YouthNet blog

Friday Sep 22, 2006

The Durning Report

Have you read Jo Durning's Review of the ChangeUp National Hubs (Word document) yet?

Though not. Unless you are directly involved in a piece of voluntary sector infrastructure reviews of them are unlikely to prove very compelling.

My attention was caught by this report, however, because I remembered being astonished when its commissioning was announced. Haven't the Hubs have only just got started? How can they be considering their future already?!

A quick recap: the Hubs are umbrella body partnerships set up to deliver the national programmes of the Government's ChangeUp infrastructure initiative, may
be living on borrowed time. Since April this year ChangeUp has itself been managed by Capacitybuilders, an agency "at arms-length from government" (albeit funded by the Home Office) that is "led by experts  from the community and voluntary sector."

Got that? Third Sector has a good piece on the history of the Hubs if you're really keen.

Setting up these Hubs was quite difficult. Partnerships had to be formed, territory fought over, terms of reference established. The final funding arrangements were only confirmed less than a year ago.

The report

Which brings us to Jo Durning's report, based on interviews with the Hubs, stakeholders and the public.

It starts with what can only be interpreted as praise for what the Hubs have achieved.

In their first year of operation, the ChangeUp hubs have set up websites and helplines, launched standards, codes and frameworks, run conferences, seminars and training, undertaken research and consultation, produced briefings, guidance, toolkits and other materials, held meetings to exchange good practice.  Most of this has happened over the past few months.  As one contributor to the review observes, there has been an explosion of activity in the sector.  All this has been achieved while working to very tight timescales, with teams mainly recruited in the course of the year, now with 50 people in place.  The hubs have largely delivered on the business plans they agreed with the Home Office in 2005, though there was some slippage against timetables, and the Finance Hub had a significant underspend.

There are also criticisms: that the Hubs haven't been co-ordinated enough, that they haven't reached down to local level and that they haven't all developed coherent strategies.

But the root of many of these problems seems to lie with ChangeUp rather than the Hubs. As Durning says:

There is a need for a strategic roadmap, with milestones, targets and priorities to get from here to 2014. The ChangeUp document is a vision statement, not a strategic plan.

In her conclusion, Durning says that:

The present system was established less than 2 years ago, after widespread consultation.  The hubs are largely delivering what they signed up to do in the business plans, and there have been some impressive achievements.  The hubs and their engaged stakeholders point to the value of the partnerships they have forged, in bringing a broad range of expertise to the strategies they are delivering, and in securing buy in.

But despite this, and the fact that "...there is no sign that the conditions in the sector are more favourable now for a central agency than they were when the idea was first canvassed," a central agency is exactly what she proposes.

It will be harder to drive delivery of the national ChangeUp programme through 5 or 6 independent partnerships, with wide ranging remits and the tensions identified in this report, than through direct commissioning by a central body which can take a strategic overview.

Therefore, she recommends that Capacitybuilders should take on most of the work of the Hubs, including commissioning. The Hubs would "continue as centres of excellence and advisory bodies, with small budgets to enable them to identify and promote good practice" (apart from the Volunteering Hub which was only ever Volunteering England in the first place).

I have no experience of the Hubs. I don't know if they have done a good job or not, nor whether they are a good idea or not. But when you set up such a big and complex piece of infrastructure on the back of a large-scale consultation surely it makes sense to give it a fair chance. Doesn't it?

Had Durning's report been filled with evidence of incompetence, failure and wrongdoing then one might think differently. But she seems to be saying that the Hubs are doing a pretty good job. Am I missing something?