During 2008, Richard Gutch, former chief executive of Futurebuilders and Director for England and Strategic Programmes at the Community Fund, interviewed 110 chief executives of third sector organisations in his new role as an Associate with Prospectus, the third sector recruitment agency. The aim of the interviews was to find out about the challenges and opportunities they and their organisations faced.
Richard, who is now a board member of NAVCA, included 16 Local Infrastructure Organisations in his interviews. They ranged from most of the big city CVS’ to the Isle of Wight RCC, Croydon BME Forum and Reading Voluntary Action. They also included Yorkshire and Humber Regional Forum and Novas Scarman Manchester. Clearly the 16 are in no way representative of NAVCA’s membership, but Circulation readers may nevertheless be interested to see how the interviewees’ concerns compare with their own.
Positive Context
One thing which all LIOs now share is a generally positive policy context for their work. Local Strategic Partnerships, Local Area Agreements and the National Indicators for a thriving third sector and the promotion of volunteering (now prioritised by two thirds of local authorities), coupled with the emphasis being given to the third sector’s public service delivery role and to the community empowerment agenda, all provide a stronger platform for the local third sector, and those who support them, than ever before.
The past few years have also seen an unprecedented level of investment in LIOs through Capacitybuilders, Big Lottery Fund, local authorities, PCTs, Learning and Skills Councils and LINks with the prospect of funding for ‘community anchors’ through Communitybuilders later this year. Not all LIOs have benefitted from this investment and it has not always been managed or targeted in the way they might have wished, but nevertheless, it shows greater recognition of the importance of LIOs than in the past.
Varied Pattern
But that is where the common ground ends. The working arrangements for LIOs across England vary enormously depending on local circumstances, local history and local politics. In Leeds, for example, there are 24 different LIOs, some providing specialist services (funding, HR, accountancy) or serving specific groups (bme, disabled), whilst Leeds Voice plays a representative role and Voluntary Action Leeds performs a generic information, advice and coordinating role, as well as hosting the volunteer bureau. Together they form the Leeds Infrastructure Consortium, chaired by Richard Jackson from VAL.
Over the Pennines, Manchester City Council decided to focus on the support needs of smaller groups with turnovers below £50k pa, on the basis that larger groups could afford to buy in their own support. Novas Scarman Manchester, who proposed a community development approach won the contract with the city council in competition with Voluntary Action Manchester and others. As a result, Manchester no longer has one generalist LIO, but, instead, has about 20 different organisations performing different LIO roles in a fragmented and uncoordinated way. On the other hand, at the sub-regional level, the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation plays an active role representing the needs of the sector at Greater Manchester level; as Greater Manchester moves to stronger, formal sub-regional governance arrangements, a number of policy areas are being dealt with collaboratively at this level through ‘commissions’, including employment and skills, health and transport;, which are all areas of significance to the third sector.
Back across the Pennines again, the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Forum seeks to provide the sector with a voice at the regional level on issues like skills, economic growth, worklessness, infrastructure development and equalities. The forum also has a dialogue with the three city regions- Leeds, Sheffield and Hull- because their boundaries do not fit with statutory or voluntary agency boundaries.
In some parts of the country, specialist forums, like Croydon BME Forum, provide a voice for the BME community through the third sector. There is one black LIO in every London borough, but most operate at a fairly minimalist level. Croydon BME Forum is one of the exceptions and it also chairs the South London BME Partnership, which has got funding from Capacitybuilders to develop the capacity of the six black LIOs in the partnership.
The picture is further complicated by recent decisions regarding the LINKs contracts, some of which have gone to generalist LIOs like Reading Voluntary Action and Keighley CVS , whilst others have gone to national agencies like the Shaw Trust, the Carers Federation and Help and Care.
Challenges
Getting to understand the complexity of all these different arrangements is a challenge in itself for an outsider, but it will hardly come as a surprise to know that the biggest challenge cited by LIOs themselves was funding. The constant need to raise funds to ensure the sustainability of their services was just as big an issue in Newcastle as on the Isle of Wight. A particular feature of this challenge is the prospect of a number of different funding sources- from local councils, Capacitybuilders and Big Lottery Fund- all ending in 2011. Three year funding is welcomed, but perhaps not when it all expires at the same time; Alan Lewis from Liverpool Charity and Voluntary services suggests some form of tapering arrangement is needed to help address this.
