Kirsty Weakley considers the implications of yesterday’s Charity Commission board announcement.

Yesterday afternoon the Cabinet Office finally posted the job advert for new Charity Commission board members. It also reappointed four of its current board.

Just last month pretty much everyone in the charity sector expressed concern about the Commission’s governance, so should they be reassured by yesterday’s news?

My initial impression is that while there are signs that the regulator is moving in the right direction on some areas there are still some big issues that have not been addressed.

Let’s start with the positives: there are signs of progress.

The Cabinet Office has quite rightly advertised for someone with digital expertise, essential given the Commission’s significant digital transformation.

The advert has also made it abundantly clear that the replacement for Claire Dove should have “detailed knowledge of charities, including an understanding of the charity sector’s role in building a bigger, stronger society”. The emphasis on the importance of sector knowledge is a welcome one, given the concerns about lack of sector expertise on the board.

Another positive step is the Commission’s decision to publish the membership of its subcommittees. It’s worth noting that the Gwythian Prins, the board member whose controversial Brexit essay triggered substantial concern in the sector, is no longer on the policy and guidance committee, while Claire Dove, the only member with experience working in the sector, now is.

When I interviewed Orlando Fraser earlier this month I was relieved to hear that he does have a genuine and long-held commitment to the voluntary sector. But the fact remains that we still know very little about some of the other board members’ connections to the sector, notably Eryl Besse who has just been made the board’s deputy chair.

Earlier this year, when I was asking a lot of people a lot of questions about the Commission, and the consensus was that she was a mystery.

Aside from her professional experience there is very little information available about her on the internet and the Commission’s own biography for her is particularly vague. It says she had “experience in a number of civil society organisations” and is a committee member at a Magdalen College School, Oxford – an independent school for boys.  

Given her more new, more prominent, role it would be wise for the Commission and Besse to elaborate on her connections an involvement with charities so that the sector can have confidence in the Commission’s leadership. She will be speaking at the next Commission public meeting on 7 June 2016 in Llandrindod Wells.

Not enough has been done

Disappointingly there appear to have been little progress from the Cabinet Office. It has ignored NCVO’s plea for a fundamental rethink of how board members are appointed. This means that the board continues to vulnerable to accusations of political patronage and bias.

It has also not taken the concern about the lack of sector experience as seriously. Replacing Dove with another person with strong connections to the sector knowledge does nothing to redress the imbalance on the board.

No-one is suggesting that the Commission should be run entirely by those with a background in the sector – the state of fundraising regulation demonstrates that, that is not an ideal way to regulate. Perhaps in the past there have been too many representatives from the sector on the board, but now there are not enough and it doesn’t look as though it is about to change.

The reappointment of Prins, albeit for just a year – the shortest of the reappointments – will be viewed poorly in the sector.

Prins has been singled out by the infrastructure bodies who deal with the Commission as someone whose viewpoint they are unhappy with, and there was widespread criticism of his decision to write an essay actively campaigning for the UK to leave the EU, at the same time he was involved in the production of controversial guidance warning charities - mostly in the Remain camp - not to speak out.

While the short length of reappointment, and his removal from the policy and guidance committee, could be interpreted as an acknowledgement of inappropriate behaviour by some, to others it the fact that he has been reappointed at all makes it look as though he has been let off the hook.

William Shawcross, in his response to Andrew Purkis’ concerns about Prins, only conceded that Prins made an “inadvertent error” in failing to notify the Commission of his upcoming essay – suggesting a failure of process rather than content -  Shawcross has not to send a strong message about how board members are expected to behave.

So on balance while there are some welcome steps particularly the increase in transparency from the Commission, the big issue around the overall governance and structure of the Commission’s leadership have not been tackled.  This leaves me with the uncomfortable feeling that the Cabinet Office, and to an extent the regulator, are still woefully out of step with the sector.