ONE THING Dame Suzi Leather is not, is arrogant. One thing she is, however, is difficult to pin down on exactly what she intends to do in her new role as chair of the Charity Commission.

This is perhaps unsurprising given that she has been in the job only since the beginning of August. She is still spongeing up all that she can about her new environment. “In order to lead you have to walk beside,” she says. “I have been spending my first few weeks ensuring that I was able to meet and have face-to-face time with every member of staff. I’m a sponge for weeks and months — and the foreseeable future.”

To be fair, she has a lot to soak up. The Charities Bill making its way through Parliament will mean new responsibilities for the commission in terms of regulation and in terms of ensuring that charities are operating for public benefit. “There needs to be, and we will ensure that there is, much more of a public debate about what public benefit means. I hope that coming out of that will be a renewed sense of what charities are doing in the 21st century and what is the benefit to us as a nation (and) also internationally.”

Her background in regulation (she was previously chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority) is the most useful part of her experience she can bring to the role. “My main contact (with charities) has been through volunteering — I have no experience personally of working for charities. I don’t think I had a very well developed sense of what the Charities Bill was going to do, so I can’t describe myself as a charities expert in any sense,” she says. Hence the spongeing. But as a regulator she has had experience of difficult public debate about sensitive issues. “We must be a good modern regulator,” she says. “We’re not there to be the sector’s friend. True regulation is being supportive of the sector, but I don’t see us trying to replicate the role of some of the umbrella organisations.”

Another aspect of her experience that she feels will help her is her background in the consumer movement (she started her career with Consumers for Europe). “There is a consumer perspective to be brought on both charitable activities and on the commission itself,” she says. “What is the information, for example, that the commission is providing for people who may want to volunteer, to donate or who may simply have an interest in the charitable sector? They want to make informed choices about who they give their time and money to and we have a role in better enabling them to make those choices.”

These aspects of the commission’s work — public debate, regulation and the consumer perspective — are, Dame Suzi says, what attracted her to the role. That, and the commission’s breadth and scope, in that it works with the smallest local and largest international charities. She evidently believes in the sector as a deliverer of public services, even if she does not think herself an expert in legislation issues.

“Think, for instance, of services working with young families,” she says. “Some families find it less threatening to have contact with charitable organisations than with mainstream social services. It’s (vital) that there’s a possibility of having sensitive alternative service without the stigma of or the potential threat of social services. Thrown in with that you have volunteers, which adds something else to the mix: the emotional investment of a volunteer relationship, which is of benefit to the recipient and to the volunteer.”

While what Dame Suzi wants to achieve in her new role has yet to crystallise, her enthusiasm for and understanding of the sector and the commission’s role as its regulator are already well in place.

Born: April 5, 1956, in Uganda
Career: 1979-84 research officer, Consumers in Europe. 1984-86 trainee probation officer; 1997-2001 chair, Exeter and District NHS Trust; 2000-02 deputy chair, Food Standards Agency; 2002-06 chair, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority; 2005-06 chair, School Food Trust
What they say: “The Charity Commission continues to show that it’s becoming more responsive to customers and more targeted in its interventions — as we speak, Dame Suzi Leather is easing her impeccable loafers under the table at the Bouverie Street HQ.” — Third Sector (Aug 2)
Little-known fact: She has done a bit of paragliding

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