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Extra £2m needed for Commission to regulate public collections

Finance | Ian Allsop | 1 Dec 2007

The Charity Commission has confirmed it is in discussion with the Office of the Third Sector about obtaining an extra £2m to regulate the licensing of public charitable collections, without which it said it would not be able to carry out the role. Ian Allsop reports.

Commission chief executive Andrew Hind (pictured) said that while it had received £500,000 under October’s Comprehensive Spending Review for its additional responsibilities under the Charities Act in addition to its 2007-8 budget of £30.2m, that would not be enough to cover the estimated £2m cost of implementing the public collections part of the Act.

From 2008-9 the Commission’s overall resource budget will decline by 5 per cent per year in real terms during the CSR period to 2010-11, and while Hind said it was putting in place a number of efficiency measures to meet this challenge, it wasn’t realistic to take on the public collections certificate commitment as well. He said he was hopeful that the OTS’s desire to see all of the Act provisions put in force would enable the funding to be made available, but if it wasn’t, as things stood, the Commission would not be able to carry out the role.

In an updated implementation plan for the Charities Act released last month, the OTS said it did not envisage the new licensing regime would come into force before 2009. Mick Aldridge, chief executive of the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association, said that there would be no other way forward if the funding was not made available by either the OTS or from within the Charity Commission’s own budget, and that it would be a great shame to lose the opportunity to implement legislation that the whole sector had agreed was workable.

“If there is to be a delay due to implementation from 2009 to 2010 due to resourcing, then that would not necessarily be a problem as long as it is made clear that this is due to organisational issues rather than a fundamental change to the proposed regime.”

Hind outlined four areas in which the Commission would seek to make changes that would not only enable cost savings, but improve its performance as an effective regulator. It wants to continue to modernise operations and use new technology to deliver services; take a risk-based approach to the monitoring aspects of its work; amalgamate some activities, such as its compliance and support function to create centres of excellence; and reduce the size of its London office.

Hind said that when the Commission’s current lease runs out at Harmsworth House in 2009 it would seek smaller premises with more options for home and remote working and hot-desking. He also said that the overall number of posts within the Commission would be reduced from 508 to 475 over the next year.

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