The Charity Commission’s senior management team has shrunk from 11 down to five under the leadership of new chief executive Paula Sussex.

The new structure will comprise a smaller team reporting directly to Sussex at director level.

The new team includes Michelle Russell (pictured), formerly head of investigations and enforcement, who becomes director of investigations, monitoring and enforcement. Her remit will be to detect, prevent and tackle abuse in the highest-risk areas.

Russell has worked for the Charity Commission for over 12 years. She has a legal background and developed the Commission's first counter-terrorism strategy which was published in July 2008. She was also responsible for the strategy’s implementation and works across government and with law enforcement agencies on government policies for dealing with the terrorist abuse of charities and NGOs.

Kenneth Dibble has been appointed director of legal services (previously head of legal services) and will lead the Charity Commission’s legal advice and litigation work. He has worked for the Commission for 36 years and previously held jobs as a banker and a lawyer.

Sarah Atkinson has been appointed as director of policy and communications and will lead the Charity Commission’s policy development, research, media and Parliamentary work.

Atkinson joined the Commission in 2006 as head of corporate affairs and was appointed as head of information and communications in 2011. She is also a trustee for the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years.

Neville Brownlee and Nick Allaway have been appointed to interim roles.

Brownlee has been appointed chief operating officer pending permanent recruitment. This is a new post that requires in-depth knowledge of the technology landscape and experience of delivering digital transformation. The Charity Commission has admitted that it does not currently have the skills in-house to fill this role and so it will be advertising the role externally on a two-year fixed-term contract.

Brownlee has worked for the Charity Commission for over 20 years and was previously head of compliance monitoring.  He will be found a new role at the regulator once a permanent COO is in place.

Allaway is the new director of corporate services, also on an interim basis. He has worked for the Charity Commission for ten years and will leave the Commission soon. The role is currently being advertised.

The six remaining departmental heads who previously reported directly to the chief executive will retain their current roles, reporting to the new directors, while the final structure is agreed. These are Daisy Houghton, currently head of the office of the chair and chief executive; Lynn Killoran, head of operations (Liverpool); Harry Iles, head of operations (Wales); Neil Robertson, head of operations (Taunton); Alison Wells, head of registration, and Jane Hobson, head of policy.

Glimpse of new online search tool 

Separately, Sussex used her speech at yesterday’s Charity Finance Summit to give a sneak preview of the Commission's new online search tool (pictured below).

Using Medecins Sans Frontieres as an example, she revealed that the new 'Overview' page would display bold figures for income and spending and provide a spending breakdown allocated to 'charitable expenditure', 'income generation and governance' and 'retained for future use'.

There will also be pages headed 'Financials', 'Documents', 'People' and 'Operations'.

Additional reporting by Tania Mason