Press Release - New guidance to help cut red tape for
charitable, voluntary and community organisations
25 June 2009
New practical guidance published today by the
National Audit Office will save charities and other voluntary and
community organisations time and money by reducing the paperwork
they are currently required to collect when providing public
sector-commissioned services.
The guidance, published by the NAO along with
the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) in the Cabinet Office and HM
Treasury, will help government cut paperwork while still enabling
it to monitor the £12 billion it gives to charities and other
voluntary and community organisations each year. OTS has also
unveiled principles for the monitoring of funding for the third
sector.
Charities that receive public funding have to
account to government funders for how they have spent this money
and should show the impact they have achieved with it. The cost of
producing this information, however, must be proportionate to the
risks and benefits involved. Cutting unnecessary red tape can free
up time and money that would be better spent focusing on the key
services charities and others provide. The term for achieving this
balance and avoiding poor practice is ‘intelligent monitoring’.
The NAO guidance, Intelligent
Monitoring, provides practical, step-by-step help for
government funders. Alongside this, the OTS has launched its
Principles of proportionate monitoring and reporting. The
aim of the principles and guidance is to lessen the unnecessary
burden of monitoring on charities, social enterprises and voluntary
organisations and help them and departments gain better value from
it. The OTS’ principles commit Government departments to
understanding the cost of reporting for third sector organisations
and to working closely with them when establishing monitoring
requirements. The principles will apply to all new funding
streams.
Rob Prideaux, director of Third Sector
Value for Money studies at the NAO, said
today:
"Government departments have a
responsibility to make sure that public money is being spent
properly. However, when monitoring goes from being a safeguard to a
hindrance to those delivering services, often to the most
disadvantaged in our society, it no longer provides value for
money. The aim of this practical guidance, which supports
OTS’s new principles on monitoring, is to help Government,
taxpayers, the third sector and service users to benefit from
better and more reasonable monitoring of
expenditure."
Angela Smith, Minister for the
Third Sector, said:
"Across public services, we
are sweeping aside the barriers that hold back the third sector’s
potential to play a central role in modern public services that
respond to the needs of individuals. The new monitoring principles
and guidance will save charities, voluntary groups and social
enterprises time and money that can be spent on doing more good for
those who need support.
"Charities, voluntary groups
and social enterprises have particular strengths like reaching out
to the most disadvantaged people, taking risks and finding new
innovative ways of doing things. This announcement is one step in a
programme of reform to bring the third sector’s strengths into
public services."
Notes for Editors
-
Intelligent Monitoring
– an element of Financial relationships with
third sector organisations – a decision support tool for public
bodies in England is available on the NAO website, at
www.nao.org.uk/intelligentmonitoring.
The Principles of proportionate monitoring and reporting
are also available on the NAO website or at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/third_sector.aspx
-
The Office of the Third Sector (OTS)
Principles of proportionate monitoring and reporting were
produced as a response to a report by New Philanthropy Capital
(NPC), funded by OTS, called Turning the Tables: Putting
Charities in Control of Reporting in September 2008.
Based on information provided by 16 charities, NPC found that the
average monitoring burden by all types of funder, over and
above what the charities would do for their own purposes, was
six pence in every pound of funding received. But this hid
considerable variation. In particular, central government
funding imposed a higher burden – on average costing 12 pence in
every pound of funding.
-
The Comptroller and Auditor General is the
head of the National Audit Office which employs some 900
staff. He and the NAO are totally independent of
Government. He certifies the accounts of all Government
departments and a wide range of other public sector bodies; and he
has statutory authority to report to Parliament on the economy,
efficiency and effectiveness with which departments and other
bodies have used their resources.
Press Notice 39/09
All enquiries to Sarah Farndale, NAO Press
Office:
Tel: 020 7798 5350
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