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Charity expenses story 'highlights risk to public trust' 1

Governance | Tania Mason | 12 Apr 2010

The story in last week’s national newspapers accusing directors of the charity E-Act of making extortionate expense claims proves that the expenses issue remains a threat to the sector’s reputation, according to IT consultant John Tate.

Tate, who kicked off the sector debate about expense claims last summer by inviting the sector umbrella bodies to publish their own expenses, said the story demonstrated that much more still needed to be done to promote openness and transparency in order to minimise the risks to public trust in the sector.

While he stopped short of saying that the Independent Expert Group on Expenses set up by NCVO and CFDG got it wrong by not demanding mandatory disclosure of expenses, Tate did say that “some of the umbrella bodies could be better at developing policy that supports greater transparency”.

“This story came as absolutely no surprise to me,” Tate, who is IT adviser to CFDG, said. “I am aware of a number of charities that have abused their expenses, but generally I found out when I was doing consultancy so client confidentiality means I can’t disclose who they are.

“While I recognise it is likely to be a small number of cases, when it does occur it is likely to be accompanied by other cultural problems, such as poor management of staff or bullying, or autocracy or secrecy.

“I would welcome more people in the sector starting to drive forward a whole cultural shift in the transparency agenda, lock stock and barrel, instead of resisting attempts to make the sector more open.”

According to reports in the Evening Standard and the Guardian, E-Act’s director-general Sir Bruce Liddington claimed £1,436 for two nights at a hotel for himself and another director attending a two-day conference in Birmingham in November.  They stayed in the Hyatt Regency hotel’s club deluxe king suites (pictured), ate breakfast in the hotel and availed themselves of the minibars.

Sir Bruce, a former schools commissioner for England, initially denied claiming back the money, but later a spokesman for the trust confirmed he had inadvertently submitted it as an expense and would repay it.

E-Act is a charitable trust that runs state-funded city academies.

The expenses information was exposed after Liberal Democrat MP Paul Holmes told a Commons committee hearing that E-Act directors “all get company credit cards and expense accounts…they use chauffeur-driven BMW and Merc limousines to go and visit the academies”.

E-Act said this was untrue, saying most directors and staff travel by rail or private car.

John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, echoed John Tate’s call for greater transparency.
He said: “It may or may not be the case that some of the claims made by some people about Sir Bruce and his minions driving BMWs may or may not be over-exaggerated. But how would you know?”

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