Nick Hurd has announced the release of a best practice guide designed to help councils limit the effect of spending cuts on civil society, at the Navca conference in Bournemouth.

Better together, written collaboratively by the Cabinet Office and the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (Navca) follows Prime Minister David Cameron's warning to local councils not to see cutting funding to civil society organisations as the "easy" option. The guide reiterates this point and outlines the need for communication, leadership, collaboration and transparency between civil society organisations and their local councils.

Examples of best practice are provided in five case studies based around these key themes. Minister for civil society, Nick Hurd said at the conference on Wednesday: “Small local groups bring people together and drive social change, lose them and you risk losing the community. The examples of best practice that we have published today show that local authorities can do much to support these groups even while making the difficult decisions necessary to reduce the deficit.”

Navca chief executive Kevin Curley warned that councils would be "doing a disservice to their local communities if they make cuts without first talking with their local voluntary and community sector and listening to how they can help".

The guidelines are designed to be used in collaboration with the renewed Compact which will be implemented later this month following its review by public consultation. Earlier this week Navca raised concerns about the renewed Compact slating its "subjective" terms and the removal of principles on prime contracting and European funding. The Commission for the Compact, which will close in March next year following the quango cull, also raised concerns, saying the Compact was "significantly weakened" in its new form.