Proposed plans to get charities to pay for their own regulator will need a change in legislation, the Charity Commission told a Parliamentary Committee yesterday.

Speaking at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Civil Society, Kenneth Dibble, head of legal services at the Charity Commission for England and Wales, said that getting charities to pay for the regulator would “almost certainly” require a change in legislation.

Dibble said that the Charity Commission currently has the power to charge for particular functions it carries out, but that they wouldn’t produce enough revenue for the Commission, and “would actually be detrimental to what the Commission is trying to achieve”.

“You could charge for registration," Dibble said. "But it might stop people applying to be charities. At the end of the day it will probably be primary legislation.”

William Shawcross, chair of the Charity Commission (pictured), confirmed that the regulator is not hoping for this to be built in as an addition to the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill which is currently being debated in the House of Commons.

Shawcross was unable to fix a timescale to paying for the legislation, but said consultations on it had already begun.

Shawcross said: “My argument is that charities need an effective regulator. An effective regulator does not need to be well-heeled and does not need to be plush, but it needs to have enough money to do its duty. It is in the charity’s interests to help contribute towards the financing of the regulator.

“One method of it doing it would be to ask for a flat fee from all charities to the regulator every year.”

The Scottish process

Shawcross was joined at the APPG by Paula Sussex, chief executive of the Charity Commission, and David Robb, chief executive of the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR).

When asked if there was any potential for OSCR to start charging charities for regulation, Robb said that this was not the case.

He said: “At present there is no Scottish process. A bit like right to buy, charging for regulation is in the ‘not happening here’ basket.

Robb said there was “no appetite” in Scotland to start charging, but said: “Had our budget suffered cuts of that scale, I could understand why the question is being asked. But we remain relatively well provided for, so it is not a line we expect to hear in Scotland.”