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Tuesday May 09, 2006
Your new best friends
Little reported amidst the frenzy of government scandals and re-shuffling has been the removal of responsibility for voluntary and community policy from the Home Office.
Hilary Armstrong will be the sector's main woman in the new post of Minister for the Cabinet Office and Social Exclusion.
This new role will be to co-ordinate the Government's agenda to tackle social exclusion. Hilary Armstrong will also take responsibility for the third sector, supported by a Parliamentary Secretary, drawing together the different parts of Whitehall that currently deal with voluntary and community sector organisations and social enterprises. A new office for the sector in the Cabinet Office will bring greater coherence to the Government's approach to the sector.
Quite how this new role fits in with the Chancellor's Budget announcement of a cross-cutting review and various other Treasury-led third sector initiatives remains to be seen. Armstrong certainly seems to be more of a Blairite than a Brownie.
It's not yet clear what will become of the Home Office's Active Communities Directorate (ACD) but with Ruth Kelly's new Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) - the successor department to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister - incorporating the communities and civic renewal functions previously undertaken by the Home Office, one can only assume that ACD is doomed.
I wonder if the ACD civil servants will be moved to new departments en masse, or if a whole new lot will have to learn about the sector.
Posted by Tom Green ( 9:16 AM ) Link to this post Comments[1]