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Tuesday Nov 28, 2006
Stop press: hubs latest
While people like Ed Miliband and David Cameron talk about their vision for the future of the voluntary sector (it will solve all our problems, basically) big decisions are being made about how the sector’s infrastructure is actually run.
There seems to have been no media coverage whatsoever given to the decision by the board of Capacitybuilders last week on the future of the national hubs. If you haven’t been following this story (what, you’ve got a life?), the basics are that:
- The hubs are voluntary sector partnerships set up to deliver the Government’s ChangeUp programme;
- They only agreed their business plans with the Government last year;
- They were reviewed by Jo Durning this year;
- Durning concluded that most of the hubs functions should be taken over by Capacitybuilders.
As I’ve said on this blog before, I have no experience of working with any of the hubs and no idea if they are doing a good job (although Durning has lots of praise for them, along with some criticism). But they were a major development in the sector and represented a very new way of working. A year simply does not seem long enough to see if they work or not.
Capacitybuilders (which, itself, is very new) has now come out in support of Durning’s report. It’s slightly difficult to unravel the language of their statement, (.pdf file), but they will be taking over responsibility for most of the important functions the hubs were originally given.
Capacitybuilders will take a greater strategic leadership role in pursuing all elements of the ChangeUp programme and an increased role as a direct commissioner of national services.
Inevitably there will be more consultation, not just on the immediate programme of work but also on a strategic plan until 2014.
It will be very difficult for any of the organisations involved to be critical of the decision – after all, Capacitybuilders has now made itself an extremely powerful player. But, as someone on the outside, I’d like an explanation as to what, supposedly, went wrong. If the creation of the hubs was such a bad idea, who came up with it? Have they been held accountable? And what can the experience teach us about the way government, beyond the rhetoric, actually works with the sector.
Posted by Tom Green ( 9:59 AM ) Link to this post Comments[2]
This funding has led to a bloated 2nd tier structure without actually helping frontline organisations. They get the funding not because they offer a solution but because they collude with government / funders in perpetuating the view that somehow voluntary sector groups are inadequate and need to be more 'mainstream'.
Whereas most VCS groups exist because the Governement / funders have been and continue to be wrong in how they apportion what are essentially our resources. ie they can fund projects that agree with their prejudices, not the groups that challenge their prejudices (failures).
If front line organisations had received the millions frittered away on these vanity projects (ie London Hub awared themselves the money without going out to tender), they would not only have had the opportunity to be more effective but also had the resources to counter the self interested voices of our unelected unaccountable 'leaders'.
The sector is too broad and too diverse to have one voice. It is high time the government and funders learnt how to deal with that diversity.
The recent consultation by the Home Office only re-inforced how angry many groups are at being pushed into being public service providers.
Posted by Jay Walker on November 29, 2006 at 01:36 PM GMT+00:00 #
The conclusion is that like any other government programme that fails they can go on tinkering with it long after a small group facing monitoring would have been closed, they can keep on throwoing money at the problem (their original mistake) until people loose interest.
Think of the CPSA, the failure of UK Online Centres to become a permenant source of public access, the NHS computer scheme.
Posted by Jay Walker on November 29, 2006 at 01:43 PM GMT+00:00 #