The Charity Commission is planning to formally recommend that charities make it much easier for members of the public to find information about their senior salaries on their websites, outgoing NCVO chair Sir Martyn Lewis intimated yesterday.

In his final speech as the organisation’s chair, delivered at its annual Trustees’ Conference yesterday, Sir Martyn criticised the vast majority of charities which had ignored the advice of the inquiry that he chaired into senior executive pay a few years ago.

At the time, the inquiry panel had recommended that all but the smallest charities should publish, no more than two clicks from their homepages, the names, job titles and remuneration of their chief executive and other senior staff, along with a summary of reasons why the board or remunerations committee felt such salaries were appropriate.

This level of transparency would allow potential donors to judge for themselves whether the rates of pay were justifiable, and would “greatly reduce the potential for shock-horror exposes”, Sir Martyn said.

But only a handful of trustee boards had followed this recommendation.

Sir Martyn advised all trustees in the audience to raise the subject at their next board meeting, before warning that the Charity Commission may soon intervene in the matter.

“If you didn’t sign up to those recommendations or if you still don’t, I happen to believe there is a real possibility that the Charity Commission will introduce those recommendations, or something like them, as a regulatory requirement in the not-too-distant future.”