News

Hubs 'not given a chance' says NCVO as it cuts 21 jobs

Finance | Tania Mason | 12 Feb 2008

The ChangeUp hubs were not given enough time to prove their worth before Capacitybuilders started evaluating them, NCVO chief executive Stuart Etherington said this week as his organisation prepared to cut 21 jobs.

The umbrella body is set to lose at least £2m a year in the transition from hubs to national support services, because the total funding available for the national element of ChangeUp has been significantly reduced but the number of services has increased from six to nine.

Last Friday the NCVO announced that because it had been chosen to run the new support services on campaigning and advocacy, responding to social change, and leadership and governance, it would create 24 new posts.

But it said 40 existing jobs would be scrapped, resulting in up to 21 redundancies, mainly in hub posts but also a few core NCVO positions. Staff have been told and a 30-day consultation period with union leaders has begun.

Chief executive Stuart Etherington told Charity News Alert that he felt evaluation of the hubs started too early, before they had had enough time to prove their worth. “The hubs were being assessed by the Durning Review within six months of set-up.”

He also voiced doubt that the new national support services model would be more effective.

“We have moved from a situation where we had more money, less hubs, and at least in some cases people around a table from the infrastructure determining what the collective business plan would be. Now we have less money, more programmes, and less incentive for people to work together – in fact every incentive for people to compete.

“If the two strategic issues were, how do you join up national infrastructure and how do you relate national services to local capacity, does this [new model] really solve those problems? The jury’s out.”

Etherington said the sector infrastructure in England was very fragmented between national and local services and was in “desperate need” of being joined up. “My worry is it might be more fragmented now and if it is, then it might be more difficult to get agreement on outcomes and impact.”

“One of the issues that emerged from the Durning Review was that it was difficult for people on the ground to know where to look for support,” Etherington added. “Well, my conclusion is that it is now going to be slightly more confusing, but we’ll see.”

Etherington rejected the criticism from some quarters that the NCVO had not acted collaboratively in its role as accountable body for three of the six hubs.

“It was interesting being the accountable body – and this is probably true of all the hubs we were responsible for – it did not actually increase your power because you had to be seen to be even-handed. Plus you had independent chairs and with all these hub brands all over the place everybody else’s brand was diluted.

“Although the NCVO was the accountable body for the delivery of strategy, ironically other organisations had more power to determine that strategy than the NCVO did, or certainly an equal amount. We were quite reticent, we let independent chairs determine it amongst a group of people, so it was not always our view that prevailed.”

Tweet

Directory: Capacitybuilders | National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)
Who's Who: Tania Mason | Sir Stuart Etherington