A particular challenge for LIOs is finding the time to do everything, especially given the increasing demands that LSP arrangements make on senior staff’s time. Having fought for years to get a seat at the table, LIOs are now finding themselves spending increasing amounts of time sitting at meetings without necessarily being funded adequately to do so. Some chief officers have taken on highly responsible roles in their LSP; for example, Nero Ughwujabo from Croydon BME Forum has chaired the chief officers’ group for the past year, whilst Colin Stroud from York CVS chairs one of the LSP Boards and used to chair the LAA Delivery Board.
Coordinating the sector’s involvement in LSP working arrangements is another challenge. In Liverpool, over 1800 voluntary and community organisations are involved through thematic and neighbourhood networks at ward and LSP level. These networks have over 100 places on LSP/partner structures where they are formally represented. In Birmingham, BVSC has established a Third Sector Assembly with funding from the LSP and the Big Lottery Fund, which is the vehicle for third sector participation via four thematic strands based on the four LAA blocks. Although the aim is to make the arrangements light touch and not too bureaucratic, they nevertheless involve a lot of extra work.
One of the balances to strike in all these arrangements is between local, community-based, engagement and district/city-wide strategic work. Caroline Schwaller from Keighley CVS, believes it is important that LIOs maintain credibility with grassroots groups, but at the same time she has to spend a lot of her time working at a strategic level on the LSP.
Most of the LIOs I interviewed are working with their local authority and PCT on commissioning arrangements. Voluntary Action Sheffield were involved in developing the local Commissioning Framework and have been supporting the development of consortia of local groups to bid for contracts with support from the RDA and PCT. Generally, trying to ensure that local groups do not lose out to national organisations in tenders is a major preoccupation for LIOs; part of the solution is to try and influence service specifications so they highlight the importance of local connections and knowledge; another part is to build the capacity of local groups to compete effectively. Voluntary Action Leicester have reassigned two existing staff to supporting local groups on bidding and contract management processes.
Opportunities
The biggest opportunity cited was the strong strategic position which LIOs are now in to exert influence and to develop new projects. It will be important to use this position of influence in the coming months to ensure that the most vulnerable groups in society get the support and services they need to survive the recession.
One development which a number of LIOs have pursued is the establishment of third sector resource centres with office premises for local groups, as well as conference and training facilities for hire. Voluntary Action Sheffield recently opened the Circle, a new £5m centre for the sector, where VAS is based along with 10 tenants. Similar centres exist or are planned in York, Nottingham, Leicester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds and London. As well as providing a tangible focal point for the sector in the city, these centres have the potential, over time, to generate valuable unrestricted income. The current state of the property market could open up new opportunities of this kind.
Another area where LIOs are trying to play a bigger role is in the personalisation and individual budgets agenda. York CVS currently manages a highly successful Independent Living Scheme and, with funding from the city council, is establishing a user led organisation, which will eventually manage the scheme within a Centre for Independent Living. More generally, the Isle of Wight RCC is exploring the potential for helping the third sector develop the more flexible, differentiated services which personalisation will require.
Most LIOs are planning to broaden their income base through charging for some of their services to the third sector, as well as earning consultancy income from the public sector and other sources. At the same time, they are very conscious of the fact that those most in need of their services are often least able to pay for them. Given the Conservative Party Green paper’s support for a ‘market’ funding model, LIOs will need to arrive at a realistic assessment of how much they can expect to generate in this way and how much of their work will need continued support through contracts or grants. Back to the funding challenge again.
Looking Ahead
The continuing need for effective LIOs is unquestionable. The issue is how to ensure they are both effective and sustainable. In the current financial climate, we can expect to see more voluntary mergers along the lines of the CVS’ in Cumbria, which have come together to form one LIO. With shared support services and a network of specialist and generic services across the county, integrated through modern IT systems, the county LIO is now better placed to provide a range of sustainable services to local groups across the area. Alternatively, with an increased emphasis on commissioning, we may see more examples like Voluntary Action Leicester’s successful bid to take over the county LIO service. In any event, LIOs will have to get better at demonstrating their value to frontline services in order to ensure they don’t get written out of public sector budgets.
Partnership arrangements may also be needed to ensure the survival of specialist LIOs serving the needs of, say, black and minority ethnic groups. By collaborating with generalist LIOs and working out who does what best, it should be possible to end up with a complementary set of, sustainable, services, serving a diverse range of groups. Funders are likely to want to see clear evidence of partnership working in written agreements and other protocols, so they can be confident that there is no duplication taking place.
The main cloud on the horizon is the inevitable squeeze on public sector spending and the probable end to some of the major grant programmes like Capacitybuilders in 2011. LIOs locally, and bodies like NAVCA nationally, will need to mount strong arguments to demonstrate that LIOs are an essential part of third sector infrastructure – in both good times and bad.
Richard Gutch
Prospectus Associate
14 January 2009
