The Charity Commission should subcontract some of its regulatory functions to sector-specific umbrella bodies in order to reduce the amount of paperwork required by various regulators, Lord Hodgson said this week.

After his address to the Westminster Social Policy Forum on Monday, Lord Hodgson responded to a comment from the floor about duplication of red tape between regulators.

Mark Jackson, chief executive of Sir Richard’s Hospice in Worcesterchire, told the Charities Act reviewer that health charities like his were having to complete more and more paperwork for the Care Quality Commission and local authority and NHS commissoners, all of which is repetition of what they’re already producing in their accounts under Sorp.  

Jackson suggested that if the Cabinet Office could orchestrate cross-pollination of regulatory demands between departments of state, that would be “exceedingly helpful”.

But Lord Hodgson said he had a better idea, one which he had mooted in his Charities Act review but wasn’t really picked up on.

He suggested that the Charity Commission could “subcontract” some of its powers to umbrella bodies specific to various sectors, and allow those umbrella bodies to provide the specialist type of regulation that such charities require.

“A specialist umbrella body focused on the particular regulatory needs of a sector could be dealt with using the overarching powers of the Charity Commission, without the Commission ever losing its power to intervene in the charity,” he said.

“That would avoid some duplication because that umbrella body would have links with the health regulators and remove from individual charities some of the responsibilities they’re faced with,” Hodgson said.

“It is not an idea that has so far taken wing, but I think it will emerge over the next three or four years for reasons of the pressures you are talking about.

“And it’s a better way to do it than cross-pollinating Whitehall which is a jolly difficult thing to do, as I found out in my Red Tape Task Force.”