Charity Commission chair William Shawcross has said he is against more restrictions on people setting up new charities – distancing the Commission from proposals outlined by former chief executive Sam Younger in his final speech.

"I resist the idea that we should stop people setting up charities," Shawcross was quoted as saying in a feature in The Independent newspaper today. "The voluntary impulse is something important which should be cherished."

The article is written by Paul Vallely, a leading writer about charity and ethics who worked closely with Bob Geldof on Live Aid, who also supports this view. Vallely suggests that setting up a charity allows people to engage with an issue in a way that donating does not, and advocates that “there is more to charity than economic efficiency”.

In May, Younger told the Ascension Trust Practitioners Conference that many people set up a new charity without it being necessary, and that the result was “duplication, inefficiency and, sadly, too many charities that are not managed well enough”.

He suggested that the Commission should institute stricter rules to ask people applying to register a charity whether it was really necessary.

The Commission put greater emphasis on these issues in its recently updated guidance on setting up charities, in which it asked people to “think carefully” before setting up a new charity.

Younger’s comments were supported by other commentators, including the Institute of Chartered Accounts for England and Wales, which had recently carried out an efficiency review of charities, and Lesley-Anne Alexander, chief executive of the RNIB, who said that anyone who wanted to register a charity should be made to wait six months and show they had carried out research.

However Younger's views were opposed by NCVO, most recently by Sir Stuart Etherington in his annual letter to the sector.