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Proper funding needed for voluntary sector

31 August 2010

Without proper funding of a strong and independent regulator the government's much-vaunted Big Society programme may push more public services into voluntary sector bodies that are left unregulated and unsupervised.

Big Society plans could overwhelm overstretched charity sector


The government announced in May a programme to “empower local people and communities and roll back big government, bureaucracy and Whitehall power”, by supporting the creation and expansion of charities and helping them run public services.  But the regulator that could provide this support, the Charity Commission, will be affected by the coalition’s demands for a 25% spending cut over the next four years and will be unable to carry out its current functions with such resources.

Civil society minister Nick Hurd said in June: “Clearing the thicket of bureaucracy that often gets in the way of doing good” was a priority, but our members believe there is a vital need to ensure charities are effectively registered, supported and policed so they can flourish.

Increase investment to support thriving voluntary sector

The commission’s joint PCS branches committee proposes increased investment as a vital step to supporting a thriving voluntary sector. Members feel frustrated that a lack of resources means they have only ever scratched the surface in the area of deliberate wrong-doing.

Darren Jones, secretary of the Charity Commission Departmental Trade Union Side and PCS Liverpool Branch, said: "The government seems to be sending mixed messaged about the voluntary sector. They have re-characterised it as ‘civil society’, thus blurring the distinction between philanthropic and private interests.

“At the same time as demanding a greater role for the voluntary sector in running public services, they are reducing funding support to charities. Alongside this, by slashing resources for the Charity Commission, they are removing any capacity for scrutiny of what charities are doing. On this last point, PCS branches at the Charity Commission are raising their concerns with Nick Hurd MP, the new Minister for Civil Society."

Members also argue there is dire need for the Charitable Incorporated Organisation, created under the Charities Act 2006 but in danger of never coming into existence, as it provides corporate protection for charities without unnecessary bureaucracy.

Commission’s resources will be stretched even further

Andrew Studd, a partner in the charity team at Russell-Cooke Solicitors, said that “with the registration of previously exempt charities, it is likely that the commission’s already stretched resources will be stretched even further, slowing response times for charities needing help”.

Charities facing the twin pressures of budgets cut and their desire to respond positively to the Big Society agenda, will look to the commission for practical help and guidance. It is dishonest of the government to claim to be supporting voluntary sector when it is reducing availability of support.

Back to Victorian philanthropy

The union’s NEC has noted in the coming period we might see a return to 'Victorian levels' of inequality and sharp social stratification by area, housing and employment if the government’s cuts programme succeeds.

Ideas such as the Big Society fit into the late 19th Century philosophy of philanthropy instead of government intervention, so while Cameron attacks the most vulnerable in society with cuts in welfare they will be left to rely on help from the “benevolent rich” and the overstretched charity sector.

Dr Nina Power, senior lecturer in philosophy at Roehampton University, and supporter of the Coalition Of Resistance, a broad group of campaigners against the cuts promoting a positive alternative, said: “We will soon need a new Dickens. The coalition’s increasingly mercenary approach to questions of public well-being is designed to return us to a time before the welfare state, where philanthropy was the only safety net for society’s less fortunate members.”

The four pilot areas for the Big Society: Liverpool, the Eden Valley in Cumbria, Windsor and Maidenhead and Sutton in south London, will, according to Downing Street, “become the great training grounds where the Big Society will be built with officials from the Department of Communities and Local Government assisting them”. But the government offices covering three of the areas are to close and the officials dispensed with as part of the closure of the Government Office Network, undermining the coalition’s plans.

Far from supporting the government’s 'localism' agenda these cuts seriously undermine it.