There has been a lack of mature and open conversations between local authorities and the voluntary and community sector. As the cuts start to bite, they need to discuss shared goals as well as individual concerns
Local voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations will share many similar challenges with local authorities over the coming months and years. Both are motivated by a drive to promote and protect the interests of their beneficiaries/local communities/citizens, and indeed, the beneficiaries of a VCS organisation will be residents in a local authority’s area and likely users of council services.
In light of the above, the backdrop context is grave. Cuts to local authorities’ central government grant and the pressures on their reducing budgets as a result of demographic change, austerity and welfare reforms have meant that many authorities have in turn cut their financial support to local VCS organisations. Further, many authorities have also sought to drive down the fees paid for services contracted from the VCS. And most, though not all, have cut their grant budgets, with some having actually eliminated grant payments all together.
In turn, the VCS has not only seen its funding from local government and the wider public sector diminish, but has also experienced a reduction in voluntary charitable income. On top of that, many VCS organisations are experiencing increased demands for their services from communities, families and individuals adversely affected by austerity and as a result of the withdrawal of publicly funded services.
Tragically, in too many places, there seems to have been no mature and open conversations between local authorities and the local VCS – conversations based on a recognition that both sectors are genuinely in this together. Indeed, instead of an adult conversation, more typically there has been megaphone shouting with the VCS commonly blaming local authorities for what actually is a central government responsibility – that is for making cuts inevitable.
Equally, some local authorities have been too prone to expect VCS organisations to be able to run services on their behalf for unrealistic fees, or to find charitable income to replace tax-funded services. Some have cut their financial support to the VCS more than they have cut other areas without explaining why. Others have come to regard the VCS as just ‘another’ supplier alongside the business sector – totally forgetting its vital voice and capacity building roles, and not considering at all the opportunity to build social value through public sector contracts (actually, of course, now a ‘duty’ as a result of Chris White’s excellent Social Value Act).
If the last few years have been tough for both local government and the VCS, I fear that the years ahead are going to be even more challenging financially. The government’s public expenditure plans merely confirm this, as does the failure of the UK and other economies to show any signs of sustained growth.
Surely, regardless of political control and complexion, this has to be to be moment when local authorities and the local VCS find common cause. I am not naive enough to think that there will never be tensions between the two, or that there can and should always be harmony. VCS organisations have a duty to speak up and to advocate for their beneficiaries – and sometimes this will inevitably bring them into conflict with a local authority. This is a healthy and constructive state of play in a democracy. Local authorities have to respect this independence.
However, a stand-off and/or a lack of trust between local government and the VCS, both nationally and locally, where it occurs, will serve nobody well, especially local residents and the VCS’s beneficiaries. Rather, it will simply compound mistrust and adversarial relations.
So what is to be done?
We need national sector leaders – both in local government and the VCS – to urge their local members and colleagues to seek dialogue and common cause. And at a local level, as I know is already happening in a few places, council leaders and senior politicians and officers must invite local VCS leaders and possibly leaders from faith and other community groups to a local summit.
Agendas for such summits should be simple but focused - and determined locally through dialogue between the key parties. However, these summits must start from a strong dose of reality through receiving a frank self-assessment of the financial state of both sectors, together with some informed commentary on what these precarious pecuniary positions are likely to mean for services, the local economy and local people and their communities.
Ideally, this will lead to agreement that the local authority (and potentially the wider public sector) must: involve representatives of the VCS in all strategic and high-level budget and policy planning; establish dialogue with the VCS in all stages of strategic commissioning, including pre-procurement activity; and set up joint-working groups to consider alternative service models, community involvement and co-production approaches.
In addition, there is surely scope to consider how the VCS might take a leadership role in some neighbourhoods to lead collaborative approaches to service and delivery and the building of community resilience. Such approaches enhance the democratic leadership role of councillors and elected mayors.
In return, the VCS should be expected to demonstrate good employment practices, effective and mature governance, and a commitment to universal equality and equity. The VCS must be prepared to be open and frank about its state of health and its capacity. There is no value in the VCS promising to do that which it does not possess the capacity, capability or inclination to deliver.
Rather, the VCS should state what it can and will do, and how it might do some things differently and perhaps more cheaply and better. In particular, neighbourhood community budgets should be driven at the neighbourhood level by both the formal and informal VCS in partnership with local businesses, public sector - and most importantly local citizens.
An approach such as I have outlined above will in no way hinder the VCS and its member organisations from criticising local authority policy decisions or dent the sector’s independence and values – but it will reflect the kind of pragmatic, collaborative approach that is the only way that vulnerable citizens and communities are going to be rescued from the worst of the ravages of austerity.
Local authorities and their public sector partners must consider some financial support to the VCS to enable this kind of approach, and this will in most cases be best directed through local collective groups such as councils for voluntary service, ‘on condition’ that they in turn involve and empower their members – and indeed, community organisations outwith their membership. This co-operation should be inclusive and representative – and not exclusive and suffer from irrelevant posturing.
As austerity bites, welfare ‘reforms’ proceed as planned and people are increasingly in desperate need. Surely, the primary and overriding duty for both the VCS and local government is to respect their differences and each other – whilst finding common cause on behalf of communities and local citizens.
