LEVENMOUTH has kick-started yet another ‘first’ for Scotland.

MyBus Community Transport is pioneering a Wheels 2 Work venture, to help people travel to work in areas where transport may be tricky.

The project is backed by £64,000 funding from the Coalfields Regeneartion Trust (CRT), the charity which supports the social and economic regeneration of mining-linked areas.

Methil-based MyBus has taken delivery of a 20-strong fleet of 50cc mopeds and 125cc scooters, provided by Rumblurs in Kirkcaldy, in a scheme it hopes will be a two-wheeled triumph.

It’s aimed at assisting people in coalfields areas like Levenmouth – often with high unemployment – overcome any difficulties with public transport after they’ve secured work, by taking the bikes on a six-month loan scheme.

There are conditions, and a weekly charge of around £20 to run the bike – with the money reducing costs if the user wants to buy the machine after the six months.

Insurance, safety wear and compulsory basic training is provided by the scheme during that time.

The project is targeted mainly at 16-25-year-olds, although no one over 25 is excluded.

MyBus managing director Mary Parry explained difficulties with public transport could hamper, discourage or even prevent people from taking a job they may have been offered.

Some workplaces may only be a short distance away but could involve long journeys if public transport services were poor.

MyBus was also liasing with Jobcentre Plus and Ms Parry added: “As a social enterprise, we are always looking at ways to break down barriers to employment and identified transport as a major issue, especially if shift work is involved.

“This project makes employment opportunities in areas such as Dunfermline and Rosyth a lot more accessible.”

The venture, modelled on successful examples in England, is Scotland’s first and Nicky Wilson, a trustee with the CRT, said it could make a difference to people’s lives, in helping secure employment, building confidence and providing a low-cost form of transport.

Author: Huffington Post

We are the 99 per cent. That slogan has captured the imagination of hundreds of thousands of people as the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread worldwide.

As the instigators and beneficiaries of global financial crisis go about their business, protest camps are establishing themselves as testimony to a rising tide of calls for a different way of life, where people matter more than finance and equality more than individual wealth.

We have all seen striking pictures of ordinary people protesting, many of whom have never taken to the streets before. We have seen too that when push comes to shove (often literally) the forces of law and order are readier to protect the laws and orders of the Masters of the Universe than the people who have been most hurt by their actions.

Yet 99 per cent of people are clearly not demonstrating, protesting and occupying.It might be truer to observe that the 99 per cent are just trying to get by, going about their daily business in the hope that things will get better.

The power of the protest camps is not that 99 per cent of people are there, or even that 99 per cent of people support them (which is questionable). It is the power of witness: like the child who said the emperor had no clothes, they point out what most people are reluctant to say. There’s a long history to draw on here, from the civil rights movements of the 1960s to the million-strong protest against the Iraq war.

While such occupations are a testament to the strength of feeling, they often do little more than express a desire for change – for a world in which people take more power over their own lives and have more say in the running of the world around them.

There’s another kind of occupation that can help bring about this change. It involves taking over land and assets and re-using them for the benefit of local people.

In Coin Street on London’s South Bank, local people who were at risk of being displaced to make way for commercial development created their own housing co-op and now manage much of the land in one of the capital’s prime areas, with affordable homes and childcare for people who would otherwise have been forced out of the city centre.

In Liverpool, the Eldonian Village is another testimony to local people’s refusal to accept that the authorities knew best. Here people whose neighbourhood would have been destroyed by a slum clearance scheme made it clear they wanted to stay put, and are now running their own homes and creating work for local people.

On the Isle of Gigha in the west of Scotland, a community that had been neglected for decades by their private landlord have bought the island for themselves, repaired their homes and are generating their own renewable energy.

In Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, local people have taken over the former town hall, unwanted by the council but valued by local residents.They are creating much-needed community meeting spaces and room for start-up businesses.

There is a rapidly growing movement of community asset ownership, with local people taking over property and running it in their own interests. Their actions often start with immediate issues: the need to create a community garden, the disappearance of the last bank in the high street, the closure of the local library. Where the private market has ignored their needs and the state has failed to be an effective steward of local assets, people are starting to move in and take over.

It isn’t easy, it takes time and energy and money, and there are many pitfalls along the way, as recent publications by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have shown. But when it works, it shows how land and economic activity can be managed for the benefit of the 99 per cent, not just the wealthy and well-connected. It may not get the attention of a protest in Wall Street or outside St Paul’s Cathedral, but this is a movement to watch.

1. Government scraps plans for local referendums

Public Finance, 19th Oct 2011

The government has dropped provisions in the Localism Bill that would have enabled small local groups to call referendums.

Speaking as the House of Lords debated the Bill, local government minister Baroness Hanham said she had ‘listened to the concerns and anxieties that were raised… about the expense’ and decided ‘local referendums do not need to have a place within this Bill’.

