"Listen to the quotes" (or in fact read them) Charity Chris, it just depends on which quotes you believe! If the CC never misrepresented their position on War on Want to the media why on earth do think they felt the need to apologise? Apologising isn't something that the Commission goes big on by the way.

Don't shoot the messenger

War on Want: original Third Sector' article:

"We have reminded War on Want a charity may only engage in campaigning and political activity that is directly related to its charitable purposes. We've also had written assurance from the trustees that they will review their strategy. "

Most recent article:

"The commission told journalists at the time that War on Want had been asked to clear future campaigns with the regulator in advance. "

No they didn't. They said what was quoted in the first article. It was someone else's interpretation that made that spurious link.

Listen to the quotes - not how someone else decides to interpret them.

I find umpire's news interesting because our complaints were related yet the Commission led me to believe that no investigation was taking place at all! I guess it depends on which Commission employee you ask - still War on Want are now becoming used to their inconsistancies (see current Third Sector story).

Don't shoot the messenger

The bottom line is they have ignored the fraud allegations by concluding, they will only open up an inquiry if there is serious risk or harm to the charity or its beneficiaries.  That is, we will not get involved if it means our involvement could hurt the charity.  That said, the only thing they are still monitoring is the fact there is no clear communication and reporting between the CEO and the trustees and the CEO has had majority of his decision making taken away.  So in effect, if they can get away with investigating claims that have not come before the courts, they will.

An interesting article on Third Sector website regarding an investigation by the CC into a trustee’s perjury.  Turns out the charity has now closed down.  However, you would have thought the CC would have found this out before wasting time and money coming to that conclusion.  If their argument is proportionality, was it really proportionate to investigate something that no longer exists?  I am lost for words.

then in some ways I don't understand why they are being accused of not doing anything / taking complaints seriously.

Obviously I'm not involved in it.

It would be interesting to hear what the ultimate outcome is in due course.

I would be prepared to email you the evidence but the CC are still so called, dealing with issues and I don’t wish to prejudice the non-investigation so to speak.  If you give Adam your email address I will happily email you what I have.  I would suggest you take a week or two off as there is many a communication to go through.

Have you reported the frauds and conspiracy to the auditors (or examiners) who also have an obligation to report to the CC? Have you reported it to the police or SOCA or SFO? Have you reported H&S breaches to the HSE? Just because it's a charity doen't mean it's only regulated by the CC.

In terms of propotionality, though, not everyone who steals from a shop is prosecuted.

Umpire - would you be prepared to share your correspondence with the CC here? It would be interesting to see exactly what they said.

Charity Chris, I too have made complaints to the CC and like GD, they have said that it was not proportionate to carry out an investigation into allegations of fraud, misgovernance and health and safety issues.  Like GD, I am battling away because even the trustees have failed to engage in dialog with me and to me, that clearly shows the charity lack a complaints procedure.  That said, the CC refuse to carry out a full investigation because I fear, it wants to keep it under wraps.  There is evidence from a country director which clearly upholds the complaints regarding fraud, yet the CC will not approach this person, why?

The CC complains that because they do not have enough resources to deal with matters, they have to deal with matter proportionately,  Surely then the same argument could be said of the criminal justice system?  However, if somebody steals from a shop, they’re prosecuted.  If somebody steals from a charity, or misappropriates funds, commits fraud etc, they are dealt with under the “it is not proportionate” to take any action.

What is of more concern is this, if the trustees are aware of senior managers doing this, then surely they are not fit to run a charity?  The solution, trustees should be registered and regulated like doctors, solicitors and accountants.  Trustees should have to go on training courses etc to know their legal obligations etc.  Who should pay, the charity of course, I know I would continue donating if I knew the trustees were trained to deal with issues etc, will it solve bent trustees and managers, maybe not, but it will go a long way to addressing the gap.

That's interesting. At the end of it all, maybe you can share your overall experience of the process and the ultimate outcomes here.

Hi Chris

Yes I did, although I have to say that the whole process for making a complaint is somewhat confusing. I had to ask over and over again how best to do it and ultimately there appear to be about three of four layers to go through. Still, I've not given up because the matters have still not been addressed (although the Commission seem willing to tell my MP rather more than they've told me as the complainant) I guess I'm just not important enough, but I won't let that stop me! 

Don't shoot the messenger

GD - did you ever make a complaint DIRECTLY to the Commission? I can understand your unhappiness at the allegations being overlooked if they are in the public domain, but if the allegations were put directly and then ignored without some kind of factual basis for doing so, then you start to have evidence of their procedures not working properly.

