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Tender for research into licensing public charitable collections

12 January 2009

The Office of the Third Sector is inviting tenders to carry out independent research into the licensing system for public charitable collections.

The Charities Act 2006 provides for the establishment of new arrangements for the regulation of public charitable collections. It contains provisions to ensure that all public charitable collections in a public place, apart from local short-term collections will be regulated.

There will be a two stage process for this new scheme. In the first instance, organisers of collections would be required to apply for a public collections certificate from the Charity Commission. If the Commission is satisfied that the organisation is eligible, it would issue a public collections certificate for up to five years. The next stage is for the organisation to apply to the local authorities in whose area they wish to operate for a permit to collect.

The 2006 Act provisions have still to be implemented and we would like to commission a research project to provide more information on current practice, current demand and on how the new provisions might work before introducing the new regime.

Objectives 

The purpose of the research project will be to:

• assess the costs and benefits of the new licensing scheme compared to the existing system of licensing;
• inform the developmental and design phase for the PCC provisions in CA 2006; and
• identify how best to produce cost-effective, risk-based and proportionate regulation of PCCs.

The project will be managed jointly by the OTS and the Commission. To enable the project to take account of the expertise and concerns of those directly affected by the current and proposed regimes, OTS and the Commission will also liaise with, and seek input from, other relevant stakeholders including, for example, local authorities and charity representatives. The aim will be to obtain full engagement by stakeholders on any issue of specific relevance to them without the need for a commitment of resources to, for example, attend all project board meetings or comment on every aspect of the project.

In more detail, the research will be expected to cover the following areas: 

1. Identify stakeholder and legislative issues to be resolved or developed further prior to implementation and national roll-out of the 2006 Act regime and help to identify and/or develop ways of resolving those issues.
2. Gather comprehensive information from Local Authorities, including those not operating a licensing system, and currently collecting organisations in order to:

• produce an improved OTS/Commission understanding of the operation of the current system;
• give a clearer picture of the current take up and use of licensing to enable a quantification of demand;
• inform a detailed assessment of how best to use the PCC provisions to produce improved, cost effective regulation of PCCs;
• understand Local Authorities’ views on how they would work within the new PCC regime, and their assessment of its likely impact compared with existing arrangements.  This can consider issues around monitoring, information sharing and enforcement generally;
• understand the views and needs of promoters and collecting organisations, including estimates of both the costs of complying with the current framework and their expectations of likely costs and other impacts of the PCC provisions.

The contract will commence in April 2009. The contractor must produce a final report by December 2009.  If you are interested in submitting a bid or would like more information, please e-mail OTS.info@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk before 12 noon on 4 February or call Mubin Jaigirdar on 0207 276 6027. We will arrange for a full tender package to be sent to you, full details of the contract and tender process (including evaluation criteria) will be included in the tender package.

All tenders must be submitted by Noon 16 February 2009.