Civil Society could play “an even greater role” in the government’s plans than before, an official from the partnerships unit at No 10 Downing Street has said.
Speaking at the annual Association of Charitable Organisations conference last Thursday, Jamie Scudamore, head of partner relations at the prime minister’s partnerships unit, told a sector audience that the government recognised it “cannot solve alone the big challenges of our time, and we need to work together”.
Scudamore, who joined the No 10 unit recently after a career in the charity sector, told the event in London that it “hasn't always felt that there has been a consistently trusted and supportive relationship across all of government at every level”.
However, he said there was “a recognition of that and honesty about that to build those stronger partnerships” between civil society organisations and the government.
The partnerships unit at No 10 was set up by former prime minister Keir Starmer in an effort to improve the government's relationship with civil society, businesses and trade unions.
Last year, the Civil Society Covenant was also published with principles designed to underpin how the sector and state bodies collaborate.
Scudamore said new prime minister Andy Burnham's government planned to build on this work with several further initiatives.
He said there would be a new “capacity building programme across the civil service to help understand the sector better”.
Scudamore also said the government was undertaking a “big piece of work on procurement, recognising that sometimes, particularly smaller organisations get frozen out of processes, and we’re doing everything we can to shift that”.
The government recently proposed changes to how social value is applied to public contracts, with the requirement removed for smaller tenders.
Scudamore added that in the coming autumn, there would also be “conversations about particularly how we unlock the power of the sector in the context of devolution”, as plans to devolve power to local authorities progress.
