Pickles invites examples of unfair sector funding cuts 5

Finance | Tania Mason | 25 Jan 2012

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has asked the NCVO to feed in to him personally, any examples of disproportionate or unfair local authority cuts to voluntary sector budgets.

And he has promised NCVO’s chief executive, Sir Stuart Etherington, that he will write to Nottinghamshire County Council about the extent of its funding cuts to the local sector.

According to the NCVO, Pickles made the commitment in a phone call with Sir Stuart last night.

Sector bodies have been lobbying Pickles to intervene in Nottinghamshire for several weeks – late last year the then-Navca chief executive Kevin Curley wrote to him requesting that he take up the matter with the Council’s leader Kay Cutts, and ask her to look again at the budget proposals and reinstate some of the funding.

The budget for supporting the sector in 2010/11 was £3.2m. The following year, it was cut to £1.4m, a reduction of 56 per cent.

The affected charities were unable to use the Department for Communities and Local Government’s Best Value Statutory Guidance to challenge the decision because the council’s new budget was set before publication of the guidance.

Directory: National Association of Voluntary and Community Action | National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)
Who's Who: Sir Stuart Etherington | Kevin Curley

Place a comment

William Clemmey
Chief Executive
WAYC
26 Jan 2012

Warwick District Council are trying to cut their Discretionary Rate relief to the voluntary sector from £135000 to £60000 a cut of £75,000 or 55.5% which is much higher than the cuts to their own budget.
This is an hidden cut which even some of the local councillors do not seem to have been made aware of despite it being passed by their Executive in December 2010.
As a sector we have only just become aware of it when we were asked to complete new applications for the 2012-13 rate relief

[Reply]

Kath Rees
Chief Executive
The Haven
25 Jan 2012

I have just attended a meeting where a focus group of Voluntary Sector Representatives have discussed Wolverhamptons City Councils proposal to cut 12% from the Voluntary Sector Budget in 12/13. If this is implemented it will result in a 30% reduction to our sector since 2009/10. as far as i am aware the council has not made 30% reductions in its costs and it is causing great alarm for many providers of essential services. The Haven is a Domestic Violence Project in Existence since 1973. Our servcices are essential to the, Safety, Health and Wellbeing of women and children. The VS proposal to look at a different way of making the savings to ensure that services are still here in 2016 with WCC are moving slowly.

[Reply]

Carl Allen
25 Jan 2012
Response to [Kath Rees]

In the late 1990's, when the BME sector was the focus of savage cost cutting,as is happening to the entire sector now, I raised three points for consideration

1. What frontline activities needed to be saved with the available funding i.e. what should we tell the council to cut and what to leave alone

2. What activities should and could be saved through collaboration taking into acount the cuts

3. And since geographical dispersion of communities was a reality, what activities might be viable across councils.

[Reply]

Stolen
25 Jan 2012

What is the point when the Pickles has long shown himself to be disproportionately unfair?

**content removed subject to community standards**

[Reply]

Stolen
25 Jan 2012
Response to [Stolen]

Okay. I will try again.

What is the point of feeding the Pickles when he has long shown himself to be disproportionately unfair?

[Reply]

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