NCVO President leads on de-regulation
18th August 2010
The Government has launched its taskforce on deregulation to "cut red tape" for civil society organisations, making it easier for them to be set up and managed.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots, president of NCVO, will be chairing the taskforce, run jointly by the Office for Civil Society and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Sir Graham Melmoth, chair of NCVO, will also be a member of the taskforce.
Our chief executive Sir Stuart Etherington said:
"The taskforce represents a great opportunity for the sector, and we look forward to contributing to its work. At a time when many voluntary and community groups are struggling with their income and funding, it is vital to reduce the burden of regulation and administration as much as possible, while ensuring public trust and confidence in our sector is maintained."
Our policy team has already started gathering evidence from NCVO members and will be making a submission. To inform our response, please join our discussion on how to cut red tape.
Comments
Another way to cut bureaucracy and costs for voluntary sector organisations is to have a standard template for submission of annual financial statements and reports.
For the most part, the annual return to Companies House and/or Charities commission should be standardised and simplified. Clearly, bigger organisations may want to use these reports to market themselves, but most VS organisations simply want to comply with their accountability requirements.
If there was a template for organisations to complete their report and financial statements, then once they had completed it for the first year, after that it should be even simpler.
And it would reduce costs on accountants.