Adam - clearly, they have denied it.

They have stated that they have revised CC47 as they wish to take a 'proportional' approach. That does not mean the same as 'lax'. That is your translation. If it did, that is what they would have said. If I wished to write in an equally crass way I might suggest that you are, by your logic, advocating a disproportionate approach.

I'm sure you aren't but: I still haven't seen any specific examples where Charity Commission regulation has been proved to be severely deficient, and nor has anyone here come up with a coherent list of areas they feel that the Commission should be monitoring (and how proactive or reactive that monitoring should be).

Their system as it stands appears to me to be pretty transparent, given the involvement of the Independent Complaints Reviewer.

Of course, if you complain, and don't get the decision you personally want as you hate your ex-employer, it is again easy to state that both the Commission and the ICR aren't doing their job. If anyone doubts that, the ICR annual reports do make a good read. There's plenty of information out there, and I can only base my opinions on the evidence that is provided.

At the risk of banging on and repeating myself: if you think that they are under-resourced then it's not them you should be directing the criticism towards. The Commission's equality monitoring shows a figure of 541 staff. Again using their figures, at the end of March there were 190,387 charities on the register.  In this context, I can completely understand their 'risk-based approach'. They have to use their resources where the assessed risk is greatest. Of course, there is the other point of view that the Commission's annual budget of £30 million (approx, I think - I could stand corrected) is 'lavish'.

The funding and resourcing levels are set by Government. The Commission work within that.

Hi Chris, yes I do have an insight of sorts as I have made a complaint to the Commission and am exceedingly disatisfied about how it was dealt with. But my desire to get something changed isn't because I want recompense or even an apology, rather I'm deeply concerned that charities are not being properly protected because the Commission keep dodging their remit.

Let me explain what happened in my case. Along with several colleagues I made complaints to the Commission that Senior Management at a charity I worked for were attempting to commit fraud and breaching other legal obligations under health and safety law and employment law. Further we alleged that the Trustees of the charity were refusing to intervene and that this neglect of duty amounted to a breach of their legal obligations as the Employer (covered by both charity law and employment law).

Perhaps unsurprisingly the complainants lives were made exceedingly difficult by their employer (two were sacked over it) and we ended up with several (totally unavoidable) employment tribunal cases being brought. This proved to be a real opportunity for the Commission who took it as an invitation to back out of the investigation process by cynically declaring that the complaints were now "employment matters". Not true. The only thing that was being considered by the Tribunal Panel was whether or not we were treated properly by our employer. The substance of the complaints that led to the poor treatment - the allegations of fraud and misgoverannce - were not for Employment Tribunal to decide upon.

The Tribunal cases have now been satisfactorily disposed of (I should say no more!) but the end result is that the Commission still hasn't looked into issues that are unarguably within their remit using the laughable logic that they were once mentioned in an Employment Tribunal hearing! This is not good enough because it means that the charity's reputation and assets continue to be put at risk. Allegations of fraud and misgovernance are not 'employment matters' and they need to investigated thoroughly. In fact fraud is supposed to be one of the Commission's 'zero tolerance issues'. Good only knows what they mean by zero tolerance in this context.

Let's get one charity regulator that does it's job rather than three of four that mean little to the wider public.

Don't shoot the messenger

Charity Chris: I've investigated the issues surrounding CC47 in a reasonable amount of depth, and I'm afraid I just cannot agree with your analysis. Last week, I met Rosie Chapman, Executive Director for Policy and Effectiveness at the Commission, to discuss the revisions made to the guidance. During our discussion, it became clear to me that the Commission has objectively backtracked on the commitments it made in the 2003 version of the guidance. The Commission's line is straightforward: it wants to take what it calls a 'proportional' approach to regulation, and the new CC47 better embodies this 'proportion' than the old version. This translates as, "the new CC47 is more lax than the old version." At no point has the Commission denied this, even though it's been given ample opportunity.

Catman: Good to hear from you again; it's been a while. Of course, I am sure - as you say - that many charities take complaints extremely seriously. But this is not the case across the board. According to people a lot better qualified to know about these things than I - such as the Charity Commission's Independent Complaints Reviewer - the state of redress-systems in the sector is seriously lacking. This is something I've also heard from a variety of other senior sector people in private. I'm prepared to believe them.

Finally, this is a good place for me to say that - as well as being an (occasionally) harsh critic - I am also one of the Commission's biggest fans. Given their stretched resources and strange set of stautory duties, they do a phenomenal job. But - like everyone - they do sometimes get things wrong. 

