Capacitybuilders, the Commission for the Compact and the Office for Civil Society Advisory Body will all be scrapped, the government confirmed today.
The abolition of the three organisations was widely expected after the list of quangoes to be abolished was leaked to the Daily Telegraph last month, but the Cabinet Office had refused to confirm the accuracy of the list until today.
The functions of the Commission for the Compact – to promote and champion the Compact – will transfer to the Cabinet Office and Compact Voice respectively. This too was anticipated after the two organisations launched a draft renewed Compact a few weeks ago which, as reported by Civil Society yesterday, was roundly criticised by the Commission.
With regards to Capacitybuilders, the government states that alternative delivery for capacity-building activity is under review – civil society minister Nick Hurd has already announced that he will launch a consultation soon on the future shape of sector infrastructure. Capacitybuilders will have disbursed around £150m of government funding to the sector during its existence.
The OCS Advisory Body – effectively the group of senior sector figures appointed to advise the old Office of the Third Sector on what the sector wanted from the government – will cease to exist when its members’ terms of office come to an end on 31 March next year.
The Charity Commission will remain; its survival was never in doubt, though it is expecting savage budget cuts as part of next Wednesday’s spending review. Other bodies relevant to the sector that will continue to exist include the Churches Conservation Trust, Arts Council England, Historic Royal Palaces, Museums and Galleries, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.
Among those that are being retained despite being warned they were at risk of abolition are English Heritage, the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The government decided to retain these because they perform “a technical function that should remain independent from government”.
A number of other quangoes will be reconstituted as independent charities. Among these are NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), the Design Council, and British Waterways - this will become “similar to a National Trust for the waterways”.
The School Food Trust will no longer be a non-departmental public body but will continue as a charity with the potential to become a Community Interest Company.
The Theatres Trust will continue as a charity, as previously announced.
In other developments, the Consumer Direct helpline will be taken over by Citizens Advice; the Community Development Foundation which already has charitable status will be “supported to move to a social enterprise model”; and Sport England will merge with UK Sport.
The Youth Justice Board will be scrapped.
And the Equality and Human Rights Commission will be retained but “substantially reformed”, with “better focus on its core regulatory functions and improved use of taxpayers’ money”.
The government claimed that the restructuring of the quango landscape would “help to reinvigorate the public’s trust in democracy and also ensure that the government operates in a more efficient and businesslike way”.
