Statement on the Charity Commission
The Good Law Project has said that the Charity Commission has opened an “investigation” into Sex Matters.
A routine regulatory compliance case was opened a year ago in response to complaints made in relation to data collection when we tweeted a call for women to tell us about their experiences of men in women’s sport. The Charity Commission said that given the complaints received, and because Sex Matters is a newly registered charity, it was “keen to ensure the Charity is operating as effectively as it can and that the trustees are taking appropriate steps to protect its reputation”.
The Charity Commission asked the charity’s board of trustees for information and it promptly supplied it. We are awaiting its response.
We are confident that we are not unlawfully processing personal data when we undertake research and report on the impact of men in women’s sports. You can read more:
- Details of Sex Matters’ open request for people to share with us their experience of encountering male players in women’s and girls’ sport in the UK, and the impact of this on them.
- Our privacy policy.
- Our answer to the question of whether sex is special category data.
The Charity Commission undertakes around 5,000 investigations a year into regulatory concerns as part of its routine work with charities. These are not statutory inquiries into serious concerns (of which there are around hundred or so a year), such as the investigation into Mermaids.
GLP has also linked us to remarks made by Richard Dunstan. We are not in any way linked to those remarks, and we did not know about them until GLP brought them to public attention.
Background to the complaint
In October 2024 Sex Matters tweeted a call for women to tell us about their experiences of men in women’s sport.
Following that tweet we received five complaints, including one that came in an email headed “Legal Letter” from the Good Law Project itself. It said it was writing to us because it was concerned that we “may be unlawfully processing personal data and/or special category data as part of your work to ‘map the trans identified males that are competing in women’s sport in the UK’”. It said the letter was “written outside the specific requirements (but within the spirit) of the relevant pre-action protocols”.
As a duty bearer under the UK’s data-protection regulations and a regulated charity we take our responsibilities seriously, and regularly review our policies and processes. The charity’s board is responsible for setting and approving policies, and the CEO is responsible for implementing them.
We replied to the Good Law Project at the time of its complaint with information about our policies and did not hear back from it on its threat of legal action.