The government is mulling over making some “pretty radical changes” to the payroll giving system, but the Economic Secretary to the Treasury reiterated that those changes will not include making the scheme mandatory.
Sajid Javid (pictured) told a meeting of fundraisers at the Home Office yesterday that the Treasury had received around 100 responses to its consultation on payroll giving reform, an “unusually” high amount given that often consultations elicit just one or two responses.
While the views put forward in the response were widely divergent, Javid said that most respondents supported the reduction of the 60-day clearance deadline for payments, to be replaced by a 30-day window of time for the money to get from the donor to the charity. While most attending the Institute of Fundraising’s Payroll Giving Conference took this as a strong suggestion that the Treasury will make the period shorter, the minister poured cold water on other charity sector hopes.
“There are some pretty radical changes that we’re considering pretty seriously," he said.
“[But] we don’t think there should be a mandatory force on companies. The whole essence of giving is that it should be a voluntary activity.”
Javid was in essence repeating the government’s view on a mandatory scheme which it put forward in its consultation into payroll giving, released in January. The proposals included opening up the scheme to for-profit providers as well as standardising forms, although the minister made no mention of how these were received. The scope of the consultation, which had disappointed many in the charity sector, led many attending the Institute’s conference yesterday to doubt how “radical” the changes to payroll giving may eventually be.
However, the Institute of Fundraising’s chief executive Peter Lewis took reassurance from the fact that Javid indicated that payroll giving will remain under the remit of Treasury. While some felt that the department has been more hostile to charitable breaks than others, Lewis said ultimately that Treasury holds the purse strings.
New portable payroll giving platform launched
The sector has been pushing for the payroll giving system to become portable, but in the absence of government action on that, a company – Payroll Giving in Action – yesterday launched its own portable digital payroll giving mechanism.
It will enable employees who give via payroll to continue giving when they change jobs – so long as their new employers are also signed up to the scheme.
PGA founder and director Jeremy Colwill said: “It’s something the sector has been screaming out for and because the system is completely paper-free it overcomes the long-standing issue of slow data flow between charities and company payroll departments.”
Also at the conference, Javid revealed he has lobbied fellow MPs to take up payroll giving, and civilsociety.co.uk found that the leading proponents of payroll giving in the charity sector themselves have barely above-average take-up of payroll giving among staff.
