Too many local authorities are subjecting the voluntary and community sector to a crude ‘contract culture’, instead of fostering essential local support organisations 
Across the country, I hear leaders of the local community and voluntary sector express their concern that increasingly local authorities are abandoning grants and replacing them with contracts. They are right to be anxious.
Indeed, the adoption of a ‘contract’ culture should be far more worrying for the local community and voluntary sector than any increase in ‘commissioning’. Contracts are the way in which the funder, or more precisely the purchaser, dictates to the voluntary and community service – the supplier – what it requires it to do. Contracting, if applied in a heavy handed manner – and all too often it is – is about the local authority seeking to take control, and thereby undermine the valued and important independence of the many local community and voluntary organisations.
The irony is that the vast majority of the voluntary sector has no wish to become a major provider of contracted public services – yet increasingly, local authorities seem to regard this as their only fundable role. This is a grave error and demonstrates a complete failure to appreciate and value the critical role that the sector can and does play in building community capacity, nurturing social capital and offering a voice to communities – and especially to some of the most marginalised communities. And it is doubly ironic, that at the very time when local authorities and central government are pressing the case for localism, neighbourhood empowerment, social cohesion and tackling long term social and economic challenges – that the very organisations which could offer so much are being denied the necessary resources.
I accept that there is (or can be) an important role for the voluntary and community sectors in delivering public services, whether through public sector contracts or in collaboration with larger third and even business sector providers. But whether an organisation wishes to play such roles should be a matter for their trustees, freely taken. Unfortunately and increasingly, however, we are seeing small local community groups pursuing contracts because this appears to be the only way of securing finance. And all too often, the contract payments are too little to ensure sustainable quality services with the consequence that there is pressure to raise charitable funding – in effect to subsidise the public sector. This is not right and further, it is not sustainable.
Many small local community and voluntary groups are members of their local support and development organisations – perhaps a Council for Voluntary Service. They rely on the collective power and resources of these organisations to: speak on their collective behalf to local government and the wider local public sector; provide development support and capacity building; offer advice; and sometimes to co-ordinate activity including contracting between community groups.
Many local authorities continue to value the contribution that a good and effective local support and development organisation can make – traditionally inviting them to: represent the sector on local strategic partnerships and other similar bodies; comment on major changes to policy and budgets; and speak freely for their members – the local voluntary and community sector. And historically, local authorities have funded their local support and development organisations through grants.
However, the evidence is becoming stronger every week that there is a growing and disturbing trend in some local authorities to either stop or severely reduce this funding. Some are seeking to commission and then contract the services – thus telling the organisations what services they should provide to their members and how. There are some authorities that have gone further and have introduced a market-based voucher system whereby they award community and voluntary organisations vouchers to ‘buy’ their support services from any approved provider (and in one case that I know of, this has to be named individual consultants and not an organisation like the CVS).
There are also examples of local authorities using a competitive bidding process to award the local support and development role to private sector businesses with no local base, knowledge or networks and, I should add, no local credibility.
Reading the specification for one such contract, I was struck by how much the local authority seemingly perceives the new local support and development role as being about ‘assisting local community organisations to be ready to bid for public sector contracts’. In this case, the local authority is, of course, denying the wider role of the sector and presumably claiming the expenditure of the contract to the support services business as part of its wider market-making duty.
The picture that I have described above is not a good one for the local community and voluntary sector and more importantl, it is desperate scenario for those communities and individuals who need strong vibrant local community and voluntary action to improve their life chances and environment.
Thankfully, there are a core of local authorities who continue to recognise and value the contribution that the local community and voluntary sector makes and who recognise the need for the sector to decide and control their local support infrastructure. These authorities and their political leaders are to be applauded.
That said, many local authorities still need to be persuaded of the importance of a vibrant local community sector and of the need to provide appropriate support. At the same time, the sector has to consider and adopt alternative funding sources, to merge and rationalise organisations and find ways to share resources and support services. However, there is always going to be a need for local public sector financial support and local government should see this as critical to the localism and leadership of place agendas.
The local community and voluntary sector has always evolved to meet the needs and aspirations of communities and to ensure it remains fully effective amidst changing political, social and economic environments. But to do this, hundreds of thousands of local voluntary community groups across the country need local financial support – and they need grants, not contracts. They also need to be able to choose, own and control their own local support and development organisations.
There is an urgent need for dialogue at a national level between the sector and local government – and in every locality. The community focused national members of the wider third sector must also form alliances to make their case and ensure that their voice and that of their local members is not lost in the loud cacophony of the national service-providing charities. The latter should be complementary partners rather than competitors but at times, national and local policy too frequently seem inclined to promote their short term needs at the expense of their local smaller partners.
Urgent action is required to make the case for local voluntary community action – and for it to be seen as the natural ally of progressive localism.