Grant Compliance Guide: Ensuring Regulatory Adherence

Essential compliance requirements and best practices for grant management, including legal obligations and reporting standards.

By Plinth Team

Grant Compliance Guide: Ensuring Regulatory Adherence

Compliance in UK grantmaking means proving decisions were fair, lawful and in the best interests of beneficiaries.

  • Know your duties: Charity law and trustees’ duties apply even when funding third parties.
  • Document everything: Keep a clear record of eligibility, checks, decisions and conditions.
  • Protect data: Apply UK GDPR principles across applications, assessments and monitoring.

The UK compliance landscape at a glance

Key areas include charity law and governance (act within your purposes, manage conflicts and maintain adequate internal controls, see Charity Commission guidance such as CC3 and CC8), data protection (lawful basis, minimisation, secure processing, retention and data subject rights under UK GDPR, see the ICO), financial sanctions (screen grantees and payments against the UK consolidated list managed by OFSI) and counter‑fraud with proportionate due diligence, escalation routes and reporting lines.

Practical controls to evidence compliance

  1. Publish clear eligibility and criteria; maintain a conflict register.
  2. Record due diligence checks (register lookups, policy reviews) for every applicant.
  3. Keep reasons for decisions, including declined applications and feedback provided.
  4. Issue grant agreements with conditions, schedules and reporting expectations.
  5. Store data securely with role‑based access, and apply a retention schedule.

How Plinth supports compliance

Plinth bakes in an audit trail: every check, summary and decision has a timestamp, reviewer and evidence links. Automated UK checks (Charity Commission, Companies House, OFSI) and structured applicant feedback make it easier to demonstrate fairness and proportionality. Data is encrypted and access‑controlled, with exports for your own records.

Discuss compliance workflows in Plinth

Frequently asked questions

Do we need consent to process applicant data?

Usually no – your lawful basis will be legitimate interests or contract. Only use consent where it is genuinely optional. See ICO guidance.

How do we manage conflicts of interest on panels?

Maintain a register, capture declarations per round and exclude conflicted reviewers from the case. Plinth records this automatically.

What if we fund non‑charities?

Apply proportionate checks via Companies House or other regulators and document your rationale, conditions and monitoring approach.

How long should we keep application data?

Keep only as long as necessary for your purposes and audits. Apply a published retention schedule and enable deletion on request where appropriate.

Citations and trusted sources

About the author

Written by the Plinth Editorial Team, with input from UK grant managers and auditors. Updated August 2025.

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