If the state is not prepared to help build voluntary local capacity in places like Liverpool, then who is? Asks John Popham of the cuts which threaten the "Big Society".
John Popham is an independent facilitator of community-based social media development, and a founder member of Our Society, a network that celebrates people-led local development
The “Big Society” has been much in the news over the past week or so, but not in ways in which its proponents in the coalition government would have liked. Liverpool City Council has pulled out of its role as a Big Society “Vanguard”, while Lord Nat Wei, the big society czar, has revealed that he cannot afford the level of voluntary effort required for the role. It may appear that a tide of negative publicity is threatening to overwhelm the whole project.
When a highly respected charity leader, who had initially expressed enthusiams for the Big Society concept, publicly condemns the way the thing is being carried out, then it begins to look very serious. Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, out-going executive director of Community Service Volunteers (CSV), is the latest voice to express the concern that the extent and speed of the public spending cuts is de-railing the Big Society train.
At the heart of this argument is a strange contradiction. David Cameron argues that the Big Society is about rolling back the state, giving more power to individuals and communities, and creating a society in which people take action to care for each other, rather than abrogating responsibility to government. At the same time, the prime minister argues that the cuts agenda and Big Society are not linked; that they would be advocating greater community control even if they were not having to make cuts.
However, there is an increasing realisation that the cuts make the Big Society impossible to deliver. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the state is being rolled back too fast; even if there were a queue of community organisations waiting to take over the running of former state services, the gap that is opening up is too big for them to fill.
The second reason is that there is increasing evidence that the sector being hardest hit at local level by the cuts is the very voluntary sector that underpins Big Society-type initiatives. As government withdraws funds from local authorities and other public agencies, they often find it easier to pass on a greater proportion of the cuts to the voluntary agencies they fund.
The website voluntary sector cuts has so far recorded more than £40 million worth of cuts to more than 200 voluntary sector organisations. The website relies on those facing budget reductions posting the information on the website, and so the figure represents the lower bound of the effect of the cuts. In fact, we are only part way through the first year of at least three years’ worth of cuts, which are estimated to be worth £4.5 billion or 40 per cent of the sector’s state funding.
At the moment at least, there doesn’t appear to be a queue of wealthy philanthropists waiting to invest in areas such as Liverpool, the one vanguard project which was actually situated in an area of extreme deprivation. If the state is not prepared to help build that voluntary local capacity, who is?
24 Responses to “Big Society faces £5 billion of cuts”
David Kane
thanks to @leftfootfwd for mentioning the @vscuts website in their latest post: http://bit.ly/dOT3BS
Syzygy
This was obvious from day 1…. where were the mainstream media? I am appalled by how badly served we are by the so-called free press and the television channels. The worst example, has been the burying of the Lansley Health reform car crash under the wall to wall coverage of Egypt… was that a nice little foreign jolly for the correspondents or something more sinister?
scandalousbill
Mike Thomas,
“What part of voluntary charity do you have a problem with? Raise your money for your needs privately.”
Right, open another charity shop or take a collection bucket in front of Tesco or f*ck off.
Where did you get the notion that charities are self serving? On what basis do you advocate that the manner of fund raising should take precedence over the work performed and benefits to society these groups provide?
While I do not dispute that your stated notion of “Big Society” faithfully parrots the Cameronesque notion of so called citizenship, it clearly indicates the often stated position, that the “Big Society” is merely an ill conceived facade to mask spending cuts, has merit, .
Three questions about the dying Big Society | Liberal Conspiracy
[…] >But it turns out that this is too simple. Charities are enormously dependent upon state funding. […]
bob
*On what basis do you advocate that the manner of fund raising should take precedence over the work performed and benefits to society these groups provide?*
This is a defence often spoken, but really misses the whole point.
You may argue that the ideology is wrong, and that the people of this country cannot be relied upon to be charitable, and that would be your right to do so (I argue people are becoming less charitable the more the state does). But the point of the big society is not “we are Tories and love cutting services, oh, and beating up grannies”, its “as Tories we believe that the state should not do this, but the people should”.
I repeat “as Tories we believe that the state should not do this, but the people should”.
The whole point of cutting funding to charities is that they are not charities if they are funded by government, they are not voluntary if they are funded by the government. And so they should either be tax funded arms of the state, or they should be charities, charities can’t be called charities and receive ANY government funding.
Of particular concern is the moral quandary of government funding charities. Particularly with democratic accountability, who decides which charities are worthy, because it sure aint the electorate! Surely it should be the person donating the money, not a government department (when historically ever government has show poor money skills, like the famous “spend all the road money so we get the same budget next year). How many times have we heard of charities like ASH being funded by the government to lobby the government, just look at the fake charity website and tell me how many are worthy causes and how many are “worthy causes”!
The whole point is that if these bodies do good works, then it should be for the electorate to decide that that work should be done by the government by voting of it, or for them to pay for it out of their own pockets.
If they do neither, and you believe they do good works, then do something about it, don’t just demand tax payers money is given to “charities” by unelected means.
Go out, fund raise, campaign for awareness, do voluntary work, DO SOMETHING. If these people or organisations do good work, benifitial to society, then it should become the responsibility of the people to make it happen.
That’s the point of the big society, getting people to look after each other, rather than the dead hand of the state.
Again, you may disagree with that philosophy, but please spare us the usual “the Tories just want to cut services because they are evil”.
(Now saying all that, the implementation is a farce, but that is another long winded post)