The clauses would have allowed just 5% of voters in an electoral ward to trigger a non-binding local referendum on any subject.

Hanham’s climbdown followed objections from all the main parties.

2. Right to challenge falls foul of local authorities

Local groups say there should be a maximum period of time for councils to consider their bids to run public services, according to consultation

A consultation on the community right to challenge has demonstrated a divide between voluntary groups and local authorities over whether councils should be given a set period of time in which they would have to consider local groups’ expressions of interest.

The right to challenge, under which local groups could challenge public bodies that deliver public services by putting in a bid to deliver those services themselves, is a key part of the Localism Bill.

The consultation on the proposal asked local authorities, voluntary and community groups, parish councils and other groups for feedback on its planned introduction.

A summary of the consultation responses, published by the Communities and Local Government department last week, shows respondents were asked whether there should be a maximum period in which councils must make a decision on the bids.

It shows all 25 of the voluntary groups that responded said there should be. However, 35 of 59 local authorities that responded said there should not.

Asked whether there should be a minimum period for councils to make a decision on the bids, 59 of the 70 council respondents said there should not, but 16 of 28 voluntary groups said there should.

The document also shows nine respondents warned of the risk that external groups would “cherry-pick” services or parts of services that could be more cheaply or easily delivered or could be more lucrative. This would leave councils delivering “a less sustainable, more expensive or unviable part of the service”, it says.

The Localism Bill is currently before parliament and is due to be debated in the House of Lords once the recess ends next month.

Author: A blog from Julian Dobson

We’ve been hearing a lot about optimism lately. David Cameron last week invoked the British bulldog spirit in a speech that suggested all we need is strong leadership (his leadership) and to stop being ‘soggy’.

So how’s it looking out there in the real world? Have we got cause for a new wave of optimism?

Look at the big picture and you might think not. Here’s a random selection of recent highlights. At a global scale, we’ve seen the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation warning of continued price volatility and the best part of a billion people at risk of hunger. Small, import-dependent countries are most at risk, it says (the UK, by the way, hasn’t been self-sufficient in food for well over 200 years).

Let’s come closer to home. Here’s the British Retail Consortium, making the most of a slight increase in consumer spending last month:

‘Underlying conditions remain weak. Spending growth is below inflation, meaning customers are buying less than last year.’

What that means is the prospect of consumers spending the UK out of recession looks bleak. And given that retail accounts for around 14% of employment in the UK, that’s worrying.

There’s reason to be worried. Take a look at the latest report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, not known for its tendency to scaremonger. In the next two years median income is likely to fall by 7%, the biggest drop since the oil crisis of the 1970s. More than 3m children will be living in poverty.

Dig behind the figures and you’ll find the squeeze isn’t being applied evenly. A recent report by the Resolution Foundation found that even when the economy was growing, the living standards of the bottom half of the workforce weren’t growing at the same rate. In the five years from 2003 to 2008 the economy grew by 11%, but median wages didn’t shift. That’s because more of the profits have stayed in the hands of the top earners or been distributed to shareholders, while low earners have become more dependent on state support.

So where is the cause for optimism? Not in public school pep talks about leadership or in economic strategies dreamed up by the consultants at Micawber and Pangloss.

This week I’ve been talking to people who make me optimistic because they’re taking action, using the resources they have to make a difference. People like Jon Fitzmaurice, who runs Selp-help Housing, giving people tools and advice to take over empty homes and bring them back into use. People like Dan Thompson, who’s been doing a similar job through the Empty Shops Network, reusing the empty shops blighting our high streets. People like Tessy Britton, who’s creating a series of Community Lover’s Guides to help people celebrate what they value about their towns and cities.

There are many more like them. They don’t have great personal wealth or the backing of corporations. But they’re using the crisis we face as an opportunity to build a better world. What they have in common is that they’re not prepared to wait for an imagined recovery or a change of government – they’re ready to get on, using the tools and contacts and resources at their disposal.

If David Cameron really wants to build a more optimistic country, he needs to invest in the people with ideas that will create lasting change. He needs to invest in the optimists.

The specific findings of the evaluation of the Community Chest Fund were:

1. The Community Chest has successfully engaged with very small community groups across Scotland with grants made in every local authority area.

69% of applications were from, and 74% of grants awarded went to groups with an income of under £10,000. 63% of available funding was awarded to community groups or voluntary organisations not registered as a charity. Over a quarter of applications came from groups that had been operating for less than a year. For the majority of groups who responded to the survey, this was their first funding application.

2. The Community Chest successfully attracted applications from, and awarded grants in 6 local authority areas from which VAF and other funders had traditionally received few applications

The unique approach taken by VAF to penetrating those local authority areas where historically there has been a very poor uptake of mainstream funding was highly successful. Over the two and half years of the grant programme, an average of 40 applications came from each of the 6 priority areas. This compared with an average of only 24 applications from each of the other 26 local authority areas.

