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Charity Commission team publishes expense claims on website

Finance | Tania Mason | 20 Oct 2009

The Charity Commission has published the detailed expense claims of all its directors and board members on its website, ahead of any guidance for the charities it regulates from the independent expenses group.

During the financial year 2008/9, chair Dame Suzi Leather (pictured) incurred the highest amount, claiming a total of £31,768.  Most of this, £25,403, was for hotel and travel costs from her home in Devon “to allow her to fulfill her Charity Commission commitments in London, in line with her contract of employment”.

She also claimed £4,697 in taxi fares, an average of £391 each month.

Simon Jones was the next highest-claiming board member, with claims of £3,286, mostly for rail fares.  The notes explained that he is based in Cardiff and “thus incurs higher levels of expenditure in order for him to attend London board and audit committee meetings”.

The rest of the board all claimed less than £420.

Executive team claims

The highest claim by a member of the executive team was by David Locke, executive director of charity services, who claimed £9,313 – around half was for rail fares and most of the rest was accomodation.

Andrew Hind, chief executive, claimed £4,006.  Kenneth Dibble claimed the least, at £2,800.

In total, the executive team claimed £36,137, while the board members claimed £36,709.

As it is not a charity, the Commission will not be subject to any guidance that is published by the independent expert group on expenses. The Commission said it decided to take the initiative of publishing the expenses online “in line with its commitment to transparency and openness”.  It put them on its website in late July. Andrew Hind, who also chairs the Charities SORP Committee, wrote in Charity Finance recently that expenses is a governance issue, and not merely about SORP disclosures.

He wrote: “The issue is about ensuring that a charity’s control arrangements are sufficiently robust to distinguish between proper claims and those made unnecessarily or for personal benefit. This means clear policies and practices for what can and cannot be claimed and clear procedures for their approval.”

'No comment' on Paul Palmer

The independent group that is drawing up guidance for the sector about whether and how it should report its expenses, has so far declined to comment on our story last week that one of its members, Professor Paul Palmer, is also on the board of a for-profit company that has just launched a software package to help charities record and report their expenses.  The group is preparing a statement.

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