Voluntary group issues warning over creeping local authority control

Voluntary group issues warning over creeping local authority control

New Start magazine

14.03.07

Some local authorities are trying to gain control over the third sector to make it easier to meet their local area agreement targets, the vice chair of a collapsed voluntary group has claimed.

Ellie Lynall, of Voluntary Action Bolsover (VAB), a council for voluntary service in Derbyshire, said the deteriorating relationship between the organisation and its local strategic partnership (LSP) had led to it losing funds and being forced to close.

She said the organisation and the LSP had been in talks about merging voluntary infrastructure groups into a new organisation, Community Voluntary Partners, which would also support the community empowerment network.

VAB was thrown out of the LSP working group that was setting up the new organisation and the LSP stopped funding it, according to Ms Lynall. Subsequent bids to the Big Lottery Fund were either unsuccessful or had not been decided by the time VAB’s funding ran out.

‘There’s a severe misunderstanding of what the voluntary sector is, how it works and what its culture is,’ she said.

‘It is also perceived as being out of control because of its independence. As the local area agreement requirements bite locally there are advantages to the council and the LSP of extending [their] control as much as possible into areas that affect service delivery.

‘We know people are being told that VAB had a chance to join the process, but we did not. We wanted to be a part of it but were not given a legal way to do it.’

Two of the three community forums hosted by VAB could also close. The disability forum has called a dissolution meeting and the ethnic minority group is deciding whether or not to dissolve.

Mandy Chambers, chair of the local strategic partnership, said: ‘Following lengthy debate and discussions, Voluntary Action Bolsover took the decision to no longer participate in the process to form a new umbrella organisation.’

Five members of staff at VAB will lose their jobs because of the closure.

Elin Gudnadottir, deputy chief executive of third sector umbrella group Urban Forum, said: ‘The change from funding coming from central government to going through the local area agreement controlled by the local authority automatically gives them more power.’