News

OCS programme spending fell by £30m last year

Finance | Tania Mason | 11 Sep 2012

The Office for Civil Society spent £190.6m on programmes in the year to March 2012, a drop of just over £30m on the previous year.

The Cabinet Office’s annual report and accounts, published last month, reveal the extent to which the coalition government has reshaped OCS funding priorities over the two years it has been in power.

Resource grants to the voluntary sector increased by more than £51m compared with the previous year, as a result of new funding being allocated to the Transition Fund (£89m), National Citizen Service (£20.7m), the Advice Services Fund (£17.7m) and the Social Action Fund (£17.9m).

But there was a corresponding drop of £62.6m in capital grants, as Futurebuilders and the Grassroots Grants scheme wound up and funding for volunteering charity v dropped sharply. 

There were also decreases in grants-in-aid as the Strategic Partners programme was refocused on a smaller number of organisations, and Capacitybuilders closed.

Community organisers programme

The accounts reveal some hiccups in delivering the community organisers programme.  Delays in recruiting organisers led to delays in training them, with training of the first cohort only completed in September 2011, four months later than anticipated.

The target of training 800 organisers by the end of March this year was also missed, though the Cabinet Office insists that it will catch up and still meet the target of training 5,000 by the end of 2015.

The average cost of training a senior community organiser was £676; training a mid-level organiser cost £190.

Mutuals Support Programme and National Citizen Service

Since the Mutuals Support Programme launched in December 2011, 60 organisations have been or are being supported by helpline, triage and one-to-one support paid for by the Cabinet Office.

A total of 8,434 young people took part in National Citizen Service during the year and the cost to the department of the programme was £20.7m, equating to £2,463 for each participant.

Data protection breach

The report also mentions an “accidental disclosure” in March this year of up to 28,000 email addresses belonging to people who had posted comments on the website of the Red Tape Challenge.

The breach was due to a “web-build error to a software plugin”. Once it was discovered, immediate action was taken to disable the plugin and secure the data.  A subsequent investigation by the Cabinet Office concluded that the risk of harm to individuals was low and that no further notification was required.

“Recommendations have been made and implemented to upgrade the security of the website, and reduce the potential for any repetition of this type of incident.”

Ministerial salaries

Minister for civil society Nick Hurd was paid £23,697 for his ministerial duties, on top of his MP’s salary of around £65,700, and Francis Maude (pictured), minister for the Cabinet Office, earned £33,002 for his ministerial role.

Directory: Office for Civil Society