involves:
- ensuring that the OpCos’ objects remain appropriate;
- ensuring that the OpCos are well governed;
- ensuring that the OpCos’ strategic plans are in accordance with their objects;
- reviewing achievement of social impact;
- reviewing transparency of financial and impact reporting; and
- providing guidance and advice to the OpCos, if appropriate and practicable, or as requested.
The Oversight Trust is the sole member or majority shareholder of each OpCo and produces group accounts however it does not intervene in the day-to-day operations of the OpCos, which is the responsibility of their individual boards. Each OpCo’s board is also responsible for its own governance, strategy, policies and procedures, and ensuring that its funds and resources are at all times applied in a manner that is compatible with its obligations.
Processes and Powers
The Oversight Trust has a number of rights and powers described in the OpCos’ governance documents including their Articles, Dormant Asset Funding Agreements. Each company also has a Governance Agreement with the Oversight Trust.
The Governance Agreements detail the key processes and powers to enable the Oversight Trust to fulfil its responsibilities, with the proviso that the Oversight Trust may make reasonable requests from each OpCo in addition to those set out in the Governance Agreements if that is needed to help the Oversight Trust meet its obligations.
Each OpCo provides a quarterly update to the Oversight Trust Board and there is a Deep Dive review of each company’s strategy and performance once a year.
There is an annual Governance Review meeting with representatives from the Boards of each OpCo. In addition, the Oversight Trust appoints an independent panel to conduct a review of each company (in turn) – the Quadrennial Reviews.
Further details of how the Oversight Trust operates to fulfil its role can be found on its website: oversighttrust.org.
The Oversight Trust’s ultimate power to enforce and address any concerns in relation to its responsibilities is its ability to remove OpCo directors. The Oversight Trust is also involved in the process of appointing new OpCo Chairs (in addition to its powers of ratifying their formal appointment).
History of the Oversight Trust
Since the first Dormant Assets Bill came before parliament in 2008, there has been cross-party political support for establishing a Dormant Assets Scheme. Initially it was set-up to receive amounts left dormant in UK bank accounts for over 15 years.
The Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Act 2008 (the Act) agreed the mechanism by which dormant accounts could be voluntarily handed over by banks operating in the UK to a Reclaim Fund. After retaining sufficient money as reserves, the Reclaim Fund passes a sum of money to the National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) to distribute between the home nations. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the devolved authorities decide how the funding is utilised. It was specified in the Act that the English funds would be used for three specific purposes: youth services, financial inclusion and to establish a social investment wholesaler at the direction of the Secretary of State for the Department for Culture. Media and Sport.
When first elected, David Cameron announced that the Government would initially be directing all Dormant Accounts money (up to £400 million) to establish Big Society Capital (now renamed Better Society Capital) to act as a Social Investment Wholesaler to provide repayable funding to help grow social enterprises and charities in the UK.
BSC was launched in 2012 together with the Oversight Trust (then named the Big Society Trust) to act as its majority shareholder to oversee its activities and keep it “on mission”. The four major high street banks are minority shareholders in BSC). Subsequently in 2014, Access was established to enable smaller charities and social enterprises to develop their enterprise models and access social investment. Access was established with an endowment from DCMS as a charity with the Oversight Trust as its sole member.
In January 2018, DCMS announced that dormant accounts would also be allocated to initiatives in England to help disadvantaged young people into work and to tackle the problem of people being unable to access personal credit at reasonable cost. The funding streams for youth and financial inclusion would each be delivered by new, independent organisations. The idea was to establish organisations, independent of government control, that can operate with a long-term vision and have genuine autonomy, a model demonstrated by both BSC and Access.
Before both new organisations (Fair4All Finance and Youth Futures Foundation) could receive funding, they needed to have in place systems, controls and an oversight regime.
In 2019 the Oversight Trust Board agreed with DCMS that it would expand its role to be the sole Member of each of the new organisations and oversee them. This involved a restructuring of its Board, the appointment of a secretariat and a codification of its processes and procedures. This included establishing a quadrennial independent review process to assess the effectiveness of the OpCos in achieving their respective missions.
In February 2022, Parliament passed the Dormant Assets Act that expanded the dormant assets scheme from covering just bank accounts to include: the insurance and pensions; investment and wealth management; and securities sectors. DCMS estimated this expansion would unlock around a further £880 million for good causes in the UK.
In summer 2022, a consultation was organised by DCMS on how additional funds raised for expenditure in England under the expanded scheme will be used in the future. DCMS concluded that futures monies should continue to be allocated to the existing three causes: social investment wholesaler, youth services and financial inclusion and an additional cause of Community Wealth Funds should be added. The secondary legislation needed to reflect this change was passed in December 2023. Given the broad geographic spread and different nature of the risks associated with Community Wealth Funds, it was decided that NLCF will have the responsibility of establishing and overseeing this activity.
On 12 July 2024 the DCMS Secretary of State, Lisa Nandy, announced that the projected dormant asset distributions for England for 2024-2028 of £350 million would be split evenly between the four causes of: social investment; financial inclusion; youth and Community Wealth Funds.