Being CEO of an organisation is rewarding – personally and financially. Risks carried, decisions taken are shared by the collective body to whom the individual leader is accountable. When it works well, the price paid to exercise executive leadership is worth the cost to the individual leader and to the organisation. Collective leadership by charity trustees, undertaken voluntarily, comes at a different price; its cost rarely considered. Sometimes devastating consequences ensue as at City & Guilds of London Institute (CGLI), the charity I chaired until recently. Disproportionate and unsubstantiated attacks in the media on former executives and CGLI trustees leave me disheartened, disillusioned, and dismayed – a sad conclusion to 35 years’ voluntary service in over 50 charities. Over the last four months, ill-informed commentary and serious personal allegations (‘secretive deal’, ‘unlawful sale’, ‘illegality’) have been made in the media. The Charity Commission (CCEW) is the appropriate regulatory body for independent investigation of such claims, and I was pleased to meet them recently. I am disappointed however, that concerns have not been taken up directly with me as chair of CGLI at the time of the divestment. I take no issue with rightful and necessary scrutiny. I welcome challenge and face-to-face engagement. Through listening to concerns, mutual understanding – although not necessarily shared agreement – can be achieved. Disagreeing agreeably is a responsibility of leadership. The torchlights of scrutiny must be shone on facts and not on fiction. The facts are that CGLI is not a public body, as has been claimed. It is a registered charity. In 2020, the board, then chaired by Sir John Armitt, and under Kirstie Donnelly’s executive leadership recognised that CGLI faced a difficult commercial environment, an increasingly competitive, constantly changing UK qualifications scene, and an IT infrastructure requiring significant investment. CGLI was financially vulnerable. Trustees had a choice – face up to or ignore this challenge. In May 2023, to avoid further decline, trustees acknowledged that CGLI’s long-term financial future called for strategic transformation. The ‘do nothing’ option would have resulted in continued gradual descent into peril as evidenced in published accounts over the last ten years. As charity trustees, ignoring this would be tantamount to dereliction of duty. The decision to divest the charity’s commercial assets was instigated by trustees. Through a formal tender process, trustees engaged specialist independent commercial and legal advisers. Together between May 2023 and October 2025, they undertook a detailed commercially confidential review and options process, restricted by NDAs and called Project Birthday. Led by a trustee chaired task group, which excluded me as chair, it comprised trustees with specialist commercial experience and financial expertise. Its work was recorded and regularly reported to the board and its committees. Trustees’ overriding collective responsibility was to act lawfully to secure the best possible price for the divestment. Trustees obtained almost twice the original estimated value. In ceding control to PeopleCert through the sale of loss-making commercial activities, trustees disposed of assets that for decades had operated uneasily under the umbrella of a charity, simultaneously preserved a structurally unchanged, now financially secure charity able to fulfil its educational charitable objects. Acting throughout on external advice, in taking what was a carefully considered decision, trustees did not act unlawfully in undertaking a commercial transaction strictly in confidence, were not in breach of CGLI’s constitution or Royal Charter by not informing the council until its meeting on October 16, 2025 and consulted with, but did not require, regulatory approval from CCEW. Trustees were required, as a condition of sale, to ensure that the purchaser of the awarding organisation, PeopleCert, received full registration from Ofqual before divestment. In concluding the sale on October 31, 2025, with Department for Education knowledge, Ofqual approval was given to PeopleCert – at a time of least disruption to learners and examination centres – which was the shared objective of all parties. Leadership decisions are sometimes inadequately communicated, misunderstood, or unpopular, and can have consequences which not everyone accepts. This does not make decisions wrong or unlawful or the people that took them villains or criminals. CGLI trustees acted in a voluntary capacity, in good faith, in accordance with the charity’s objects, completing three years of considerably complex confidential work and deriving no personal benefit. Trustees took the right collective leadership decision and action, at the right time, to secure a financially strong future for the charity – which was our duty.