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Charity Tribunal faces charges of ageism

Finance | Tania Mason | 4 Mar 2008

The public appointments body which is recruiting members of the new Charity Tribunal has been accused of ageism after rejecting applications from former chief charity commissioner Richard Fries and Cards for Good Causes founder Judith Rich, because they are too old.

Both applied to the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) to become lay members of the Tribunal last October but received letters saying they were not eligible because of their age. Fries is 67, Rich (pictured) is 72.

“It’s an ageism issue,” Fries told Charity News Alert.

Tribunal members are not subject to the same age discrimination legislation that applies to employees, but to regulations affecting members of the judiciary. The compulsory retirement age under this legislation is 70, but according to Fries the Lord Chief Justice can waive this if he chooses.

Tribunal members are expected to serve a “reasonable length of time, usually three years”, Fries said. “I am 67, and by the time they get round to dealing with the application process and appointing everyone I would be approaching 68, which means I would be able to give two good years. But it appears that they wouldn’t even entertain the possibility of applying to the Lord Chief Justice to extend this at all.”

Judith Rich added: “It is disgraceful that they are turning down people on the basis of age.  They need people who are broad-based, who have wide knowledge of the sector and no commitments to any one particular thing. With the sector being what it is, many of these sorts of people are going to be at the end of their careers.”

Fries said he was “very annoyed”, particularly since it was he, as chief charity commissioner from 1992 to 1999, that spearheaded the modernisation of the Charity Commission and what is now recognised as “the greatest reform of charity law for 400 years”.

Fries said he fervently wanted to serve on the Charity Tribunal for his last job, to round off the work he’d started at the Commission so many years before.

Once he received the first rejection letter from the JAC, Fries wrote back to challenge it but was told there was no right of appeal. He has now written an official complaint to the organisation but not yet had a reply.

A spokeswoman for the JAC said the Commission was “simply applying the eligibility criteria set down by the Ministry of Justice”.

“The statutory requirements include a retirement age of 70 and stipulate that candidates must serve a reasonable length of service, which in practice is five years,” she said. She added that any question about waivers by the Lord Chief Justice did not fall under the JAC’s jurisdiction.

This is not the first scandal to hit the Tribunal recruitment process. Gareth Morgan, professor of charity studies at Sheffield Hallam University, withdrew his application after finding that the Commission would not reimburse interviewees’ travel expenses. He felt this would put low-income applicants at a disadvantage.

The only member that has been appointed to the Tribunal so far is its president, charity lawyer Alison McKenna. The Tribunal was supposed to open for business last week but at the last minute the Office of the Third Sector declared that its launch would be delayed due to “administrative reasons”. A new launch date has not been set.

The JAC spokeswoman said it was on schedule to fulfill its role in setting up the Tribunal, which was appointing the panel members.

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