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Cuts threaten the voluntary sector’s contribution

David Cameron’s bold plans for a radical transfer of power to citizens and communities are in real danger of being squashed by short-sighted council cuts to the funding of voluntary and community organisations, says STEPHEN BUBB

Last month, David Cameron re-launched his plans to build a ‘Big Society’, in a room of third-sector leaders and thinkers. Whilst there was still a real sense that the government’s plans present huge opportunities for the voluntary sector in the long term, the immediate questions still loomed. How do we get the sector to a stage where we can seize these opportunities, whilst we face such significant cuts to funding today? Many of my members will be listening to the government’s plans whilst making very tough decisions as to the future of the services they provide and the organisations themselves. Perhaps they can therefore be forgiven for not being overly optimistic at this stage.

For some time now, the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) has welcomed Cameron’s vision of a ‘Big Society’: his plans for a people-power revolution, a downshift of power to citizens and communities and a much bigger role for the voluntary sector in the delivery of public services. These are all things for which ACEVO has been calling for decades. However, the issue remains that these bold plans are still in real danger of being squashed by short- sighted decisions on cuts by local authorities around the country.

In our recent conversations with Communities and Local Government ministers, ACEVO has been clear about our concerns on this front. We have spoken about some of the bad behaviour we have been witnessing from councils, which currently threatens to undermine the government’s Big Society agenda, devastate the third sector, and hit some of the most vulnerable hardest. We have also warned that warm words from government ministers in the past about the sector don’t appear to have had an effect.

Reasonable expectations

 We were therefore very pleased that in his speech to charities last month, Eric Pickles really upped the ante. In the speech he made it clear that government had ‘reasonable expectations of how councils will conduct themselves’. Reasonableness being that:

We will now be monitoring the situation, to see if his words have the desired effect, and, if they don’t, we will be backing the government in introducing legislation to prevent councils from passing on disproportionate cuts.

In the past few weeks we have also seen a number of other promising signs from government that they have no intention of putting their ambitious plans for charities on the backburner, despite criticism from the unions and warnings from all sectors that the Big Society is ‘on the rocks’.

In February, the government announced an extra £200 million for the Big Society Bank, which is due to start lending in the early summer. We have seen a number of exciting plans for reform set out in the Health Bill which would allow for a far greater role for charities in community health services. And we have seen real engagement by the Department for Work and Pensions with the voluntary sector on how they can ensure the sector has a key role in the government’s work programme, even if, for many, the prime contractor model and payment by results makes that engagement difficult.

White Paper

 In the next few weeks the government will be launching a White Paper on public service reform and the Localism Bill will be passing through Parliament. We are hopeful that the White Paper will build on the detail of reform needed to allow the third sector to have a far greater role in service delivery, in particular in areas such as health, welfare to work, offender management and children’s services. We also hope that elements of the Localism Bill, including plans for a ‘right to challenge’ and a ‘right to buy’, will be set out in a way which allows the third sector to be able to step up to the challenges government has posed.

Whilst I don’t believe the Big Society project is ‘on the rocks’, we will need to see solid commitment in reforms over the next few months for the sector to have confidence in the government’s plans.

Sir Stephen Bubb is Chief Executive of the ACEVO

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