Are charity chiefs paid too much?

Please note, the opinions expressed here are John’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Craven Herald.

It was a sad little encounter in the supermarket and one that still leaves me feeling guilty.

I hope I did not hurt the feelings of those two nice ladies who were giving their free time to volunteer in a cause they no doubt admire.

They were collecting money for the RSPCA, one of our best known and best loved charities in the Skipton Morrison’s, but my doubts were beginning to show through.

I could have walked straight past them, like so many of my fellow shoppers, but I felt obliged to stop and explain why my small change would not go into their tins.

I was becoming increasingly distressed at the direction the society was taking, as more and more of our great charities seem to be taken over by metropolitan elitists at hugely inflated salaries and – what many critics are claiming – an ever growing role as political pressure groups.

My two ladies looked sad but they did not have the time to listen to my concerns, which have been growing for more than a decade since I served on the Craven charity committee which raised a staggering £1 million for the non-compensated victims of the foot and mouth plague which devastated the district.

At the inaugural meeting of that committee, an experienced and very successful charity fundraiser gave a short talk which contained one staggering fact. “If anyone in the North makes a donation to a national charity, 80 per cent of it will be spent in London and the South East”

Now he was not alleging that charities spend more on sick animals or needy people down south: the RSPCA in particular is outstandingly active in its work here in poorer parts of Yorkshire because, sadly, hard times for people often mean harder times for their pets.

His claim was that many national charities carry massive overheads on posh offices and highly-paid staff in London, taking huge bites out of what you and I give to support their work in the field. And, in a series of massive rows these past few weeks, that trend is alleged to have been growing ever since.

Latest figures show that there are 30 charity chief executives earning more than £100,000 a year – some of them almost double that – and Mr William Shawcross, chairman of the Charities Commission, says that such salaries are “threatening to bring the entire charity sector into disrepute”.

This is certainly true to some Herald readers, as the Letters Page has shown recently.

One reader complained that the new RSPCA chief executive Gavin Grant received £50,000 a year more than his precedessor for a total wage of £165,000, considerably more than even the Prime Minister.

The society’s Diane Roberts vehemently denies this, although the RSPCA refuses to publish the actual figures.

But she told me: “As one of the oldest and largest animal charities in the country, the RSPCA is committed to the rescue, rehabilitation and re-homing of hundreds of thousands of animals in need.

"It is only reasonable that to do this we attract and retain skilled professionals who will ensure we step ever nearer to our goal of ending animal cruelty."

There may be some justification in this – the RSPCA is a huge and efficient operation. What worries me much more is the not-so-small small fortunes the society is wasting on prosecuting fox hunts for alleged breaches of the Hunting with Dogs Act.

Just one case – against the hunt in the Prime Minister’s constituency – ran up a legal bill of £326,000. There have been others, too, although not quite so expensive, but many people now believe that these cases have been taken for political rather than animal welfare reasons.

The RSPCA strongly denies this too and vigorously defends its prosecution record, which includes hundreds of cases taken against people guilty of obscene cruelty against defenceless animals – a policy about which this whole nation can be justly proud.

But this recent obsession with fox hunting disturbs me, yet I am no horse lover: when my children were young we had a bad tempered Welsh mountain pony (as well as a cat, a dog and a rabbit) which regularly threw my daughter and once bit me savagely on the shoulder (until I punched it on the nose that is, an act which might have had the RSPCA on my case today).

But I do object to trendy townies imposing their will on country folk, as they forced a reluctant Tony Blair to introduce the Hunting with Dogs Act.

And that they are continuing to do so from sumptuous salaries from luxurious offices worthy of multi-national businesses offends me deeply.

If those two nice ladies at Morrison’s read this, I ask them to forgive me if I offended them.

But until the RSPCA takes a deep breath and rethinks its 21st century imperatives, my spare pennies with continue to go to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance and Help for Heroes.