Warren Escadale

Posted on behalf of Richard Caulfield, Chief Executive of VSNW (@caulfieldr):

Eric Pickles, the Minister for Communities & Local Government has stated that his priorities are ‘Localism, Localism, Localism’. Andrew Stunnel, a minister within DCLG went a step further and stated that he has one additional priority – Localism.

So what does this mean for the sector? At first sight it is hugely positive – the idea that we are going to have such a local focus can be a real opportunity for those encouraging local voluntary and community action. Many of us infrastructure organisations are always promoting the benefit of local action and locally owned groups – so we have to welcome the focus in many ways.

The ‘My Square Mile’ initiative on the Big Society website takes this a step further and encourages people to focus on the square-mile around them, again very positive in many respects.

Undoubtedly this government is keen to promote community and voluntary activity at the local level and looking for local organisations to start delivering services. Again for many this is an attractive agenda – great opportunity to income generate by the delivery of services. But this is where we start to hit the buffers – and here are the issues we face with this agenda:

• There is no – or at best little – money. The localism here is as much around volunteerism and individual activism as anything else so not about income generation for groups.

• The overall capacity to deliver public services locally is not as great as government likes to think. Recent research by IPPR North, funded by North West Together We Can, showed up significant issues in the funding make up and capacity of many community/social enterprises and the reliance on grants. There needs to be a concerted effort in providing the right business support services to allow these enterprises to truly flourish and play a major role in the delivery of the government’s vision. (IPPR North research: Growing Big Society: Encouraging success in social and community enterprise in deprived communities)

• A major issue for me is how the equalities agenda gets played into this. Communities of Identity in particular tend not to have their voices heard in small geographic based community settings: how do we deliver appropriate services for people with disabilities, the lesbian, gay and transgender communities and many of the BME communities who do not fit inside neat geographic communities?

• My Square Mile’ is clearly a concept developed in an urban setting: let the authors come to the North West and sell the idea in some parts of Cumbria and Lancashire and see what there is in many of ‘our square miles’.

Perhaps we as a sector can address these challenges – but at the moment we are stuck in what seems perpetual Purdah – people in public sector organisations not able to engage effectively with us because they themselves do not know what is happening at the moment, if their jobs are safe or if they have a budget to spend.

The best we can do is to continue to engage with decision makers wherever we can – to be a ready and willing partner; but we must maintain our values and not sell our soul: if localism offers you opportunities, take them but don’t let the equalities agenda slip. In the coming months and years many of our communities are going to rely on the work of the sector just to survive and above all else, we must be willing to help those most in need.