The PCS union, the biggest union within the Charity Commission workforce, has launched a campaign against the threatened cut to the regulator’s budget, in a bid to reduce job losses among its members.

Negotiations officer Jack Papasavva has written to various Commission stakeholders and sector figures, requesting that they use their contacts to try to influence the government’s decision on funding.

He wrote: “PCS members at the Charity Commission are very concerned that proposed cuts across government, in addition to being a threat to their jobs, seriously threaten the ability of the Commission to carry out its statutory roles, including regulating and supporting the very charities and voluntary organsiations which the government is looking to take on an increased role in its Big Society programme.”

He went on to urge recipients of the letter to support the PCS campaign or to make “your own independent representations in support of our aims to preserve the Commission as a properly funded charity regulator”.

Papasavva said that civil society minister Nick Hurd is the MP in the best position to influence funding, while Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude also “has an interest”. "You may have other influential contacts of your own of course," he wrote.

About 60 per cent of the Commission’s 500 staff are understood to be members of the Public and Commercial Services Union.