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Thursday May 04, 2006
National versus local
Should the local volunteering infrastructure be funded by national government?
On a day when turnout in local elections is expected to be below 40%, volunteering provides a good illustration of the tensions between national and local.
On the one hand, national government wants to utilise volunteering to meet their policy goals on everything from crime reduction to youth inclusion. They're prepared to put money in, but direct funding of the local volunteering infrastructure (Volunteer Centres) is off-limits. That, through custom rather than any set rules, is funded by local government.
As in politics, all (or at least most) volunteering is local. People give time to local organisations. They respond to local needs. So Volunteer Centres (VCs) are best-placed to manage the development of volunteering in their area.
Some are well-funded by their local authority, but many are not. If central government steps in, as it has done in the past, to fund VCs where none exist, then local authorities who do provide money will feel that they are, in effect, losing out.
In recent years national government has tried to get round this dilemma indirectly. Funding national projects such as do-it.org.uk (run by YouthNet), and giving organisations such as Millennium Volunteers, Volunteering England, Timebank and the Experience Corps money to distribute has put resources into VCs. The Russell Commission charity is likely to do the same.
But that still relieves the pressure from local government to fund it's own VCs. Arguably, it is part of the centralisation that has eroded local democracy - a problem highlighted by commentators like Simon Jenkins.
It would take a brave government to reduce funding for things like volunteering in order to force them up the local political agenda. And it's not something that national volunteering organisations, who themselves benefit from centralisation, are ever likely to advocate.
Posted by Tom Green ( 10:00 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]