The Charity Commission’s new chief executive is unfazed by the prospect of wielding the hatchet that is poised to fall on the regulator’s activities – and is convinced there will be opportunities to create new services as well as cut old ones. Tania Mason reports.
Sam Younger may need nerves of steel in the coming months to keep his new vessel, the Charity Commission, on a steady course.
The regulatory body has already announced its intention to cut 60 more jobs over the next six months to cope with a funding reduction of £900,000 this financial year, and the Comprehensive Spending Review on 20 October is widely expected to bring more carnage.
But Younger is not intimidated by the prospect of having to make unpopular decisions, despite the fact his last big job, as founding chair of the Electoral Commission, was all about building up an organisation, not shrinking one. He says he does have experience of downsizing, citing his time as managing director of the BBC World Service, where he had to implement budget cuts, though not, albeit, “of the percentage magnitude we might be faced with here”.
He has no intention of going in and axeing services unilaterally. After spending his first two weeks in the job touring the Commission’s offices, meeting groups of staff around the country and learning about what they do, he plans to kick off a far-reaching strategic review of the organisation, starting with a consultation with all stakeholders about how best to apply a much-reduced budget. This will necessarily involve inviting views on which services could least painfully be cut, but Younger is at pains to stress that he is also expecting the Commission to start doing more of some things, and even introduce some new services.
1978 - 1994 | Sam Younger's CV
Various BBC roles, mostly in radio |
1994 - 1998 | Managing director, BBC World Service |
1999 - 2001 | Director-general, British Red Cross |
2001 - 2009 | Founding chair, Electoral Commission |
2009 | Interim chief executive, Shelter |
2010 | Interim chief executive, Bell Education Trust |
“Assuming the cut in the budget is of the order we’ve been led to expect, the one thing you cannot do is have business-as-usual while shaving a bit off here and there,” he says. “What we need to do in the context of a strategic review is go right back and ask what it is the Commission needs to be doing.”
While this may be a bitter pill to swallow for some of the 60-plus staff facing redundancy, Younger is convinced that consulting widely will confer credibility on the choices that will be made.
“Obviously decisions are going to be made that are difficult to make and difficult for the people affected. But it’s hugely important that even if people don’t agree with your decisions at least they feel they have had a chance to put their point of view; that at least the process has allowed the arguments to be made.
“It’s difficult but if you are going to take a really radical look, chances are there will be areas you will grow in and do new things in.”
Perceptions
Younger says he was attracted to the role “partly because it’s a sector I’m really interested in and one that’s going to become even more central and important; partly because I’ve got an association with the sector and feel an empathy with it, and thirdly, I have some experience of and interest in the conundrum of regulation – how do you regulate effectively while regulating with a very light touch?”
In a few weeks he will make one of his first public appearances as chief executive at a Labour Party Conference fringe panel discussion organised by Charities Aid Foundation. He says this will give him an opportunity to gauge people’s perceptions of the regulator. So does he have a vision for how he wants the Commission to be perceived, under his watch?
“I want it to be regarded by the sector as part of the architecture of the sector that’s indispensible to them, and as an organisation they can rely on to facilitate them in things like complying with the law and managing themselves properly. And I’d like the sector and the public to feel that the Commission can give people confidence by cracking down on areas of poor practice.
“I’m realistic enough to know that a regulator of any sector is never going to be regarded as the greatest thing since sliced bread. However you do have the possibility that people will say ‘of course we sometimes find it irritating and burdensome, but we would not wish to see it disappear, or its functions taken elsewhere, because it does what it does well’.”
Political affiliations
He neatly bats away a suggestion that the new dream team of himself - the son of Labour minister Kenneth Younger - and Commission chair Dame Suzi Leather, who has always been transparent about her Labour connections, might find it difficult to build meaningful relationships with ministers in the coalition government.
“First let me say I have no doubts about working with Dame Suzi,” Younger says, “who I think is an excellent public servant and well capable of looking at the issues objectively. Yes my father was a minister in a Labour government 65 years ago, but my cousin (George Younger) was a Conservative minister, and I myself have never had any political affiliations.
“If there had been any question marks over my ability to be politically impartial, they would have been ferreted out during my eight years at the Electoral Commission. So I have no concerns about that, and I don’t see why perceptions here should be any different.”
Five things you didn't know about Sam Younger
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He declined to pass judgement on the hot potato that is public benefit of independent schools – his own son was educated at Westminster School – beyond admitting to “slight surprise” at the heat that has been generated around the issue when the Commission “seems to have put forward perfectly sound and reasonable guidance”. Indeed, he adds, during his own brief spell as interim CEO at the Bell Education Trust it became evident that the public benefit test was “something worthwhile to have to think about”.
However, he welcomed the likelihood that the Attorney General would refer the Independent Schools Council’s application for judicial review of the public benefit guidance to a higher tribunal. “In any of these areas where there is new law it is right to develop authoritative interpretation of what it means,” he says. “It seems to me there is no reason it should be the subject of significant controversy in the future anyway.”
Younger has substantial experience in both executive and non-executive roles, and admits he “probably prefers the strategic, big-picture” stuff than the minutiae; however he adds: “I find detail interesting too.” Of most importance to him, he says, is to feel that he is making a contribution in an area of real value. “But I wouldn’t describe myself as a workaholic, or obsessive,” he says. “I think it’s important to have other dimensions.” He’s always maintained his closest friendships outside the sphere of work: “It’s healthy. If you’re beginning to feel that what you’re doing is terrifically important, your friends will always take you down a peg or two.”
While the vast chunk of Younger’s career has been spent in the public sector, he has had both executive and trustee roles in charities, most recently interim CEO jobs at Shelter and Bell Education Trust. He also spent over nine years as a trustee of a small arts charity, the English Touring Opera, and insists that while such length of tenure may not accord with best practice, certain challenges facing the organisation meant that some continuity of governance was needed. He had to relinquish this role to take up the Charity Commission post.
Two years at the Red Cross
But perhaps the most anomalous entry on his CV is his spell at the helm of the British Red Cross – surely such a big job should warrant more than a two-year stint? Younger joined the charity when it was just beginning a major strategic renaissance and oversaw the painstaking task of bringing together hundreds of decentralised branches under the umbrella of one national charity – a challenging project by anyone’s standards, particularly given the passion and dedication of the Red Cross’s thousands of local volunteers. But Younger insists he wasn’t actively looking to leave. Instead, he had put his name forward for a role as a part-time commissioner at the start-up Electoral Commission, hoping to do that alongside his Red Cross job, but then was “gobsmacked” to be offered the full-time chairmanship of the Commission. “It was fascinating and stimulating at the Red Cross and I would happily have stayed well beyond the two years I was there,” he says. “But the Electoral Commission was too interesting an opportunity to pass up. So I left the Red Cross with many regrets but on balance it was the right thing to do.”
So how would his former employees describe him? “I would hope they would say open, approachable, listens, either understands or tries to understand, but is nevertheless prepared to stand up and be counted and say ‘this is what we do’ even when it is not what everybody would like.”
