Charity Commission chief executive Sam Younger says charging charities an annual fee in order to help fund the regulator is “something we need to look hard at”, but it would require legislative change.

Answering questions about the Commission’s cost-cutting plans at a CFDG open members meeting yesterday, Younger revealed that when the regulator submitted its bid to the Comprehensive Spending Review it had drawn up an illustrative sliding payments scale.

Asked by Younger to help with the figures, executive director of policy and effectiveness Rosie Chapman said from the audience the Commission “could get away with charging relatively little to the smaller ones”, while the 5,500 charities above £1m income could be charged “say £5,000 each”.

Younger was at pains to emphasise that no decisions had yet been taken and that it was a purely hypothetical look at what an alternative funding model might look like, but said that with 180,000 registered charities, “it did actually look pretty modest”.

Earlier, Younger had said: “In order to be able to raise money in any significant sense we would need a change of legislation, so that’s going to be for the Act rather than anything else.

“But I think we do need to look at funding models, and this may not just be either public funding or charging to generate our income, or an annual subscription, it could be a hybrid.

“This is pure speculation, one of the things we will look at, but you might actually define a core of activity that is publicly funded but then add on services that are either charged for or by subscription.”

Less individual guidance

Elsewhere, on the Commission’s advisory role Younger said internal discussions had given the “strong sense” that the regulator should give less individual guidance and rely more on published guidance and working with other organisations.

He said there had been discussion of building relationships with “trusted advisers” such as umbrella bodies, with whom the regulator would liaise rather than with “every individual charity”.

He added: “Funnily enough it’s something we’re forced to look at because of the financial circumstances but it’s probably something we should be looking at anyway because it’s a better way of managing the needs of the sector in terms of advice and guidance.”

Payment of trustees

Younger also faced questions on the possibility of a relaxation of restrictions on payment of trustees, and revealed that even within the Commission it was an issue which produced “very polarised” attitudes.

He said that “frankly our internal discussion hasn’t been much help yet in making a decision”, adding that his experience had been that opinion in the sector at large was equally polarised, and as a result, “I really don’t have an answer to it yet”.

The Commission chief then took the opportunity to run a straw poll among the attendees of the meeting, which found what Younger described as “a clear majority” in favour of the Commission continuing to carefully scrutinise any charities wishing to pay trustees.