The Charity Commission are working under huge pressure (as is the case with many Government agencies) to make significant changes to their operations with a severely diminished budget. They are being stripped of many of their traditional roles with the Government suggestion that these will be picked up by umbrella bodies (although funding these support functions will prove to be a challenge). This approach is consistent with a many other areas of the current Government reforms. The oversight of this transformation has fallen to the new Chair of the Commission, Sir William Shawcross, a writer and commentator according to Wikipedia. I have written previously of my concern at the lack of charitable experience in the CV of Mr Shawcross, here and here.

Although the Commission Chair plays a very significant role, the other board members are  able to exert an influence that could in principle help to mitigate Williams lack of knowledge of the sector and how charities operate. This article from Third Sector provides an excellent analysis of how little prospect there is of this happening with the current intake of new board members.

It is clearly too late to change the makeup of the current board, but the Government could  improve the process for future vacancies on the Commission.  According to the article the Cabinet Office received 270 applications for six positions. An interview panel chose 13 to be considered by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, who made the final selection. The interview panel comprised William Shawcross, Helen Stephenson, director of programmes at the Office for Civil Society along with Lord Bew, a crossbench peer and chair of a number of charities, and John Wood, a current legal member of the board. Wood is a former head of charities at Herbert Smith Freehills solicitors.

This means that the only person who has had any experience of charities is a man whose working life has been spent primarily in Northern Ireland academia and who has been a member of the Lords since 2007. I confess that I don’t know which charities Paul Bew is Chair of, but it would be reasonable to suggest that even if he has wide experience of the breadth of the charitable sector, that one voice amongst 4 is probably insufficient to ensure that the needs of charities are being considered as fully as they could be. It is inconceivable that the Government would only put one business person on the selection panel for a board of a business regulator. At its worst Paul Bew could be Chair of a small number of charities regulated by the Northern Ireland regulator and so his experience of the way the English and Welsh regulator works may be non-existent!

My suggestion is to ensure that the majority of people on the sifting committee are people who are well versed in the sector. People who between them can reflect the needs of small local community based charities without any paid employees or indeed finances apart from what is raised locally, and also medium sized charities which do employ staff but perhaps struggle to compete for Government contracts due to the structural barriers. Finally a voice from the very large national charities would be useful even though these charities are a small part of the sector as a whole. There is no need for the OCS to be a formal part of the panel although clearly they could advise members, just as they will continue to advise the minister in making the final decision. This approach would ensure that ordinary Trustees and Chief Executives from the Charitable sector could have more confidence in the Commission which is intended to regulate their work.