Adam, Intelligent Giving

There seem to be some personal vendettas going on here.

Let's dig a little deeper.

Adam states that the Commission don't make a commitment to  investigating 'excessive' fundraising / admin costs. However, they do state, for example, that they will investigate:

"serious non-compliance in a charity that damages or has the potential to damage its reputation and/or the reputation of charities generally"

That sounds to me as though it could cover that particular scenario.

Of course, it is easier to write opinion presented as fact rants on this website and in the charity press that help to undermine public confidence in the Commission than actually engage with them and ask them why they've made the changes and how they would respond to certain scenarios.

Looking back at the IG complaints about the Wooden Spoon charity - you might not have got the response you wanted, but you can't deny that the complaint was taken seriously. The Commission responded intelligently and had clearly spent some time considering the case and writing a detailed response.

I still haven't seen an answer to my original questions. GD - it sounds as though you have a specific case in mind. I take it you made a complaint. What was the response? How do you know it wasn't taken seriously? Have you made an FOI request to find out why any complaint wasn't investigated as fully as you personally might have wished?

Ultimately, my point is this. We might all have our own personal beefs about something. Whilst it is difficult to accept at times, we aren't always right. I might happen to think that Collingwood shouldn't be back in the England cricket team, but as I haven't spent my working life in professiona cricket coaching, I guess I can accept that someone else's opinion might have more weight than mine. In the same way, the Commission are the experts and the regulator.

I'm not saying the Commission will never make mistakes. Everyone does. It's also reasonable to question them, but for anyone, even with experience working in the sector, to set ourselves up as necessarily always knowing better than them is not, in my opinion, a helpful road to go down.

Let's see if we can find out why the changes to CC47 have been made and see if we can find out why GD's complaint didn't result in an investigation before we act as judge, jury and executioner.

Adam, you wouldn't know shizzle if it sat on your nizzle!

All this anti CC rant has blotted out your (first) huge assumption. That charities are blissfully unaware of the need to rectify complaints. You put across this up to date, cutting edge charity veneer but in the end you might as well be wearing a twin set and pearls.

Any charity who receives money from the government, local or national has to have a complaints procedure. If I receive a complaint then I treat it with the utmost integrity and use it as a learning experience.

But no, that isn't good enough for you, so lets get another layer of government to preside over your perceived issue of complaints. Adam, from the recent blog traffic I assumed you were essentially a Cameronite. And here you are, advocating more civil servants? I'm as confused as a conservative manifesto.

The FRSB is in nature "toothless", however punitive fines on charities would be unpalitable to all and could end up in the courts which would not look pretty. The whole emphasis of the FRSB is arse about face. They should be explaining to the public what modern charities are like and  explain about how making a donation makes a differnce. Making the whole emphasis of "accountability and trust" about complaining is plain foolish. All I've  done for the last 3 days is moan about being too hot!

And as to the charity commission investigating excessive fundraising costs, well that is whole different kettle of fish. Are you able to intimate their long term fundraising strategy from the annual review? No but you probabaly think it should be in there! When the CC pull up its kecks and investigates a charity it is often a long, expensive and PR unfriendly affair. Not something to be taken lightly.

catman

Sorry my last post was in response to Chris, but others got in first!

With regard to RSPCA's comments, I completely agree about what could be regarded as 'customer care' complaints.

However, the commission's remit is absolutely unambiguous when it comes to Trustees being required to fulfil their legal obligations and matters of misgoverance. If Tribunal claims are occuring because a charity's procedures and practices are incompatible with employment law then it's a clear case of the latter. If a highly damaging case comes to a tribunal only because the Trustees ignore their legal status as employer and refuse to listen to complaints about senior employees they're failing in their legal obligations. Either way, these are matters which do fall under the Charity Commission's existing regulatory remit.

It's important to draw a distinction between the proper behaviour of a charity towards its employee (which is quite rightly a matter not for the CC but the ET to decide upon) and any organisational failings which may have led to the case/s being brought in the first place - which are a matter for the CC...... That's not even to mention any allegations of illegality which come up in an Employment Tribunal hearing such as, just by way of example, fraud. The ET panel will not reach a verdict as to whether fraud took place (because that's not their job), but that doesn't mean that the CC shouldn't investigate it. Unbelievably that's exactly their attitude at the moment though. 

