http://nds.coi.gov.uk/content/Detail.aspx?ReleaseID=417027&NewsAreaID=2

I thought the following two comments particularly interesting:

Community ‘Right to Challenge’

Voluntary and community groups, social enterprises, parish councils and local authority employees delivering a service will be able to challenge a local authority to let them run that service.

Community ‘Right to Buy’

Communities will be able to bid for public or private assets when they come up for sale. This will allow communities to save sites which are important to the community.

Called the Commission on Big Society, the group will be chaired by Lord Rennard, the former chief executive of the Liberal Democrats. Other members include the Right Reverend Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, Louise Casey, the government’s Victims’ Commissioner, and Paul Boateng, the former Labour minister.

It will meet every three weeks, starting in January, and plans to produce a report in the spring.

A spokeswoman for Acevo said the group would hold consultation events across the country and report back to the commission on the outcomes of these.

She said the aim of the commission was to “articulate a vision for what charity leaders want to achieve through the big society agenda, and recommend practical steps that the government, third sector organisations and others need to take to make that vision a reality”.

Lord Rennard is due to launch the commission today. Speaking at an event to mark its launch, he will say that the sector must think through the practical actions needed to make the big society agenda work.

THE BIG PANEL – Members of the commission

Lord Rennard (chair): Liberal Democrat peer, former chief executive of the Liberal Democrats

Hilary Belcher, Director, Mosaic Clubhouse

Paul Boateng: Former chief secretary to the Treasury, former High Commissioner to South Africa

Nick Boles MP: Conservative MP, PPS to Nick Gibb, minister for schools, and former director of the think tank Policy Exchange

Louise Casey: Victims’ Commissioner to the government, former coordinator of the Respect Taskforce

The Right Reverend Richard Chartres: Bishop of London, former Gresham Professor of Divinity

Phil Collins: Former speechwriter for Tony Blair, trustee of the think tank Demos, writer for The Times

Matt Hyde: Chief executive, National Union of Students

Peter McGurn: Chief executive, Goodwin Trust

Michael Quicke: Chief executive, investment house CCLA

Srabani Sen: Chief executive, Contact a Family

Jane Slowey CBE: Chief executive, Foyer Federation, and chair of Skills – Third Sector

Dame Clare: Tickell: Chief executive, Action for Children, and chair of the government’s early years review.

Anna Coote, head of social policy, NEF

New Economics Foundation says the voluntary sector faces an impossible task in filling the void left by the state

Spending cuts will break the big society and leave voluntary organisations facing an impossible task, according to a report published today by the think tank the New Economics Foundation.

Cutting It: The Big Society and the New Austerity, claims the speed and scale of cuts will result in a poorer society because voluntary organisations will not receive enough support to fill the void left by the state.

“Efforts to reduce the deficit will undermine the very networks and groups that are most needed as life gets tougher for those who are already disadvantaged,” the report says.

The report is critical of the government’s vision for the big society, which it says “may be at odds with the character and purpose of many groups and organisations.

“People usually choose to participate in community activities when they find them optional, small-scale, convivial and life-enhancing, but many of the government’s plans for supporting civil society are conditional, formalised, complicated and hard graft,” it says.

The report also claims that the programme “is ultimately at odds with the character and purpose of many groups and organisations” and threatens the nature of civil society by making it less diverse, spontaneous and free-spirited.

It says the £470m announced in the spending review for civil society will not go very far and the Office for Civil Society’s new Communities First fund “doesn’t begin to tackle the systemic causes of unfairness and exclusion”.

To succeed, it says, the government must revise its policies on spending cuts to guarantee sustained support for third sector organisations and local government.

Anna Coote, head of social policy at the NEF and author of the report, said: “The cuts mean there is a much heavier responsibility for dealing with more acute poverty, unemployment, distress and social conflict. It is madness to imagine that in these conditions civil society can fill the gaps left by a retreating state.”

Cabinet Office

It says charities for vulnerable people rely more on public funding

Charities working with people who are socially excluded, have mental health needs or have learning difficulties are most likely to be reliant on government funding, the Office for Civil Society has told local authorities and other government departments.

An OCS report published today, Exposure of the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Sector to Cuts in Public Funding, will be sent to local councils and government departments to warn them not to cut funds to the voluntary sector first, as an easy option.

It says data from the National Survey of Charities and Social Enterprises, carried out by the Cabinet Office and the polling firm Ipsos Mori in 2008, showed that 33 per cent of charities working with socially excluded or vulnerable people reported public funding as their most important source of income, compared with 31 per cent of those working with people with mental health needs and 26 per cent of those helping people with learning difficulties.

Charities working with victims of crime, homeless people and offenders and ex-offenders are also likely to report public funding as their most important source of income, the report says.

It says treating the voluntary sector as an easy target for cuts would “risk a disproportionate impact on the sector, threatening the services the sector provides for some of the most vulnerable in our communities, and potentially slowing progress towards the vision of a stronger civil society”.

The report also asks councils and government departments to consider the availability to charities of other resources such as philanthropy, volunteering and support from local businesses before deciding to cut funding to them.

For more information please talk to our directors George Ruddock 07860 844763 or Eileen Hutchinson 07771 825030.