CTN response to Review of Financial Thresholds in the Charities Acts

Submitted 31 March 2008 

Charity Trustee Networks is a registered charity which aims to support trustees from across the voluntary and community sector in order to improve the governance and therefore the effectiveness of their organisations.
Charity Trustee Networks welcomes the review of financial thresholds in the Charities Acts and its attempt to explore areas in which life can be made easier for charities and their trustees.

Charity Trustee Networks has publicised the consultation widely among its over a thousand member trustees. It was included in our e-newsletter, as a news item on our home page (www.trusteenet.org.uk), a short web-based questionnaire about it was made available and specific questions were put on our homepage as quick polls.

The response to this has been small, which could be taken to suggest that trustees are not so bothered by the current threshold limits that they are keen to advocate their being changed. However, CTN believes this reflects more that for trustees of charities who are not near one of the financial thresholds the discussion of changes to thresholds simply is not relevant. The issue is not immediate to them and so they focus their attention on those issues that are most pressing.

Trustees are a diverse range of individuals with an accompanying diverse range of views. The responses we have received reflect this – the overall response from trustees to the proposals could be described as’ yes and no’.

While there was an indication that some trustees would welcome some thresholds being raised there was a strong underlying message that accountability, transparency and confidence in charities was vitally important, and that this must be protected.

It may be that it is not the thresholds themselves which are problematic for charities and their trustees, but a lack of support and resources for charities which have just reached a threshold and must change how they do things. For example, one charity respondent commented that having to move to doing accruals accounts was a good thing as it meant the charity was much more aware of its financial position. What was problematic was the lack of an affordable and suitable entry level accounts package to enable them to do accruals accounts. Raising thresholds would not do away with such problems.

Overall, while there is interest in raising some thresholds, there is no overwhelming demand for this. There is a demand, however, for accountability and for confidence in charities to be maintained.