WRAP takes important step towards charity status

WRAP chief executive Liz Goodwin hailed an important step towards charitable status for the organisation after its members today (August 4) backed plans for it to apply to become a charity.

In the next few weeks, the resource efficiency body now intends to submit its application to the Charity Commission, outlining its proposals, with the hope of achieving charity status by the end of March 2015.

Writing in her blog this morning, Dr Goodwin said: WRAPs members today overwhelmingly backed our plans to apply for charitable status at a special meeting. It was very gratifying to receive this support for such an important step on our road to plan a successful future for WRAP.

WRAPs members are those who opted to work closely with the body when it was first set up in 2001 and currently include 25 organisations such as the British Retail Consortium, Organics Group of the Renewable Energy Associaiton (formerly AfOR), Defra and WasteWatch.

At present, WRAP is a not-for-profit company with an independent board alongside its members but earlier this year it announced plans to seek charitable status, which would see a new group of trustees appointed instead. This was announced alongside plans for Scottish resource efficiency body Zero Waste Scotland to become independent from WRAP (see letsrecycle.com story).

Charity

A spokesman for WRAP explained that the members were happy to support the move to becoming a charity even if this meant losing their status as members, provided they would continue to have a close relationship with WRAP.

He added: Because what we do is charitable it doesnt mean we have to change what we do. There would be concern if we were about to behave in a very different way but that is not the case.

WRAP claims that by becoming a charity, it will be able to access funds from a wider range of sources and diversify the way it works.

The move towards becoming a charity comes as WRAPs budget is squeezed from 38.9 million in 2013/14 to 35 million in 2014/15.

However, the WRAP spokesman insisted that the two were not linked. He said: This is not because we have not got any money, it is because we feel it opens up new sources of money and allows us to do things differently.

Dr Goodwin added: Our work will not change, but there is no room for complacency. Competition for funds is fierce and I want us to be even better at what we do, and how we do it. We have a major programme of continuous improvement underway at the moment to achieve this.