What was the Office of the Regulator of Community Interest Companies?
The Office of the Regulator of Community Interest Companies is the latest (and perhaps the most obscure) victim piled upon the government’s bonfire of quangos.
First there was the Payment Systems Regulator, which was rolled into the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Then, Sir Keir Starmer announced his most radical health reform yet by shuttering NHS England – a body set up in 2012 to centralise running of the health service, which has since come under fire for “duplication”.
As for the ORCIC, the niche watchdog was set up specifically to establish which companies should be Community Interest Companies (CICs) – a particular type of limited company that allocates profits and assets into communities, rather than for shareholder profit.
It left a relatively limited digital footprint behind in the two decades of its existence, having been established in April 2005 by the equally wordy Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004.
In a nine-page document detailing the status, role and function of the regulator, the body committed to “light touch regulation”.
The mission statement of the regulator involved “deciding whether an organisation is eligible to become, or continue to be, a community interest company”, “investigation of complaints about community interest companies and enforcement action” and “provision of guidance about matters relating to community interest companies”.
City PM columnist and former government advisor James Price, said: “It’s nigh on impossible for ministers to understand what the plethora of Quangos and Arms Length Bodies and other invidious parts of the administrative state actually do, let alone the public”.
The regulator appears to have an X account – though it is neither verified nor does it have a profile picture or bio – which regularly posts light-hearted GIFs to mark the weekend.
In amongst these whimsical posts, the CIC Regulator account also shares Companies House updates – particularly regarding online maintenance.
According to the document, the regulator is already based within the Companies House office.
Price added: “In Government, we would try to exercise some executive authority only to find that responsibility or delivery had been frittered away to some unaccountable organisation by a Parliament scared of its own power.
“The only way to return to competent Government in Britain is to abolish almost all of these organisations, absorb them back into Whitehall Departments and give Ministers the power. They will sink or swim on the outcome, but at least we will know who to blame. Or maybe, occasionally, praise.”