Robert Ashton is aghast at the recent behaviour of a mentee’s local CVS.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the CVS movement. They're usually populated by people passionate about helping civil society organisations survive and thrive. For those starting out on their journey, perhaps as new trustees or founders, their local CVS is the obvious first calling point. And of course they can help you find those all-important volunteers you need to really make a dent in the social challenge to which you are responding.

So you can imagine my horror to be phoned by a terror-stricken mentee, panicked by being turned away from his local CVS at the very moment he needed it most. I'd helped him set up a brilliant CIC, focused on combatting prejudice and stigma in a particularly innovative way. With a low first year's turnover, he'd left filing his accounts until the very last minute. He went for help to his local CVS and, it seems, been turned away.

Once I'd calmed him down and persuaded him not to run headlong through the first accountant's door he could find, I heard a disturbing account of his unfortunate experience. Although this CVS does offer a range of support services, he was told that unless he converted from CIC to charity, it could offer no help with his books. This appalled me as, surely, social enterprise is something to be encouraged by us all.

Worse was the fact that the CVS seemed to make no attempt to refer him to a CIC-friendly accountant. Or perhaps he took flight before it had the chance to do so.

Now to cast adrift someone who's never hired an accountant, facing an imminent deadline, into his local town centre is frankly cruel. It's like sending a child to swim in a shark-infested bay. The chances are that an unwelcome encounter with a predator is going to cost an arm and possibly a leg.

He could so easily have had his CIC's modest bank balance snatched and paid over the odds for what is, essentially, a very simple task. Although to him of course, it looks monumental! Luckily and coincidentally I was owed a favour by an accountant in his local town, so within the hour, he was safely sorted.

But let's reflect a moment on that CVS. Yes, of course it will be more expert in charity governance than that relating to a CIC. But surely, at a time when more and more voluntary organisations are setting out on often-perilous social enterprise adventures, its staff should take the time to become the trusted experts people understandably expect them to be.

And more importantly, with regional social enterprise support predictably less well funded and certainly less visible, where should one go for advice you can trust? In fact with their own funding increasingly under attack, I wonder why more CVS organisations aren't leading by example, setting up their own social enterprises to meet the needs of this growing sector.

There's no future for Luddites, even in the CVS movement; surely we all know that!