Tania Mason can't get too excited about the brave new world of sector support being proposed by the coalition government.  It all sounds too familiar.

Did anyone else get a sinking sense of déjà vu reading through the Office of Civil Society’s latest treatises about supporting the sector to deliver the Big Society?

The OCS wants to fund a brand new programme of sector support (spending review permitting, of course) and has a wonderful new vision of a tidy step-by-step programme that starts with a website, progresses to signposting and mentoring, and ends with bursaries to cover the cost of obtaining specialist help.

Somehow this all sounds horribly familiar.  I recall the last government had a similar desire to support the sector to become more “efficient, businesslike and entrepreneurial”, and gave us the ChangeUp programme.  More than £200m has been devoured over the last six or so years, yet we still haven’t cracked it – the need for support is now greater than ever, we are told.

Interesting too that the OCS chose the premises of the NCVO to unveil its strategy and consultation on sector support – the same NCVO, I think, that ended up mired in controversy about who should get the lion’s share of the ChangeUp funding all those years back.  The same NCVO that hired lots of new staff to deliver that ChangeUp programme and then had to make them redundant when the government shifted the administration of ChangeUp into Capacitybuilders. The same Capacitybuilders that the new government has just announced is to close.

And the prospect of yet another new support website for the sector makes me throw my hands up in despair. I’ve lost count of the number of websites that have launched over the years, each one the product of someone’s brilliant new idea to transform support provision and each one a receptacle for yet more public funds.  Remember the Directory of Social Change’s www.governmentfunding.org.uk – now superseded by the NCVO’s www.fundingcentral.org.uk.  Capacitybuilders created www.improvingsupport.org.uk – what will happen to that after March next year is anyone’s guess.  All the ChangeUp hubs had their own websites: www.governancehub.org.uk, anyone? www.icthub.org.uk?  Both of these are now integrated into the NCVO’s own site. www.knowhownonprofit.org was set up with Big Lottery money rather than taxpayer funding, but is yet another example. There are plenty more.

So forgive me if I can’t get too excited about the coalition’s new pledge to “invest in a new programme of strategic interventions which will help organisations modernise and become more efficient and entrepreneurial”.  I can’t help feeling that we’ve been down this road before.