The National Council for Voluntary Action will make four redundancies as part of a three-year plan to become more sustainable, its chief executive has said.

Neil Cleeveley told Civil Society News that the new three-year plan will come into place next month and see Navca become “a slightly smaller organisation”. Redundancies at the organisation mean that the number of staff will shrink from 11 to seven.

“It’s pragmatic,” he said “we needed to consolidate the organisation because of financial pressures” and “a smaller tighter team was more likely to be sustainable over the longer term”.

Navca has seen its income fall by almost two-thirds in the last five years, largely down to the loss of government grant funding. For the financial year ending March 2014 its income fell from £2.6m to £1.2m, mostly due to the end of a one-off £1m grant from the Department of Health.

He said Navca would be doing fewer things but "raising the intensity of what it does do.

He said that Navca will “offer less specialised support” and instead be “looking to signpost members to other sources of support”.

He said Navca will . “We will still have an interest in what the Charity Commission says, but we will probably take a less active role in some of its consultations,” he said.

“Where we intervene it will be much more targeted and rather than making general comments it will be about the impact on the local voluntary and community sector.”

Navca will focus on the recommendations from the Commission on Local Infrastructure’s final report, which called for a redesign of local infrastructure. Cleeveley said: ““I think Change for Good demonstrates the important role it plays in society, we need to make sure that is recognised and that something is done about it to make sure it is sustainable over the longer term.”

In an interview with Civil Society News Neil Cleeveley outlines his vision or the future of local infrastructure organisations.