Charity Commission fees
At the end of November last year the CEO of the Charity Commission, Helen Stephenson CBE, gave a keynote speech to the Charity Law Association.
Helen recognised that the Commission needs to develop its service to trustees and be more accessible and helpful.
Of course, the key reason for the delays is pressure on resources at the Commission. Commission resources have decreased by 50% and at the same the Commission has received 40% more applications for charity registration. The Commission gets over 100,000 enquiries every year and only has 300 staff to deal with these. Clearly then the Commission needs greater resources to fulfil its aims to be more accessible and helpful.
This extra resource is proposed to come from charities themselves – Helen is in favour of charities paying for the services they received from the Commission. We can expect to see a consultation on fee paying this year, but the basic proposal is reported to be that the top 2,000 largest charities will have to contribute £7 million of funding yearly (£3,500 each a year on average).