PROPOSAL
Working with the Voluntary and Community Sector (third sector)
Our proposals will make VCS organisations more influential and effective than they are now. They will have a more effective voice through partnership arrangements that ensure their involvement and meet their needs and aspirations. They will be partners in creating the virtual public service for each area. The two unitary local authorities will replace the divided priorities, services and budgets of seven authorities.
The new authorities will work with the VCS to achieve excellence and equality in public service delivery for all residents, rather than a top down approach of doing things to the sector, and look to have services provided through appropriately supported VCS organisations wherever possible.
Joint working arrangements and agreements with the VCS will have particular advantages:
- help to prioritise and target resources where they are most needed
- opportunities for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable residents
- deliver services that the public sector is not best equipped to deliver
- relationships with clients that local authorities may not always have
- services in areas of need where it is not economic for the private sector to provide
- jobs, training and volunteering opportunities other sectors cannot provide
- operate effectively at a small neighbourhood level
- bring added value thorough their own resources and social capital
- help local communities and hard-to-reach residents have a voice and influence service provision • encourage good citizenship
The seven authorities that currently make up Cheshire work in partnership with the VCS at strategic and local levels for the benefit of our shared communities. The two new authorities will build on this. This commitment is evidenced through the local Compacts where robust, mature partnerships and relations already exist for listening to, consulting and engaging with the sector and their service users.
The priority will be how to inform, consult and engage people in communities more effectively and encourage residents, through community development, capacity building and facilitation methods, to play a role in shaping public services for their communities.
Successful work with community partnerships has brought money to all authorities to transform public service delivery and minimise inequalities including EU’s Objective 2 funding, DCLG’s neighbourhood management and NWDA’s single programme. VCS organisations have an important role to play in these programmes as service providers and by supporting and informing the decision-making process with their local knowledge and experience.
Grant arrangements set in the authorities’ procurement approach will support the development of VCS organisations and the delivery of their services at neighbourhood and strategic levels. Grants will be on the basis of longer term agreements rather than annual grant, aligned to the strategic priorities of the authorities.
Procuring services through commissioning by the new authorities plus bringing together disparate budgets will provide the chance to innovate and respond to best value and efficiency challenges.
Within a commissioning framework, councils will set performance and quality standards and provide longer term commitments in funding. Therefore, in turn, enabling the VCS to plan longer term.
A significant link will be to neighbourhood working arrangements – many VCS organisations operate best and most effectively at a local level.
The aim of working with the VCS is not to control or manage organisations. The VCS is independent and will determine its own arrangements. However, the new authorities will support the creation of networks aligned to the new unitary areas. This will not preclude other working arrangements, but it will be for the VCS in each area to decide.
VCS organisations are engaged in county wide consortia and partnerships but struggle to make sense of these arrangements over such a large area. They have been resistant to county-wide structures because this impedes delivery at a local level. There are good examples of joint working which meet the socio-economic needs of the communities across boundaries. These will continue across the two socio-economic sub regions without the constraint of county boundaries. The VCS will support the transformation of the two areas of Cheshire. They will energise local residents on local and strategic issues which affect their quality of life and well-being.