Minister for civil society Nick Hurd has written an open letter to the sector that seeks to explain the “strategic framework” underpinning the government’s recent policy initiatives.

In it, he states that the government believes its efforts to grow giving and social investment will enable charities and social enterprises to “access significantly more resource”.

The letter, which mentions the “Big Society vision” as soon as the second paragraph, is effectively a reiteration of all the actions taken by the government recently to pursue the agenda and expands on the thinking behind them.

These include increasing giving, cutting red tape, National Citizen Service and Community Organisers and Community First.

Hurd goes on to say that the Big Society agenda contains “three major long-term opportunities for civil society” – the opportunity to deliver more public services; the opportunity to shape local priorities, and the opportunity to “access significantly more resource”.

The government will facilitate these opportunities, he says, by making it easier to run a charity or social enterprise, making it easier to work with the state, and getting more resources into the sector.

Public spending cuts

At the end, however, he reminds readers that “this agenda of opportunity has to be reconciled with the urgent need to reduce government borrowing”.

“What is at stake is an economic recovery which the social sector needs to see as much as everyone else. A sector which receives £13bn of taxpayers’ money a year cannot be immune from the painful but necessary process of reducing government expenditure.”