Navca chief executive Kevin Curley has asked local government secretary Eric Pickles to intervene to stop Nottinghamshire County Council making massive cuts to its voluntary sector budget.

The budget for supporting the sector in 2010/11 was £3.2m. The following year, it was cut to £1.4m, a reduction of 56 per cent.

In a letter to Pickles last Friday, Curley pointed out that this reduction is very much higher than overall cuts made by Nottinghamshire County Council to its own services – though he admits he could not pinpoint an exact figure for these.

Curley said the budget cuts were particularly saddening given the “excellent history of partnership working” between the council and the local voluntary sector.

He said that if the cuts were made after the Department for Communities and Local Government published its Best Value Statutory Guidance, which advises local authorities not to make disproportionate cuts to voluntary sector providers, Navca would have been able to challenge the decision.  But the council’s new budget was set before publication of the guidance.

Curley requested that Pickles take up the matter with the leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, Kay Cutts, asking her to look again at the budget proposals and reinstate some of the funding.

“I am writing to you at the request of Navca’s members in Nottinghamshire,” Curley wrote.  “I do hope you will be able to intervene and help the voluntary sector in Nottingham.”

He also copied the letter to civil society minister Nick Hurd and Sir Merrick Cockell, chairman of the Local Government Association.