DCH 329 Memorandum from the Sainsbury
Family Charitable Trusts
22 July, 2004
Via email
Mr Andrew Kennon
Commons Clerk of the Committee
Joint Committee on the Draft Charities Bill
Scrutiny Unit
7 Millbank
London SW1A 3JA
Dear Mr Kennon,
I understand that Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover
spoke to you yesterday about expanding the point he put on the
record concerning over-burdening purely grant making trusts with
regulatory obligations that are largely irrelevant to the activities
of such charities.
He quoted in Committee the current draft of the Standard
Information Return, which is open for consultation until the end
of this month. I know that a number of grant making trusts will
be making it clear in that process that they do not see how these
questions will add any clarity to the publicly available information
about their activities. As is clear from the draft guidance on
the form which is also currently posted on the Charity Commission
website, this document and the guidance has been prepared without
any thought to the different characteristics of grant making trusts.
In the same vein, Lord Sainsbury wanted to set on
the record the growth in sheer volume of requirements now imposed
by the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) on accounting
for charities. Although this document is notionally "recommended
practice", compliance now has the force of law following
cross-references in Accounting Standards which have statutory
force. For the record, this material has a habit of expanding:
- SORP 1995, contained 68 pages and 240 paragraphs.
- SORP 2000 was 89 pages and 358 paragraphs.
- The latest draft is 100 pages and 439 paragraphs.
(These references exclude about half as much again
in worked examples appearing in the documents.)
The reality is that this is a charter for accountants
and registered auditors to charge charities. When the Charity
Commission comments in its evidence that it doubts whether any
charity is fully in compliance with its regulatory requirements,
the sheer scale of the minutiae with which all charities are expected
to comply under the terms of this one document alone gives a rapid
explanation of why the compliance regime is getting completely
out of hand. This is probably a bigger problem for tiny charities
without professional advice but it is also a major and largely
unnecessary overhead and diversion for sizeable grant making charities
which often have relatively few transactions to report in any
given year. One size fits all regulation fails to meet the presumption
of proportionate and fair regulation, about which much hot air
was expended by the Home Office Minister and her adviser at your
session yesterday.
Yours sincerely,
Michael Pattison
The Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts
| 
