Minister for civil society Nick Hurd is confident that the Charity Commission can still carry out its work adequately with a much reduced budget.

Yesterday the government announced that the Commission’s budget would be slashed by 27 per cent over the next four years, a cut described by the regulator’s chair Dame Suzi Leather as “extremely challenging”. 

The organisation expects to have to reduce its workforce by another 140 staff, on top of the 60 it is cutting this year. This will bring staff numbers down to around 300 by 2014/15, from a high of just over 600 in 2005.

But in an interview with Civil Society yesterday, shortly after the CSR was published, Nick Hurd (pictured) was adamant that the Commission could still fulfill its role properly.

“I had meetings with the Commission over a number of weeks and they expressed their concerns about the extent of the cuts,” he said. “But they can’t be exempt and like many organisations they will be forced to look at what their core functions are and may have to stop doing certain things.

“But at no point did they make serious representations saying that budget reductions of the levels that were visible would jeopardise their core regulatory function.”