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At a conference held in March this year, Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, outlined his view on the opportunities for the sector.
He said that councils knew they must work more efficiently to “maintain services and places that local people need and want to live in”. He added that this commitment would “drive them into partnership with voluntary groups”.
In August I wrote a blog ‘Is anyone really listening?’ and referenced two Cabinet Office/Office for Civil Society consultations to which we had no responses. I continued my push for a response and Third Sector also asked government for comment. Read more »
In January 2011, Voluntary Sector North West responded to the consultation paper Supporting a Stronger Civil Society under the expectation that this would be the starting point for how Office for Civil Society was going to develop its’ strategy for working with VCS infrastructure in the future. Knowing that the money available would be significantly less, we know how important it is to get the strategy right. Read more »
A few years ago you couldn’t move for publications, training and think pieces on full cost recovery. Now, I rarely seem to hear the words uttered and, on reflection, I think that in an age of austerity we have let the government ignore the concept and start to put price right at the heart of all commissioning processes. Read more »
At Vountary Sector North West, we have been a little slow off the mark in working out our process for engaging the sector in discussions about what our formal response will be to the Open Public Services White Paper (#OPSWP). Capacity issues, timings and even a few oncoming staffing changes have all played their part, but in reality I think we have lost a bit of enthusiasm for taking part in some conversations with government. Read more »
The idea that small, even medium to large, local voluntary organisations will be able to hold a contract on the scale they are now being let is becoming impossible to imagine. And this isn’t confined to one area of delivery. In the last week alone, partners have highlighted this issue in regard to the Work Programme (around the size of sub-contracts), tenders relating supporting families with multiple issues and in the changing world of offender management. Read more »
I, like
everyone else, was pleased to see the Government announce the Transition Fund -
you couldn’t possibly be against it could you? Of course, the size of the fund
does little to address the scale of cuts in the sector, but then it wasn’t
meant to fund more of the same. It was about helping organisations make
a change to how they went about their business and helping them increase
sustainability.
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