RSPCA to reduce expenditure by £54m

Finance | Gareth Jones | 26 May 2009

The RSPCA is drawing up plans to reduce its expenditure by an aggregate of £54m over the next three years.

RSPCA chief executive Mark Watts (pictured) told Charity News Alert that the shortfall was indicative of the problems charities face going into recession.

He added that the adjustment was also necessary as the charity had previously been running at a deficit. “It was as a deliberate policy as we had spare reserves; we had allowed for some stock market variation, but not as much as has occurred.

“That is why we are taking what some might call this drastic action.”

Some action has already been taken on “general issues”, such as pay awards to staff, but Watts said more detailed proposals “affecting individual departments” would be put to the trustee board on 10 June.

He declined to say which services might be cut before the trustees have had a chance to consider the proposals.

Watts first revealed the news at the CFDG Annual Conference last week, emphasising that the figure to be cut should be viewed “in the context of an annual turnover of £100m+, a capital replacement programme of £20m and the employment of 1,600 staff accounting for 45 per cent of the annual turnover”.

Animal welfare strategy

The RSPCA also hopes to have an “animal welfare strategy”, setting broader goals for animal welfare over the next three to five years, finalised in the autumn.

“We have had strategies in the past but they have tended to be in business-speak rather than animal welfare-speak, as it were,” said Watts.

Who's Who: Gareth Jones

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Chris Newman
REPTA
27 May 2009

The RSPCA could achieve this target by discontinuing the grossly unjust practice of taking private prosecutions, and instead work via an independent prosecuting body such as this CPS - this would reduce costs by some Â£10m per annum.

Not only would this reduce costs substantially it would ensure an open and transparent prosecution system.

The Scottish SPCA operates this system and is unquestionably fairer and more cost effective. So is it not time the RSPCA entered the 21st century and discontinued its archaic practice of private prosecutions?

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