We thought that Lisa Nandy MP, Labour Shadow Minister for Civil Society, might bring a fresh and enquiring eye to the tired politics we are used to. We were wrong. The message we take from the Labour Party “consultation with the third sector” is that Labour will do just the same as the Tories but … Continue reading
In what is going to be a pretty massive release, we have today uploaded the first two of sixteen reports from our Inquiry into the Future of Voluntary Services. The general background to our Inquiry is provided by Dexter Whitfield’s ‘The Ideological Context’, which sketches out how neo-liberal ideas have damaged public services and … Continue reading
Listen to a podcast of NCIA’s Andy Benson speaking about whether there’s enough power to go around in the voluntary and community sector at the ARVAC annual lecture on 9 May 2011. You can also download a transcript of Andy’s presentation (Word, 6 pages) and the presentation slides (Powerpoint).… 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
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
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
As a “lefty American” traversing the ground of the voluntary sector in the UK, I have often had a strange mixture of feelings:
