LESS red tape and bureacracy may help local charities run for longer and achieve more, it has been claimed.

Speaking at the Houses of Parliament, Dwyfor Meirionnydd MP Liz Saville Roberts called for the establishment of ‘associations’ - an organisation that allows small, local groups to apply for grants and the like without taking the “bureaucratically burdensome” step of applying for charitiable status.

Addressing the house on Welsh Affairs, Mrs Saville Roberts said: “[I would like to talk about a type of] voluntary organisation — the very local set-up, generally based in one village or community and dedicated to one particular aspect or cause, from providing lifts to a local hospital to running an eisteddfod.

“They include ‘O Ddrws i Ddrws’, with its on-call bus services and round-Llyn summer bus route, to Eisteddfod Ceidio and scores of other tiny eisteddfodau in village halls, chapels and vestries across Wales.

“Those small organisations are the bread and butter of the voluntary sector — the essential glue of communities. They encapsulate the spirit of Dewi Sant’s endorsement of the importance of the little things — y pethau bychain.

“And yet they sometimes struggle to survive from year to year.

“One reason is that they often have no status and no legal personality, with charitable status being in their eyes inappropriate and too big and bureaucratically burdensome a step to take.

“If and when the committee secretary retires, the charismatic founder moves on or dies, the committee falters because of age or ill health or there is a combination of all those factors, the organisation falters and may cease to exist.

“We are all too familiar with that scenario. The handover from one generation to another is fraught with obstacles and risk.

“I propose that we need an intermediate status for these organisations in Wales, which is more than a collection of interested individuals who may come and go, and less than a registered charity.

“Such a status exists in other countries, allowing “associations”, as they are called, to register locally with municipalities and with the minimum of red tape.

“They then have the status needed to apply for grants and reclaim VAT, and when members cease to be involved, the association itself is more likely to continue, as it has a certain amount of formal supportive structure to carry it through times of change such as we are in now.

“Many local initiatives could benefit from such a provision in my constituency and, I would venture, in constituencies across Wales.”