Last month Philip Kirkpatrick, partner at Bates Wells, declared that the model of governance currently adopted by almost all charities is “broken, and no longer workable”, especially for large, complex organisations.

He said that appointing a team of “skilled and less skilled people, and asking them to supervise, on a part-time basis, a team of full-time professionals”, and to “carry the can if it all goes wrong”, is not fair and does not work for too many charities. A charity’s staff are more competent to develop and discharge strategy than the trustees; they are more engaged and spend more time thinking about the charity and its work. Yet the trustee board, who might meet only quarterly, has ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the day-to-day management of the charity is undertaken properly. “How?” poses Kirkpatrick. “How do they genuinely obtain the assurance they need?”