Sir Roger Singleton, a former board member of the now-defunct Capacitybuilders, has expressed doubts over whether its £150m funding of infrastructure bodies actually helped frontline charities during its six-year history.

And Sir Stuart Etherington, CEO of NCVO which got the lion's share of that national funding, admitted that sustainability of the funded programmes was never really considered.

They were both speaking yesterday at the Civil Society Question Time coalition debate, which saw a lively two-hour exchange between 100 charity sector leaders and a panel comprising shadow minister for civil society Gareth Thomas, Lord William Wallace, spokesman for the Cabinet Office in the House of Lords, and Sir Stuart.

Sir Chris Kelly, chair of the King’s Fund, asked the panel whether the significant amounts of public money which were provided to the sector in the form of ChangeUp hubs, Capacitybuilders and Futurebuilders did any good for the sector, and what there was to show for it now in terms of sustainable outcomes.

Thomas cited the expansion of poverty charity Cambridge House, which received Futurebuilders funding to renovate its premises, as an example of a lasting legacy from the funds. The other panelists were more oblique in their responses. Lord Wallace said charities had been too dependent on the state for funding during the Labour years, and Sir Stuart predicted that the future of capacitybuilding in the sector would veer towards more online peer-to-peer learning.

But the question elicited a frank reply from Sir Roger Singleton, chair of the Diana Memorial Fund, who sat on the board of Capacitybuilders at the time:

“I think the direct answer to Chris Kelly is that it was a mixed picture,” said Sir Roger.

“The question left in my mind is the extent to which national, regional and sub-regional funding of bodies actually helped and facilitated frontline charities.

"I don’t think we ever really bottomed that one."

Sir Stuart: Sustainability was not a factor 

Elsewhere in the debate, Sir Stuart admitted that in the 'golden age' of the Labour years, "we didn't really think about sustainability".

"We thought, there's a contract, let's have a go for it, let's expand," he said. "But we didn't really pay much attention to how sustainable this was and because we became more influenced by public spending changes because there was more public money, we therefore suffered more as a result of changes in public funding."

NCVO had hired staff to deliver various ChangeUp-funded programmes, but had to make them redundant when the then-government shifted the administration of ChangeUp into Capacitybuilders to stem infighting by sector bodies over where funding should be allocated.

Last year, NCVO admitted that ChangeUp had been a missed opportunity to make the sector’s infrastructure provision sustainable.

Capacitybuilders was culled by the coalition government two years ago as part of its review of government quangos. It disbursed around £150m of government funding to the sector during its existence.