Unfortunately I won't be revising my view of the CC as unashamed remit dodgers. I also don't buy their oft trotted out propotionality argument. When it suits they jump all over small charities for minor indiscretions whilst shying away from investigating far more serious allegations against the big boys. I'm not a fan.    

Don't shoot the messenger

Adam you make a very good point, excessive costs in fundraising.  I worked for a charity who spent around 66 pence in the pound raising funds from schoolchildren.  The CEO would say that this was a PR arm of the charity and they did good work, maybe so, however, I never saw anyone who was in business ringing me up saying “I recall you coming to my school, my company wants to donate X pounds.  I never saw them tell the children that actually, 66 pence in the pound pays their costs.

Finally, I thought the CC was set up to monitor charities in the light of using public money?  That to me means, if charities are defending cases in the employment tribunal just to show support for errant managers, that is not good use of public money.  Instead, it would be cheaper for the CC to step in and uncover exactly what did happen.  After all, they have the Civil Appeals Board for prison officers etc, why not a Charity Appeals Board?  The board could make all sorts of recommendations for both charities and their trustees if shortcomings were evident.

For 1): "Let's take for example their non involvment in any matter which results in an Employment Tribunal case being brought. They are quite right to state that they shouldn't take sides or interfere in a charity's day to day management of their staff. But what if the issues being brought up in the case point to misgovernance or serious legal breaches which put the charity at substantial risk of financial loss or damage to its reputation? Those are matters which fall within the Commission's regulatory remit and should be considered distinct from the issue of fair treatment of employees.

What happens at the moment is that the Commission uses the very mention of an Employment Tribunal to wash its hands of its regulatory responsibilities. This means that charities lose in the courts, make pay outs which should have been avoided (from publically donated income if they're not properly insured), attract columns and columns of negative media coverage..............and then? Well, then they usually release a statement saying that they've done nothing wrong and then continue to run the organisation in such a way to make further litigation highly probable! This is a disgrace and it's allowed to happen because Ms Berg and her colleagues are not doing their jobs."

This, in my opinion, is the Commission deliberately avoiding its remit and the consequents can be dire.  

As for 2) If there are issues that fall outside the Commission's remit - they could be things like incivility. poor treatment of volunteers, a perceived wasting of resources etc. perhaps they could be dealt with more effectively by the charities themselves. If that doesn't prove adequate then, as a matter of principle, I'd rather have one regulator with a broader remit than two regulators with two sets of associated overheads!

Don't shoot the messenger

Chris: there's a lot wrong with the Commission's guidance on complaints (that is, CC47). I grumbled about this document's shortcomings at length in Third Sector magazine a few weeks ago - but in short, my problem is that the just-published version of the guidance rows back significantly from the previous version, published in 2003. Back in 03, the Commission said it would investigate - amongst other things - excessive fundraising and admin costs. It no longer makes that, or any similar, commitments. And that's a really disappointing step.

Adam, Intelligent Giving

I think you're being a bit hard on the CC. They were (at least originally) set up to register and regulate charities in the sense that they were required 1. to satisfy themselves that the proposed objects of the charity were indeed charitable and 2. to satisfy themselves that the charity was complying with its own governing document (including boring things like not having only two trustees then the document said three).

AFAIK it does in fact do this most of the time* - what it doesn't do is make any attempt to field all the zillions of complaints that are really "customer care" (in my case people who think they should have been given twenty quid towards their vet bill when I only gave them ten, and so on).

I don't think there's any way they could possibly deal with the customer care complaints, simply because charities are so diverse that no external body could possibly regulate all the ins and outs of what we do.

There's another aspect to the problem of volunteers who feel badly treated, which is whether it's altogether a good thing to put charity volunteer managers in a position where they may have to defend themselves by humiliating the complainant if they have to explain in public exactly why (for example) that person was "let go".

*With due respect to GD, who will probably add that persistently spending money on tribunals is very poor management. 

It sounds from the comments here that people have two issues:

1) There is a belief that the Commission don't investigate issues which would seem to be within their remit; and

2) The remit is not wide enough

What is the evidence for (1) and for (2) how wide should the remit be?

The problem I have Chris is that the Commission don't currently investigate issues that are within their remit. This, I believe, is quite deliberate. If it's a matter of not having the budget then they should say so rather than insulting the intelligence of those who bring coherent and relevant complaints to then to be dealt with.

