The new chief executive of the Charity Commission gave her first external speech yesterday to the Charity Finance Summit, run by Civil Society Media. David Ainsworth looks at what her words suggest for the future of charity regulation.

Paula Sussex, the new chief executive of the Charity Commission, gave an impressive performance at the Charity Finance Summit yesterday. She said the right things, and promised to do the right things, and she did so in a way that made it believable that they would get done.

Sussex outlined a number of priorities for the Commission which the sector should be able to back. Top of the list was to toughen up on wrongdoers and get more proactive about tracking them down, using a specialist team and scrutiny of accounts, rather than waiting for complaints from the public, the press and other regulators.

She also suggested the Commission would have to stop being a friend to the sector, and be more aggressive in using its powers, rather than sending out polite letters. It was clear there will be much less interaction with charities and much less hand-holding. She promised that charities would stop getting “the benefit of the doubt” from the Commission.

There was also a clear message that the Commission will aim to be more efficient, and waste less time, both its own and that of the people in the sector who interact with it.

And she promised greater transparency – sending out more press releases about regulatory activities, and generally explaining better why decisions were being taken.

She has also decided to focus much more on IT and online interaction, including the recruitment of a specialist chief operating officer with the skills to develop the Commission’s offering. A new register, with more information and much more searchable data, is already in train.

All of these are welcome promises. The sector is likely to be unhappy about less personal guidance and interaction, but it also has to be realistic about the Commission’s resources, and accept they have to be applied in the right place.

Of course, the thing about promises is they have to be kept to be any good, and we’ll have to wait and see whether the “tougher and tighter” regime Sussex wants will actually emerge. The Commission has proven resistant to reform for a very long time, in the manner of many a slow, risk-averse public sector body. But it looks as if she has at least shaken things up, and instilled a bit of enthusiasm in Commission staff. And the evidence so far is in her favour: an impressive-looking CV, some good noises emerging from the Commission during the first days of her tenure, and a good speech which struck the right tone with the audience.

It’s perhaps not surprising if morale was on the low side after a long time in which the Commission has been criticised from within the sector and outside, and been made a punchbag by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee. So perhaps Sussex has stepped into an organisation which is ready to change. She certainly deserves the help and support of everyone in the sector to get her organisation facing in the right direction.

Should charities pay for the Commission?

Among all the stuff we can agree on, there was mention of one potentially more divisive suggestion: charging charities for its services. Sussex didn’t bring this up in her speech, but in response to a question from the floor, suggesting it’s on her agenda, but far from the top. She made it clear nothing has been decided yet, but said NCVO and Lord Hodgson were holding a roundtable to discuss the issue. In short, it doesn’t look like something which is likely to happen quickly.

Andrew Hind, editor of Charity Finance, former chief executive of the Commission, and chair of the event, said he firmly backed the idea, and there are certainly arguments in that direction.

If we wanted to fund the Commission using charity money, the cost would be extremely modest. If government stopped funding altogether, and instead charities contributed around £5 of every £10,000 they received, it would more or less double the Commission’s budget.

It does have disadvantages, though, in that the Commission does not currently issue a single invoice, and would need a whole new department to collect the cash. It would be pretty hard getting charities to pay, too, especially those with no paid staff. It also has the potential to upset a lot of people because the principle doesn’t seem right. Should money donated for the public good be funnelled back to the government to pay for a regulator?

The thing is, you get what you pay for. If you’re a charity with an income of £100,000, is it worth paying £50 to get a strong regulator - one answerable to you and not dependent on the vicissitudes of public funding?