Sarah Lamb is a trustee of Adur Voluntary Action. She was one of the people who contributed to qualitative research in 2009 on The local state and voluntary action in West Sussex which showed the damage commissioning does. NCIA caught up with her to find out how things have been going over the last 18 … Continue reading
Read our two new papers if you want to get thinking about what privatisation means for charities and community groups and how the ‘big society’ and localism damage independent action.
Big market: how localism and the ‘big society’ damage independent voluntary action (2011) PDF, 4 pages
Voluntary action under threat: what privatisation means for charities … Continue reading
Despite talk about a ‘big society’, two new case studies show that small community organisations are still expected to comply with over-complex tendering processes and evaluation systems that fail to value their local knowledge and independence.
The case studies show how independent action has been undermined in youth work and how people on the frontline … Continue reading
Read the summary of our new paper on privatisation, including the related topics of cuts, localism and the ‘big society’. This is just the start of setting out our views. Please let us know what you think and help us spark a proper debate about cuts, commissioning, competition and how to protect independent action … Continue reading
Thursday 27 January 2011, 1.30pm to 5pm
Quaker Meeting House, 10 St James Street, Sheffield S1 2EW
Cuts, privatising public services, commissioning replacing grants, voluntary agencies being run like businesses, managers who don’t understand the front line work, nonsensical targets… If you’re feeling angry, you’re not alone!
At the last NCIA assembly we discussed … Continue reading
The latest version of the compact – the bit of paper that reckons to set out a more equal relationship between voluntary organisations and the government – has now been put off indefinitely.
We’re not too worried as the compact continues to ignore the bulk of small scale voluntary action. Meanwhile the compact industry sucks … Continue reading
Local authorities and other statutory agencies are damaging relationships with local voluntary and community sectors and undermining the independence of voluntary action, reveals a new report from the National Coalition for Independent Action (NCIA).
The report is based on interviews with 16 voluntary agencies in West Sussex conducted by NCIA working with Adur Voluntary Action, … Continue reading
The Charity Commission has finally spotted what NCIA predicted at the beginning of the year, and long before –
“many charities will go bust because of their reliance on government contracts to deliver public services.”
Hard not to say “we told you so” to those who have tied themselves into State agendas with little … Continue reading
One of the principal ways – perhaps the main way – in which the Government is mounting its assault on the voluntary sector is through the peddling of its latest ‘fad’ for PROCUREMENT AND COMMISSIONING. Statutory services of all sorts have been told – explicitly or implicitly – to develop strategies for this. There has … Continue reading
Previous articles in Green Socialist have pointed out that privatisation does not just affect services formerly run by the statutory sector, and also (ironically) that privatisation can sometimes go hand-in-hand with increased state control. Voluntary organisations providing public services are being compelled to adopt the methods and priorities of private businesses through tendering and commissioning … Continue reading