Radcliffe Chambers maintains its strong reputation as a leading charity law set. Members demonstrate experience in significant cases before courts and tribunals and routinely advise an impressive client roster, ranging from the Charity Commission to major UK charities. Exemplifying this expertise is ‘go-to‘ charity barrister Robert Pearce KC, who advised four schools in South Africa in a dispute with the Rhodes Trust concerning the Rhodes Scholarships reserved for old boys of those schools. Matthew Mills acted in Dasji v Bhudia, a High Court case which resulted in the first reported judgment since 1983 on the court’s powers to amend a charity’s constitution. With ‘wide and deep‘ knowledge of charity law, Joshua Winfield represented the appellant in the First-Tier Tribunal in Mond v Charity Commission, the first successful appeal against trustee disqualification under section 181A of the Charities Act 2011, after the regulator disqualified a trustee of the Jewish National Fund after Facebook activity the regulator considered to be Islamophobic.

Maitland Chambers is home to experienced advocates advising charities, trustees and regulators across a broad range of governance, regulatory and contentious matters. Andrew Westwood KC represented supermodel Naomi Campbell in an appeal against the Charity Commission’s order disqualifying her from being a charity trustee. With ‘extensive knowledge and experience across charity law issues‘, Matthew Smith KC successfully acted for a local community in efforts to remove and appoint trustees of a charity owning a city farm in North London. Maxim Cardew, who has been praised for having a ‘first-rate mind‘, acted for six of the defendants in Dasji v Bhudia and others, a High Court case concerning a dispute between the charity trustees of the Shree Swaminarayan Temple, a Hindu place of worship in Stanmore.