The Left's self-serving defence charity "sock puppets"

Last year the Baring Foundation, after careful consideration, chose the most worthy recipients for their largesse. They decided to spend a whopping £130,757 on an outfit called Civil Exchange to pay for a "Panel on the Independence of the Voluntary Sector." (I suppose at least it meant they are not pouring even more money into Law Centres to go round suing people as a form of agitprop.)

What did they come up with this lavish budget? They have produced a report which repeats the cliche "speak truth to power" five times. It concludes that charities should get more state funding and they should spend more money lobbying and campaigning.

This lobbying is not likely to be for less regulation or state spending. The state funds charities that then lobby for a bigger state. They become sock puppets. That cosy arrangement is the real threat to independence and to genuine charitable interests. It is a scandal that we have charities doing little or nothing to provide practical benefit but instead sending most or all of their money on campaigning.

But the Panel say charities devoting more money to politics would be welcome:

Despite Sir Stephen Bubb's blubbing, the Big Society is getting stronger

Sir Stephen Bubb was a Labour councillor in Lambeth who was surcharged and disqualified from office during the rate capping era in the 1980s. Now he is chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations. This is an outfit from which Sir Stephen claims a six figure salary, much of which comes from the taxpayer. Funds from the Government's Office of Civil Society to his outfit increased from £210,000 in 2011 to £425,000 last year.

As the "charity sector's" bureaucrat's bureaucrat, Sir Stephen has written to the Prime Minister about the Big Society. It is apparent that Sir Stephen's socialism remains staunch and he wishes the "third sector" to be absorbed by the state. He says the "reality many charities now face is crippling spending cuts." He speaks for the big charities preoccupied with lobbying and suckling on the teat of the taxpayer.

He adds:

Meanwhile charities who find themselves defending their beneficiaries from welfare cuts suffer ministerial attacks on ‘benefit scroungers’ – attacks that they know increase public hostility to those genuinely in need of support. Rather than ‘joining the government of Britain’, they are told that their rights to be consulted or challenge government policy will be reduced, and find decisions on where the axe should fall increasingly taken in the context of a scrutiny deficit – at a local level, where democratic participation and the media spotlight are weaker, and with the central apparatus that would once have scrutinised those decisions pared back.

Food banks ARE part of the Big Society - but the problem they are tackling is not new

Are more people going hungry in our country than a years ago? Or two or five or ten years ago? Certainly a lot more people are using food banks run by the Trussell Trust. This is a fantastic Christian charity which operates here and in Bulgaria. Their first Foodbank in the UK opened in Salisbury in 2000. They now have 292, growing at the rate of three a week and aim to have one in every town - something between 750 to 1,000.

The number of volunteers involved is over 5,000. It is the epitome of the Big Society. Checks operate to ensure people using the service are in genuine need. It is not a matter of anyone just turning up and helping themselves to free food. But the checks are carried out in a sympathetic, non bureaucratic way. The charity believes they save lives - not because people would otherwise be so hungry that they would starve but due to the suicides averted of those in despair at failing to provide a proper meal for themselves and their families.

The Trussell Trust adds:

The Big Society presents a key policy programme of relevance to this research. The set of initiatives this programme encompasses is designed to further reduce the role of the state and to promote community-level responses to meeting local needs. Key dimensions of this programme include encouraging people to ‘take an active role in their communities’ and supporting not-for-profit organisations. Foodbanks, with their focus on community participation, local responses to local needs, and charitable status are potentially extremely well-placed to inform this policy programme.

Localism and the Big Society

Cllr Ralph Baldwin, a councillor in Barking and Dagenham, says the thinking behind the Government's concepts of localism and the Big Society should be combined

For the Big Society to be effective we need to take into account the public viewpoint on charities.  Well we know about empathy and how people of certain backgrounds tend towards certain levels of generosity,
charities use this information to make money.  

The example I shall give is the Food Bank and the Trusell Trust. When I volunteered to help these guys and we stood on the doors of the Supermarket (who are owed gratitude for their kind role) the two key themes that won the public over were clear, one the food was directly given, as opposed to money, and secondly it was directly given to its intended LOCAL recipients (women retreating from domestic violence, ex-forces people living on the streets failing to adjust to civvie life etc in a manner that prevents dependency as we saw with Labour and benefits).  

The key key is that being direct and local maximises the legitimacy and relevance of the charity, it helps people, the very people we care about most, those in our community who we identify with every day. Now we saw the Government get the message wrong on charities who are no strangers to lobbying.  What ought to occur from the massive generosity I witnessed from people of all backgrounds who are currently struggling with their own issues, is that directly local charities should be given a special kite mark or status, perhaps with a Royal Seal as has occurred, but this seal gives these charities and the gifted and driven people that make them live, less of an administrative burden to receive Government Support and more freedom to practise that which they already do expertly.

Laura Trott WILL have her street party

The Daily Telegraph this morning reported that Olympic gold medalist Laura Trott neighbours were facing difficulties from Herftfordshire County Council over holding a street party.

I am assured this is not the case and the road closure will be speedily agreed.

Cllr Robert Gordon, the Leader of Hertfordshire County Council, has sent me this comment:

"Hertfordshire County Council and Broxbourne Borough Council have been aware for a couple of days that family and friends of Cheshunt gold-medallist, Laura Trott, wanted to throw a street party in celebration of her splendid achievement.

