Cabinet Office announces grants from £30m local infrastructure fund2

Finance | Tania Mason | 2 Feb 2012

Ealing Council for Voluntary Service has received the largest grant from the £30m Cabinet Office programme for local civil society support organisations throughout England.

Minister for civil society Nick Hurd announced the 70-odd successful bidders to the Transforming Local Infrastructure Fund today. Grants ranged from £965,000 for Ealing CVS to £258,135 for York CVS. The full list of awards can be found here.

The fund aims to “transform and modernise local charity support services” to help recipients provide “high-quality, joined-up support” to frontline local charities that deliver services to their communities.

The successful applicants are those that have committed to bring together different support providers to offer services at a lower cost.

The funded projects will “make it easier for organisations to forge better links with local businesses, develop stronger partnerships with local public sector bodies and for people to volunteer”, according to the Office for Civil Society.

Hurd said: “This fund is not designed to support business as usual – it’s about supporting organisations with innovative business plans who want to play their part in modernising the landscape of local infrastructure.

“One of our main priorities is making it easier to run a charity. We will ensure that we back the highest quality infrastructure support so that charities get guidance which is local, relevant and enables them to improve their service delivery.”

The fund is being managed by the Big Fund, the non-lottery arm of the Big Lottery Fund.

Navca has issued an invitation to local support agencies that have been unsuccessful at securing funding from the programme to get in touch. It said it will help them explore alternative approaches and funding sources.

Joe Irvin, chief executive of Navca, said: “Congratulations to all those involved in the successful bids and commiserations to those who have been unsuccessful. We always knew only a limited number of awards were available.

"What has been remarkable is the way that Navca members have supported each other through this process. Our members have demonstrated yet again the selflessness with which they go about their mission of supporting local voluntary action.”

The Big Lottery Fund is also spending an extra £20m to support charity sector infrastructure – its proposals for this will be published later this year.

Place a comment

Martin Brighton
2 Feb 2012

Please identify what Voluntary Action Sheffield are expected to deliver for their money.
Please arrange for a copy of their bid to be emailed.

[Reply]

Barbara
2 Feb 2012

The truth is that nobody wants to fund infrastructure but everybody - including Charity Commission and OCS - expect people to organise themselves, preferably along charity guidelines, with respect to good practice and instinctively understanding charity law (and other law that applies) - I'm asking: how people are supposed to do all that if they don't happen to be already experienced activists, preferably with a law degree? Protect infrastructure and you will protect healthy growth of civil society for everybody, not only people with uni degrees, wealthy sposes, broad connections or rich from home. Everybody has right to participate in democratic procedures (civil society being one of them, it's not all about services you know), cutting them from support will not help the society as a whole. Can UK afford that?

[Reply]

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