Richard Caulfield was suspicious about the independence of Big Society Network way back in 2010.
The only thing that surprised me about the National Audit Office report into Big Society Network and the Society Network Foundation was that it had taken so long to come out.
I read Toby Blume’s excellent blog yesterday and felt he gave a great analysis of what has been going on and it has reflected concerns I have raised over recent years.
In fact the issue of Your Square Mile was subject of my first ever blog where I questioned lottery processes around their grant going back to May 2011, and I am grateful to have discovered it in the Senscot library.
Looking through my own archives my concerns went back further – in September 2010 I submitted an FOI request to ask DCLG what role they had played in establishing Big Society Network: this has not been covered in the NAO report or any other arena, but BSN had five different members of staff seconded to them for various amounts of time between June and October 2010 from DCLG who reckoned this totalled in the region of £25,000 support for the organisation in setting up.
BSN looked like it was a government initiative and even Paul Twivy seemed to suggest that government had not given the financial support it had promised in this Civil Society News article in 2013:
“The original forecast was made against a background of Your Square Mile being the government’s flagship community project for their Big Society vision. However, the government have not contributed a single pound to YSM, nor marketed its presence even on their Downing Street and Cabinet Office websites.”
The National Audit Office report is not broad enough to cover the full range of issues at stake here and somebody needs to be held to account for what has happened. The timeline of Gareth Thomas’s enquiry to the final date of publication is just one area that somebody needs to look at as well as the accusations relating to pressure being placed upon Nesta to fund BSN. For the vast majority of voluntary groups out there the amount of money subsumed by these inter-related organisations is eye-wateringly high.
I am pleased therefore, to see news of Lisa Nandy asking for a more thorough investigation: I support it and I hope colleagues from across the sector will support it. I am sure some will tell us it will do no good, but just sitting in our offices and sniping about the lack of transparency and unfairness of it all is not an option – some things look just wrong and a light needs shining on them whatever the consequences.
It all becomes majorly relevant when you remember yesterday was the last day of the consultation on the £40m sustainability fund and I think we need some clarity on how this fund will be handled to restore faith in OCS’s grant-giving processes: after all I was writing about a different fund OCS handled and a lack of transparency as recently as February.
The new minister Brooks Newmark has a chance set his stall out with this fund: we need a clear and transparent process developing, it needs to be rigorously adhered to and it needs to evidence that Whitehall is not interfering with final decisions. There is a lot of trust that needs rebuilding – and there is no time like the present.
