What are the charitable purposes?

Applies in: England and Wales · Scotland · Northern Ireland. All three lists were read from the statutes and are recorded verbatim. One qualification: the commencement history of the Northern Ireland list is established as to content but not as to date, so this page does not date it.

What most guidance gets wrong about the three lists

Almost everything written for a UK audience describes the England and Wales list of charitable purposes. It treats the other two as local versions of it. They are not.

The Charity Commission, OSCR and CCNI each apply a separate list in a separate Act, drafted at different times. Two of the differences decide cases. If you draft purposes for more than one nation, you need all three. These lists are what you draft against when you write your purposes.

England and Wales is the only part of the UK with an armed forces and emergency services purpose. Charities Act 2011 s.3(1)(l) covers the promotion of the efficiency of the armed forces of the Crown. It also covers the police, fire and rescue services or ambulance services. Neither Scotland nor Northern Ireland has anything like it.

Take a cadet unit, a forces welfare body or an emergency-services charity that works across a border. It cannot rely on the same purpose in each place.

Scotland’s statutory definition of sport leaves out mental skill. In England and Wales, and in Northern Ireland, “sport” means sports or games which promote health by involving physical or mental skill or exertion. The word “mental” is what lets in bridge, chess and games like them.

Scotland’s definition, in s.7(3)(c) of the 2005 Act, reads “sport which involves physical skill and exertion”. A mind-sport body can point to the statute in England and Wales. In Scotland it faces a much harder argument. The difference is plain in the wording of the Act, not buried in case law.

The list for England and Wales

Charities Act 2011 s.3(1). Paragraphs (a) to (l) are set out as the statute has them. Paragraph (m) is summarised, because the full text runs to three sub-paragraphs.

Reference	Purpose
s.3(1)(a)	the prevention or relief of poverty
s.3(1)(b)	the advancement of education
s.3(1)(c)	the advancement of religion
s.3(1)(d)	the advancement of health or the saving of lives
s.3(1)(e)	the advancement of citizenship or community development
s.3(1)(f)	the advancement of the arts, culture, heritage or science
s.3(1)(g)	the advancement of amateur sport
s.3(1)(h)	the advancement of human rights, conflict resolution or reconciliation or the promotion of religious or racial harmony or equality and diversity
s.3(1)(i)	the advancement of environmental protection or improvement
s.3(1)(j)	the relief of those in need because of youth, age, ill-health, disability, financial hardship or other disadvantage
s.3(1)(k)	the advancement of animal welfare
s.3(1)(l)	the promotion of the efficiency of the armed forces of the Crown or of the efficiency of the police, fire and rescue services or ambulance services
s.3(1)(m)	the catch-all: purposes recognised under the old law or by virtue of s.5, purposes analogous to or within the spirit of any of (a) to (l), and purposes analogous to or within the spirit of anything already recognised under that limb

Three rules on meaning in s.3(2) matter more than they look. Religion includes a religion involving belief in more than one god, and one involving belief in no god. But s.3(2) says nothing about philosophical belief, which both other nations name in terms. Sport carries the “physical or mental” definition.

Citizenship or community development expressly includes:

• rural or urban regeneration
• the promotion of civic responsibility, volunteering and the voluntary sector
• the effectiveness or efficiency of charities

Why the count is contested, and what to say

The figure of 13 counts paragraphs (a) to (m), and treats the catch-all in (m) as one description. Some sources say twelve, by excluding the catch-all.

Some say fourteen, by counting the three sub-limbs of (m) separately. None of them is lying. They are counting different things. Say what the count is based on, not only the number. Otherwise a reader who has seen a different figure elsewhere will assume one of the two sources is out of date.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Scotland has 16 purposes at s.7(2) of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, paragraphs (a) to (p). It is the longest list of the three. That is mostly because it gives its own paragraph to several things England and Wales puts together. Six differences are real ones:

• Sport is narrower, because it leaves out mental skill, and is framed as “the advancement of public participation in sport” rather than “amateur sport”.
• No armed forces or emergency services purpose.
• Recreational facilities is a purpose in its own right at s.7(2)(i), with its own qualifying conditions in s.7(3)(d). England and Wales reaches the same ground only indirectly, through s.5 and the catch-all.
• Health and the saving of lives are split into two purposes. England and Wales combines them in one paragraph.
• Human rights, harmony and equality are split into three separate purposes. England and Wales bundles all three into s.3(1)(h).
• The Act names philosophical belief. s.7(3)(f) says the advancement of any philosophical belief, whether or not involving belief in a god, is analogous to the advancement of religion. England and Wales has no such express rule.

Scotland also has a rule with no English counterpart at all, and it sits outside the purposes list. Under s.7(4), a body fails the charity test outright, whatever its purposes and public benefit, if:

• its constitution allows property to be distributed or applied for a non-charitable purpose, on winding up or at any other time
• its constitution expressly lets Scottish Ministers or a Minister of the Crown direct or control its activities
• it is a political party, or one of its purposes is to advance one

The first of those is a drafting trap. A dissolution clause that allows payouts to members, or to any non-charitable body, is fatal in Scotland. It is settled when you agree powers, membership and dissolution.

Northern Ireland has 12 descriptions at s.2(2) of the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008, paragraphs (a) to (l). It is the closest of the three to England and Wales. Paragraphs (a) to (k) track their English counterparts almost word for word. But it is not identical:

• No armed forces or emergency services purpose, as in Scotland.
• Philosophical belief is expressly within religion. s.2(3)(a) includes “any analogous philosophical belief (whether or not involving belief in a god)”. Northern Ireland and Scotland agree here, and both go further than England and Wales.
• Unique to Northern Ireland: s.2(3)(e) says the human rights and harmony purpose includes the advancement of peace and good community relations. No other part of the UK has this. In context it has real weight. It is not there for show.

On sport, Northern Ireland matches England and Wales, not Scotland: mental skill is included. Scotland is the outlier.

What to do about it

Decide which jurisdictions to register in first, then draft to that list. If you will register in more than one, draft against each list separately. You may need different wording, or a decision to register in only one place. Changing purposes once registered is a separate process: change your charitable purposes.

One warning before you write anything. The regulator names generic wording as a cause of delay.

The Charity Commission lists this among its reasons for querying or returning an application: “you or a third-party adviser(s) have used generic text, including text generated through AI tools, which is not specific to the charity you want to register”. The problem is not the tool. It is that generic text cannot show what this charity does. A bid writer’s boilerplate is caught by the same rule.

Next: Write your purposes. That step produces the objects clause itself. You test it against the list for each jurisdiction you will register in.