Don't shoot the messenger

Arh bless, the poor old CC.  If somebody could simply explain to me what the CC was actually set up to do and achieve, I could comment objectively.  However, my understanding is, they were set up to restore the public’s faith in the sector.  That said, how then can they turn around and not investigate complaints?  Isn’t the age old story the same, if somebody has something good happen to them, they tell no one, if somebody has something bad happen to them, they tell ten people, who in turn tell another five each.  I am sure you get my drift?  The point being, Charities are always going to come in for criticism but equally, the CC cannot hide behind its blanket cover of, it doesn’t fall within our remit.  

What would a single Ombudsman achieve then?  What would their remit be?  Finally, would that person be a body one could complain to in the interests of “whistleblowing”?  After all, the CC is a so called body one can complain to about wrongdoing in charities, but unfortunately, you have to take the matter to the tribunal in order to get your job back, albeit, that doesn’t even work in most cases as one Chief Executive found out.  Having received her job back, she was then locked out of the building by the trustees…….brilliant, and they want us to feel sorry for them.

I am all for regulation, however, it needs to be for the benefit of the public, not the charities.  My view is simple, if charities are being held to account, they will be less likely to step out of line and more inclined to deal with complaints internally.  Give the regulator power to remove overbearing CEO’s or senior managers or ultimately, trustees who fail to recognize their legal obligations.  At the moment, knife crime is high on the agenda because it is costing young peoples lives.  So too does mismanagement with charities dealing with the deprived and needy, if they are wasting money on litigation, then they are taking money from the beneficiaries.  You cannot blame those taking the action, they simply have nowhere else to go.

Thanks for the link. The guidance seems to say that the Commission will investigate complaints that are within their remit, and won't investigate complaints that aren't.

They then give some pretty clear examples of cases that would warrant their investigation, and those that would not.

They are clear about their stance. It's easy to criticise. What would you at IG suggest that their policy should be?

While it would be good for the charity commission to have a bigger budget, thats unlikely.
For years now the government has been pushing for year on year cost savings. So remaining staff have to work harder, to do the same or more work than they did with more staff.
Staff of course being one of the larger costs of government departments and one of the easiest to cut.

So unlikely, especially in the current economic climate, to get more funding channelled to the charity commission. A whole lot of other priorities ahead of charities.

Martin

Firstly and perhaps most imporantly there's the issue of the Charity Commission, in the shape of Ms Jodi Berg, shamelessly passing the buck. In my opinion she either doesn't understand or is deliberately misrepresenting the Commission's investigative remit.

Let's take for example their non involvment in any matter which results in an Employment Tribunal case being brought. They are quite right to state that they shouldn't take sides or interfere in a charity's day to day management of their staff. But what if the issues being brought up in the case point to misgovernance or serious legal breaches which put the charity at substantial risk of financial loss or damage to its reputation? Those are matters which fall within the Commission's regulatory remit and should be considered distinct from the issue of fair treatment of employees.

What happens at the moment is that the Commission uses the very mention of an Employment Tribunal to wash its hands of its regulatory responsibilities. This means that charities lose in the courts, make pay outs which should have been avoided (from publically donated income if they're not properly insured), attract columns and columns of negative media coverage..............and then? Well, then they usually release a statement saying that they've done nothing wrong and then continue to run the organisation in such a way to make further litigation highly probable! This is a disgrace and it's allowed to happen because Ms Berg and her colleagues are not doing their jobs.

On to the matter of the Charity Ombudsman. As you might expect I'd start by making sure that the Commission did the job that it was set up to do in the first place. If it needs more funding to do it then that's a matter that needs looking at. I'd then consider the catagories of (legitimate) complaint that fall outside the Commission's existing remit and how they might best be dealt with- there shouldn't be too many. My preferred way of incorporating those would be to widen the remit of the Commission further and give them the budget they need - after all what's the point in setting up yet another Third Sector regulatory body? It increases overheads, confuses the public and sends out the message that we're happy to waste resources. Perhaps most importantly of all I doubt that it'll make any difference whatsoever.

...........As for the FRSB. Well, as far as I can see their only aim in life is to convince the public that they're got a use. Most of the complaints that they deal with seem to be nothing more than the whinges of those who hate charity anyway and don't understand how we work. To me it's the mark of a sector lacking in confidence that we indulge every prejudice - "Oh yes, it's terrible that someone wrote to you asking you for money" - rather than making a clear case for the benefits of what we do. I very much doubt whether most people have the faintest foggiest clue what the FRSB is anyway.

I'm going to stop now before my blood pressure goes through the roof! Reading about so many of my pet hates in one article isn't good for me.

Don't shoot the messenger