"There is a crisis in training in the voluntary and community sector," a leading charity analyst is set to warn the sector.

Professor Ian Bruce, head of the Centre for Charity Effectiveness at City University's Cass Business School plans to make the statement in a lecture this evening (Wednesday 24 March) on "Charities: too Amateur or too Professional".

He will warn that the sector is too "amateurish" and "happy go lucky" and needs to think more strategically about its development.

Prof Bruce, until last year Director General of the RNIB, believes that a paucity of training provision and poor take up of the courses that are on offer are blighting the sector.

"The public and private sectors spend around 3% of turnover on training whereas we only spend around 1%," he said.

"There are no reasons to justify us having less skills development than the other two sectors and this amateurish happy go lucky approach is reducing our effectiveness."

Prof Bruce said that the problem was not just an issue of money, he knew of two major charities that had problems filling their internal management and leadership courses.

He blamed the sector's "cultural imperative to 'roll our sleeves up and get on with things'" as damaging not only skills development but also research and planning.

Prof Bruce will call for a "massive investment in performance improvement, particularly skills development", which he expected to be echoed in the sector’s Performance Improvement Strategy, due to come out next month.