Action to boost support for voluntary sector and cut red tape for councils

Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, today announced a new fair deal for voluntary and community groups, wrapped up with cutting reams of red tape on local councils.

Mr Pickles is proposing a 'social responsibility' deal which will ask that councils give greater support for local community groups, including:

• seeking to avoid disproportionate reductions in funding
• giving at least three months' notice if they plan to reduce or end funding or other support
• working with the organisation to shape the future of the service; and
• speaking to the organisation and community about other ideas about how the service could be continued in a different, or more efficient, way.

Central government departments will be signing up to the same principles.

Hammersmith and Fulham slash bureuacracy for voluntary groups

Previously voluntary groups wishing to apply for a grant from Hammersmith and Fulham Council had to fill in a 26 page form. From this week we have now halved it to 13 pages. Furthermore they had to submit, as a "supporting document", a copy of their Equal Opportunities Policy. This burden has been lifted. Now they can simply confirm that they subscribe to the Council's Equal Opportunities Policy. Similarly with Safeguarding Policy.

For groups like Law Centres, of course, long complicated forms are a doddle. But you will also have small groups with an ordinary person working unpaid struggling with the form. They are wanting to do their bit with some voluntary work to help the community. Yet they find their application was turned down not because of its lack of inherant merit but because the form wasn't filled in correctly.

I had an example of this in my ward, the Grove Neighbourhood Centre, a genuine community "hub." My surgeries are held there and it is always fizzing with activities. I would have a chat with Mr Stenton, the local butcher, on his way to his ballroom dancing lesson. The centre is most welcoming to people of any age, class, sex, sexuality, race, colour or creed. But the people running it would scratch their heads at what they were supposed to put in an Equal Opportunities Policy.

£7 billion of council finance to no longer be ring fenced

There is a report in The Times (£) this morning that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is lifting the ring fencing requirements on £7 billion worth of central Government funding to Town Halls. This is very welcome both in terms of the advance of local democracy and also in allowing the money to be better spent. One of the frustration for councillors of spotting some unnecessary spending - but then having it patiently explained that it didn't cost the council taxpayer anything it was "free money" from some central grant or other - but that if it wasn't spent on a particular thing in a particular way we couldn't spend it on anything.

The Times report says:

Specific grants for schools, the police and fire services will be protected. But the rules that forced councils to spend money on other areas such as travellers, homelessness and the disabled, often by commissioning voluntary groups, look likely to be relaxed.

The number of protected grants will drop from 90 to 10.

They suggest this will mean councils will use the voluntary sector proportionately less. It ain't necessarily so. My council has spent more, in total, on grants to voluntary groups, while cutting spending elsewhere, because we believe the voluntary sector offers value for money.

Bolton Council has no excuse for voluntary sector grant cuts

When Julie Hilling, the Labour MP for Bolton West, asked David Cameron about grants to voluntary sector from her Labour-run Council he told her:

 "We should say to every single council in the country: ‘When it comes to looking at and trimming your budgets, don't do the easy thing, which is to cut money to the voluntary bodies and organisations working in our communities. Look at your core costs. Look at how you can do more for less. Look at the value for money you get from working with the voluntary sector.'

"That is the message that I would take to her local authority, and everyone should try to work in that direction."

In response she told the Labour Conference that she did get back to her council:

“They told me that Cameron is the person who cut the Area Based Grants, the very money that funded these groups.

“They told me they would do whatever they could to support voluntary groups, but cuts were inevitable. If you don’t have the money you cannot pass it on.

“We face a big challenge.

Cameron isn’t devolving power, he is devolving cuts. He talks of difficult choices — and then asks local councils to make them for him.”

Some Council grants to charities should be cut

Mark Wallace says cutting Council grants to charities could make sense - it depends what the groups are doing

The latest strand of concern to appear about where the axe will fall in council spending cuts is that the charity sector (or the “Third Sector” as some now prefer to call them) is worried that councils will see them as a “soft target”.  The National Council of Voluntary Organisations has expressed its concern that so many charities are now dependent on taxpayers’ money from councils that some may go under entirely. The NCVO also warned that essential services provided by charities for councils may be lost.

This raise two separate issues – aside from the ethical question of whether charity reliance on the state is harming charitable enterprise in itself, which I have written about elsewhere. 

First, should charities be providing “essential services” at all? Some would argue that it is the job of councils to do that themselves.

Personally, I think it can be a good thing if a charity, using as many volunteers as possible, provides things like care or transport for those who need it.

The Big Society, whilst far from being an idea I subscribe to entirely, is about encouraging citizens to start looking out for each other if it is about anything. Furthermore, charities have the potential to do the job better and with more understanding than a monolithic bureaucracy. The danger comes when charities become entirely co-opted by the state and abandon proper, voluntary fundraising.

Strike over Southampton library volunteers

Conservative-run Southampton City Counci offers relatively generous library provision and is keen to keep it that way. Yet, of course there is an economy drive under way. Therefore without sacking staff or closing libraries they saving money by increasing the ratio of volunteers. As paid staff leave some of those replacing them will be volunteers.

Have the unions welcomed this mild and common sense approach? Er, no. They have called a strike. They are quick to insult the volunteers as "unqualified" - although often the volunteers are retired librarians.

Cllr John Hannides the Conservative Cabinet Member for Leisure, Culture and Heritage, says a £550,000 spent on a new arrangement allows library users to reserve and renew items online and use self-service booths to check-out and return books in the library. This means fewer librarians are needed.

He says:

“Volunteers mean we can manage our costs looking to the future without seeing a reduction in the quality of the service. You don’t invest £550,000 in new technology and pretend it never happened.”

“We are committed to there being the expertise, the management know-how and support centrally to ensure that we can support a greater role of volunteers."