"Both councils quickly indicated their support for the party but needed details of the event so that they could ensure that it would face no problems.  I have spoken personally with Paul Mason, the Leader of Broxbourne, to confirm that the County Council was entirely supportive.

"The powers for road closures under these circumstances lie with the Borough Council and they have confirmed that they will be granting permission for the closure. In addition, they are actively working with the family to help them with their preparations.

"We are very proud of our Olympians and are keen to do all we can to help them celebrate with their local communities. We hope the Trotts and their neighbours have a great time."

Spending more on the voluntary sector can save the state money

Cllr Rock Feilding-Mellon, the Cabinet Member for Civil Society in Kensington and Chelsea, says triborough savings are being used to boost civil society

In the Royal Borough of Kensington & Cheslea, we have just decided to allocate an extra £500,000 towards the local charitable and voluntary sector. It might seem counter-intuitive at first, but I believe that this one-off increase in public sector spending can help to make public finances more sustainable in the long term by actually reducing the future size of the state.

Of course, it is essential that we Conservatives continue to drive for greater efficiencies within the public sector and to show that with innovation and a business-like mindset it is possible to do more with less. However, to ensure that the state can be reduced to the right levels, we also need to find ways of reducing people’s need for and dependence on state-provided services. I don’t think we can do this by simply denying the validity of all those needs, instead we must demonstrate that those needs are best met by society itself rather than by the state, and that is why it is worth investing now to support a strong and flourishing civil society.

Like all Councils we have had to make many difficult decisions about how to find the savings that are required nationally in order to dig us out of the mess that the last Labour government left us in. We have done our utmost to protect the frontline services and have instead looked for innovative ways to reduce back office and management costs. Primarily, we have managed to do this through what we call Triborough working - sharing senior management posts for a host of business groups with our neighbours in Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham.

Radicalism in Staffordshire

There was some good points made by Cllr Ian Parry, the Deputy Leader of Staffordshire County Council, in evidence to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee.

He talked about an arrangement in Newcastle-under-Lyme where a group of social workers had been allowed to form a mutual, like a GP's surgery. The staff turnover - which is a great source of resentment among Looked After Children - was reduced. There was less bureaucracy and more innovation. The evidence of surveys of the children in care and inspection was that standards increased.

Cllr Parry some the Government could help the process along by addressing complexities "with technical things around TUPE."

He said:

We want people outside in the private, voluntary, co-operative sectors to help us to dismantle what was the old model of local government because we can’t afford it any more, and it necessarily isn’t providing services in the right way for the future, so there are those things that we need to do. The existing and old model of local government is not fit for purpose  and we need to do something about it.

Labour-run York's war on localism

Thom Wiseman says York Council are stopping the public having their say on community grant

York had a great policy to allow a little bit of democracy when it comes to deciding who receives the community grants. However this has all been changed under the banner of ‘cuts’.

The previous system worked well, any community group who wanted a grant would send in their application, then each year the council wards would send out to residents a form listing all the organisations who have applied and what for. The residents were then given a chance to have their own say on how their money was spent and these were discussed at the Ward Committee meetings.

The funding for the old system was done on a per ward basis and each ward could then decide, a little bit of neighbourhood decision making. Now the budget is being cut for Neighbourhood Management from around £350,000 down to £141,000.

Over 3,500 applications for Diamond Jubilee street parties so far

Three months before the Royal Wedding last year only a handful of road closure applications for street parties had been received by Town Halls. But they ended up with 5,500. The Diamond Jubilee, Saturday June 2 to Tuesday June 5, has already seen 3,500 applications. So it is likely that there will end up by many more parties even than last year.

But there is still the odd problem of bureaucratic obstructionism.

The following exchange took place in Parliament yesterday:

Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con): Residents of Westbury avenue in Bury St Edmunds want to hold a jubilee street party, but local council officers have told them that road signs will have to be erected in that very quiet suburban road at a cost of £396. Will the Secretary of State please assure me that he will do everything to slash such pointless pettifogging bureaucracy?

Mr Pickles: I can assure my hon. Friend that those regulations have gone. The bunting police have gone, and there is no need to put up expensive signs or do a traffic survey. Why to goodness cannot we simply get on with celebrating the Queen’s diamond jubilee and recognising that such roads can be closed with the minimum of disruption? Let us just enjoy the day.

Why do tree surgeons need to be CRB checked?

In June 2010 the new Home Secretary Theresa May called for CRB checks to be "scaled back to common sense levels."

The good news is that the number of CRB checks undertaken by local councils on volunteers was down in 2010/11 compare to the previous year. It is now below a million. In 20010/101 it was 942,329. In 2009/10 it was 1,136,947. Given the time lag between guidance being changed (or clarified) and the difference working its way thorugh to the system it is reasonable to hope there will be a further reduction in th current year.

But the bad news, also covered in The Manifesto Club report, Vetting Tree Surgeons, is that many checks are still being carried out unnecessarily. This is a burden and insult to volunteers and a cost to Council Taxpayers of £45.2 million. For some councils the bill for CRB checks was £1 million each Hertfordshire (21,680 CRB checks), Essex (21,610) and Devon (20,095 checks).