Council Budget 2011-12
In February the full Council approved recommendations to make very substantial cuts during the 2011-12. These were in the region of £40 million and affected most services. These are bound to impact on those voluntary organisations currently providing services under contract to the Council. The grant expenditure has, in the main, been maintained, except in the case of investment in support bodies. See letters from Daljit Lally, Head of Adult Services, and Roger Styring (Deputy Leader) and Bob Langley. The justification for this reduction, initially set at 20% in a full year, was based on the findings of two reports - one prepared by Prof Tony Chapman and Dr Victoria Bell of Teesside University and the other by Stephen Corlett of Adult Services.
Commissioning of Support Services
The Council has decided to commission support services (including the Consortium or something like it) through a competitive grant arrangement. The present plan is for the selected supplier(s) to be delivering by October 1st. The proposal is out for consultation until towards the end of April and significant changes have already been made to the original plan.
VCS puts case to Council
The VCS Consortium meets quarterly with the Executive of Northumberland County Council. At the meeting in May 2010 a paper was presented outlining just why the sector is so important to Northumberland. In these testing financial times it was prepared in an attempt to answer the questions from NCC: "What has the VCS ever done for us?" and "Why should we continue investing and giving to it?" Click here to link to it.
National Third Sector/Charity and Social Enterprise Survey
A measure of the influence that local statutory bodies have on the VCS's success can be found from the Ipsos Mori survey of nearly 1000 Northumberland based registered charities and incorporated organisations. This survey was conducted in autumn 2008 and will be repeated again in 2010 but this time under the name of National Charity and Social Enterpise Survey. Back in 2008, 17.1% of the responses said the influence was "very positive" or "positive" - a very similar result to the all-England figure. It will be interesting to see if that changes in the 2010 survey. This is due to be published in the spring of 2011.
