The Charity Commission has appointed two new directors as part of its new Treasury-funded change programme.

Tracey Newman has been appointed to the new role of chief operating officer with responsibility for the Commission’s registration function, operational casework, First Contact function, website and internal IT systems.

David Jones has joined as director of corporate services. He is responsible for the Commission's finance, HR, governance and facilities functions.

Both joined in April as part of the Commission’s new three-year programme of change designed to create a more efficient and robust regulator. The programme follows an £8m ‘invest to save’ award from the Treasury to deliver new digital services to make it easier for charities to interact with the commission.

The programme is also intended to enable the commission to focus resources on higher risk work such as new technology to make better use of data for a tougher approach to regulation.

Paula Sussex, chief executive of the Charity Commission said Jones and Newman's "expertise will be invaluable and strengthen our leadership base”.

“The improvements we are making to how customers interact with us is a key part of Tracey’s new role, and she will be looking at all the ways we do this in order to improve their experience and make our operational functions more efficient," she said. 

"We continue to look at where we can be more efficient with our resources, and having recently moved our Liverpool office into smaller premises, the Taunton office move will be another good example of reducing our costs further.”

Newman has 20 years of experience in senior roles in the mobile telecommunications industry, and previously worked for the Ombudsman Services as director of dispute resolution. She will work from the Bootle office.

Jones previously worked for Ordnance Survey as head of finance and prior to that in senior positions in the Environment Agency. He will split his time between London and the Taunton office where he will oversee the commission’s cost-saving office move scheduled for late 2015.