News

Local government department 'open to change' in dealings with sector

Finance | Gemma Ware | 8 Apr 2008

The door is “very clearly open” for third sector organisations to change the way they interact with local government, according to a senior civil servant from the Department of Communities and Local Government.

Joe Montgomery, director general of the places and communities group at the DCLG, was speaking yesterday at the launch of Sustaining Grants, a campaign led by NAVCA to highlight the importance of grant funding to the voluntary and community sector.

Montgomery told an audience of third sector figures that the DCLG was “open for business with the third sector,” but that “we don’t see enough of you in our building”.

Although he welcomed the Sustaining Grants report, Montgomery said that with what was likely to be a “very, very tight Comprehensive Spending Review” next month, and the demands of the Gershon agenda to increase public sector efficiency, that grant funding “needed to be augmented”. “We need to make sure that regeneration money doesn’t wash through these target communities,” he added.

Montgomery invited contributions to the DCLG’s ongoing consultation on its third sector strategy, which closes on 20 September, and said the government realised it could learn a great deal from the sector about the communities it serves. “If there are ways in which we disadvantage or prejudice the third sector,” he said, “we’d like to change our nature.”

Phil Hope, minister for the third sector, threw his weight behind the Sustaining Grants campaign. “I’ll be making sure that my ministerial colleagues in other government departments and indeed in local authorities listen loud and clear to the messages in this report,” he said.

Hope laid out the key principles that the government would use to distribute its recently- announced £80m small grants fund and £50m fund to develop community endowments. He said that grants would be aimed at the smallest, possibly volunteer-led organisations; that they would be “flexible” to meet those organisations’ needs; and that the application process would be simple and straightforward to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy.

The Sustaining Grants campaign report used a number of case studies from the voluntary and community sector to emphasise the importance of grant funding.

It said that not only do grants keep with the “voluntary ethos” by not discouraging volunteers who might be reluctant to deliver services under a contract to a local authority, but that they can encourage risk-taking and innovation, and help lever extra support from private donors.

Kevin Curley, chief executive of NAVCA, said that in many areas grants were under threat “from the Gershon-driven efficiency agenda and the move to competitive tendering”. He called on local authorities, Local Strategic Partnership members and Primary Care Trusts to “maintain grant aid as a vital part of the local funding mix”.

Deborah Allcock Tyler, chief executive of the Directory of Social Change, welcomed the campaign. Although she said the Office of the Third Sector could “hold its head up” in its commitment to grant funding, she said the “biggest funders of the VCS are the other departments and of course in particular local statutory funders” and called on the OTS to act as the sector’s champion in persuading them of the effectiveness and importance of grant funding.

For more information on the Sustaining Grants campaign go to: http://www.navca.org.uk/publications/sustaininggrants/

To contribute to the third sector strategy consultation on the Department for Communities and Local Government, go to: http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/communities/thirdsectorstrategy

Tweet

Who's Who: Gemma Ware