Vellum

The request was partially successful.

Dear Privy Council Office,
I am writing to request information about the use of vellum for Royal Charters, Supplemental charters and other similar official documents granted by the sovereign on the advice of the Privy Council ("relevant documents").

1. For the period from 1 January 2010 until the present time please could you provide an estimate of the cost of vellum used in preparing documents.

2. Please could provide estimate the proportion of this cost that was met from public funds.

3. Please could provide estimate the proportion of this cost that was met by bodies with charitable status that are not public bodies.

4. Please could you provide copies of any documents/correspondence where senior employees of the Privy Council Office and/or Senior Officials of the Privy have discussed whether the continued requirement to use vellum is appropriate. I am particularly interested in discussions around cost effectiveness.

Yours faithfully,

John Cross

John Cross left an annotation ()

The reason I made this request was because of a comment on the Government's Red Tape Challenge website:

"The solictors’ firm at which I work recently added a supplementary charter to a royal charter on behalf of a client. The cost of doing this was over £2,500 because the Privy Council requires that the charter be printed on vellum. This seems a rather outdated and wasteful requirement, so we thought it a good idea to flag up this expensive peice[sic] of red tape."

http://www.redtapechallenge.cabinetoffic...

At first glance this does look a little wasteful so I thought I would look into it.

John Cross left an annotation ()

The Privy Council Office's development plan 2006/2007 also refers to use of Vellum:

"Send 95% of final cleared proof of Charters to printer to produce Vellum within 2 working days of receipt from client"

http://www.privy-council.org.uk/files/pd...

Privy Council Office

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Cross,

Please find attached an acknowledgement to your email dated 30th April.

Kind regards

Paul Brown
Privy Council Office
2 Carlton Gardens
London
SW1Y 5AA
E-Mail Paul[email address]
Tel: 0207 747 5306
Fax:0207 747 5311

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Privy Council Office

1 Attachment

Good afternoon Mr Cross
Please find attached response to your enquiry under the Freedom of Information Act.

Margaret Newell
Privy Council Office
2 Carlton Gardens
London SW1Y 5AA
Phone: 020 7747 5307
Fax: 020 7747 5311

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John Cross left an annotation ()

Perhaps the law needs changing to eliminate the need to apply a large heavy seal and reduce costs for charities and for the tax payer.

M Bimmler left an annotation ()

John, I take your point about reducing the cost for charities, but why do you think that there is a cost for the taxpayer? I thought the response specifically explained how there was no additional cost to the taxpayer.

John Cross left an annotation ()

Very late reply to M Bimmler's comment. Most UK Universities are tax payer funded and many of these have Royal Charters. The reply said that no tax payers money was used through the PCO but did address the issue of other public bodies incurring costs.

M Bimmler left an annotation ()

That's a fair point, yes, I forgot about the charters for Universities when I wrote that comment.

Obviously it would also better if chartered charities (e.g. RSPB, RNLI, RNIB) did not need to spend the money donated to them on vellum...but that's a different story.

I admit I am slightly less concerned about the expenditure of all the Chartered Institutes, Worshipful Companies etc.

John Cross left an annotation ()

I am broadly in agreement with Michael's comments. Worth considering the fact that to do some jobs you need to be in a professional body. There is an argument that the government should not be imposing unnecessary extra costs on these bodies that will have to be passed on to their members.