Former Charity Commission chief executive Andrew Hind has declared that the Cup Trust debacle that damaged the regulator’s reputation as a competent organisation was wholly down to the “bad judgement and inadequate leadership” from its senior executive team and board.

In a hard-hitting article written for the Charity Finance Yearbook 2015, Hind (now editor of Charity Finance) defends the regulator’s performance under his leadership from 2004 to 2010, and says that its recent fortunes are a far cry from the coherent strategy that was implemented by the executive team and board during his tenure.

He decries the “Shawcross era” as incoherent and predicts that as long as the current chair is in post, the Commission has very little chance of regaining its position as a strong and respected regulator and almost no chance of preserving its independence from government.

Hind used the article to hit back at recent Public Accounts Committee criticism of the regulator’s past performance, pointing out that under his leadership it responded to earlier PAC reports by putting in place an action plan that led to, by 2007, a coherent strategy, ‘Charity at the heart of society’.

That year, the Commission won the Civil Service Award for best operational delivery in the public sector. “Not fit for purpose? I think not,” Hind wrote.

He said the Cup Trust debacle of 2013 did “untold damage” to the Commission’s reputation and that it wasn’t a function of not having enough money, but was caused by “bad judgment and inadequate leadership from the senior executive team and the board”.

He said the Shawcross era has been “characterised by a continual stream of maverick interventions from the chair, which have lacked context and strategic coherence (CEO pay, terrorist infiltration of charities, proposals for changes to the annual return)”.

He praised the appointment of Paula Sussex as chief executive and the long-serving staff in the Commission’s “engine room”, saying there was an 80 per cent chance that going forward the regulator would have a high-performing executive team. However, the chances of it achieving effective board oversight with Shawcross in the chair was just 20 per cent.

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