Sector bodies have voiced cautious support for the Charity Commission following today’s damning National Audit Office report into the regulator’s effectiveness with NCVO calling for a progress report in 2015.
Responding to today's report into the Commission's fitness to regulate, sector leaders were in broad agreement that the Commission needed to improve, but that since the Cup Trust scandal earlier this year there had been signs of improvement.
Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of NCVO, said: “The Commissioners seem to have realised the error of their ways and there is some evidence of progress. The Commission is now making greater use of the legal powers it has to investigate charities.”
But he added that there is “still a long way to go” and that "there needs to be cultural change throughout the Commission to take it from a period in which it was expected to be a friend to charities to one in which it must be an effective regulator, focusing on compliance with charity law”.
He also called on the NAO to review the Commission's progress agains the recommendations in 2015.
Caron Bradshaw, chief executive of Charity Finance Group (CFG), said: “What’s vital now is that lessons are learnt from this, improvements are made and that the regulator is supported to fulfil its role in maintaining public trust in charities.”
Alluding to Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge’s comments earlier this week that the Charity Commission could be scrapped, Bradshaw said such suggestions of a merger between the Commission and HMRC "completely ignore the broader role the Charity Commission plays".
Navca’s chief executive Joe Irvin agreed that the regulator “must raise its game” and that said its recent behaviour indicated the Commission accepts this.
“But we don’t want the Charity Commission to turn into some kind of Rambo, acting tough but showing little understanding,” he warned.
Nick Brooks, chairman of the ICAEW charities technical committee and head of not for profit at Kingston Smith LLP, suggested that the NAO had unrealistic aspirations for what the Commission can achieve. “I wonder what they expect. While a £22.7m budget may sound generous, when you stretch it across 163,000 charities it works out at just £139 per charity,” he said.
“Can we really expect an organisation that is required to fulfil such a broad range of diverse and sometimes conflicting roles – as regulator as well as advocate – to concentrate solely on regulation and regulatory powers?”
Dan Cory, chief executive of NPC suggested that: "This is also an opportunity to think more widely about what the Charity Commission should be doing and to be realistic about what can be achieved with a severely reduced budget."
