The Charity Commission has continued to increase its spending on its website to improve usability, even while making cuts in other areas of the organisation, its chief executive said yesterday.

A relaunch of the site is planned for next April.

The usability of the Commission’s site was cited as a problem at yesterday’s Charity Commission public meeting by Kat Smithson, policy and public affairs officer at Charity Finance Group.

Smithson was saying that the Commission should find ways of making it easier for people to set up new charities, and that the accessibility of its website “really needs to be addressed”.

“It should be much clearer and easier to navigate,” Smithson said. “That would make a world of difference.”

Commission CEO Sam Younger replied that the regulator is on a “continual project to upgrade and refresh our website, and it will relaunch in April”.  As an interim measure, two months ago the home page was redesigned and traffic doubled almost instantly, and has been sustained at the higher level.

Younger added that boosting the capacity of the website usability team was one area where the regulator had deliberately increased its spending even while making cuts elsewhere, as it recognised the importance of understanding how people are using the site, and for what.