Barnardo’s is walking away from many public service delivery contracts because councils pay too little, demand too much and waste charities' time, its chief executive told the Conservative Party Conference heard this week.

Javed Khan was speaking at a round-table event hosted by charity leaders infrastructure body Acevo. He said that demand is increasing and Barnardo’s was being asked “to do much more for the same money of less”.

He called for the entire system to be restructured.

“Quality is non-negotiable,” he said. “In the last year we have walked away from more offers of work than we have accepted.”

Earlier this year the Children’s Society’s chief executive, Matthew Reed, made a similar claim about walking away from public sector contracts.

Rethink the system to stop charities wasting money

Khan said that the current system was not working and should be overhauled to reduce the power that commissioners have over charities. He said local government wastes too much of charities' time.

He said that the underpinning value at Barnardo’s was that “no child should ever be turned away” but that when charities take on commissioned work they end up “at the behest of someone else’s vision”.

He said the charity was finding it difficult to live up to its vision and meet contract demands.

“Our founding fathers were masters of their own destinies,”  he said. “Many of the larger charities cannot claim that anymore.”

He added that charities are “wasting millions of pounds to compete for work”. And said: “That is not what we raise money for.”

Khan proposed a solution whereby organsiations such as Barnardo’s could be strategic partners to deliver frontline services, working with other charities in the area, in a similar way to how councils have strategic partners to deliver back office functions.

He called a complete rethink of frontline services “to get away from the bidding and contracting model” admitting that this might cost his charity money if it moved away from some of the services it currently provides “in the greater good”.

Polly Neate, chief executive of Womens Aid said that her members, echoed comments she made at the Acevo's women's summit last month, saying that small charities were noticing that local authorities often put services they had previously provided out to tender and “a big national charity comes along and wins it”.

She said that she wasn’t sure how Khan’s proposal would “look different on the ground”.