Commissioning made difficult by shared aims, warns Southwark Council chief

12 May 2011 News

Having too many charities with similar aims hampers the local authority commissioning process, the chief executive of Southwark Council has warned.

Southwark from the air. Image courtesy of Lars Plougmann

Having too many charities with similar aims hampers the local authority commissioning process, the chief executive of Southwark Council has warned.

Speaking at the CFDG annual conference earlier today, Annie Shepperd said her region has twice the national average number of charities, which creates "a huge amount of duplication".

"I wonder just how much the voluntary sector understands that part of the complexity for local authorities is too many organisations doing the same thing and competing with each other in the same territory.

"That is where you see huge waves of organisations using political influence, particularly around funding decisions."

Speaking about the commissioning process, she added: "Organisations in the charity sector recognise that they are all in competition, but the private sector does this well and my feedback to the charity sector is that they don't do it as well."