3. The Community Chest successfully helped over 500 small local organisations to build their capacity to sustain and develop their activities or services

The combination of a very flexible grant along with the delivery of free training was a powerful tool to engage small groups, and build the confidence and skills of volunteers and staff to sustain and develop services. Concrete outcomes were delivered by the grant programme for volunteers, the funded organisations and the wider communities in which they operate. In addition 20% of grant funding was directly for capacity building activities.

The training programme, delivered to 441 individuals from over 400 organisations in 21 Local Authority areas, was particularly valued by groups with 92% of survey respondents who had attended the training reporting that their group had benefited from the training.

4. The grant successfully helped sustain services to some of Scotland’s most vulnerable people

Applications came from, and awards went to organisations delivering vital services, such as: advocacy advice or information; support groups and befriending; childcare or tackling health and disability issues.

62% of Community Chest funding was used to provide services to some of the most vulnerable people in our communities including: people affected by disability and illness; older people; people from a black or ethnic minority communities; children and families and young people.

70% of applications and grants awarded were for operating costs. 66% of groups responding to the survey stated that their activity could not have gone ahead without the grant they received from the Community Chest.

5. The size of grant, the funding criteria and operation of the Community Chest grant programme successfully met the needs of very small local community groups and the community within which they operate.

At a maximum of £1,000 the grant was large enough to make a big difference to a small group, yet small enough to manage, and allow the application process to be as simple as possible. The application process was considered by respondents to the survey to be “straight forward” and “fairly easy”. The guidance notes and application form were “clear and easy to understand”.

The flexibility of the grant was an important component of the Community Chest grant programme. It allowed groups to address locally identified needs which they were well placed to both understand and react to when equipped with the skills and resources to do so.

Most applicants received a response to their application within 8 weeks. Four grant rounds were held per year to make the programmes as accessible as possible. However, this did mean that a small number of applicants waited up to five months before hearing whether their application had been successful or not.

A number of respondents to the survey also asked for more detailed feedback on why their application had been unsuccessful.

Recommendations

In the light of the findings a number of key recommendations are made for improving the Community Chest grant programme. These are:

1. Consideration should be given to encouraging applications which focus on capacity building activities that help an organisation grow and develop. A target could perhaps be set for this.

2. Consideration should be given to exploring delivering the capacity building training through local third parties, who could be provided with the course materials and trained in their delivery.

3. Consideration should be given to how the delivery and uptake of Measuring Success, the training course on monitoring and evaluation, can be increased.

4. A more detailed explanation of why applications were unsuccessful should be supplied wherever possible.

5. Consideration should be given to reducing the time from application submission to notification of decision.

Community Investment Trust – Executive Summary. Full report here

1. The reason for exploring the option to establish a Community Investment Fund (CIF) is that local engagement with large-scale renewable energy projects is potentially enhanced if local people and their communities have a financial stake in the ventures, and the process may yield outcomes that can benefit developers, investors, communities and consenting authorities. A number of options have been studied. The one which is presented here is a CIF which leases from the operator part of the renewable energy resource (e.g. the wind) accessed by the project asset (e.g. the wind turbines) and pays a toll for the electricity produced. The CIF is then able to sell the electricity to generate funds. In summary the structure is as follows:

• The community investment fund (CIF) vehicle is a standard Limited Liability Company (LLC) that satisfies the requirements for community interest and qualifies for Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) relief.

• CIF funds are obtained from members of the community – “investors” – who each purchase shares in the CIF, and apply for tax relief due under EIS rules.

• These funds (created by the tax relief) are used to pay for the lease fee and toll for the energy source and infrastructure which yields electricity as a saleable product. The lease fees and toll tariffs payable are calculated to give the project operators or capacity/asset owners a positive return. 
• Profitable sale of electricity and associated Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs), Climate Change Levy Exemption Certificates (LECs) etc. creates revenue for the CIF which can be used to benefit the community, and for CIF investors to make a return on their investment.

2. Resources available for this study were limited, and many issues related to this model need further examination and discussion. For example:

• Who are the “investors” – individuals, organisations, match funders?
• Who or what is the “community”? The more proximate the community is to the renewable energy project, the greater the sense of local engagement, cohesion etc. How are the community that can invest and the community that can benefit defined?
• What is the “project” being invested in? There is a recognised area of risk around the EIS tax incentive (as there would be with any tax driven incentive) in terms of eligibility and whether this will change in the near future. The main commercial issues to be negotiated between the CIF and project owners/operators include leasing terms and tariff, power purchase/sales agreement (if applicable), entitlement to ROCs, LECs etc. How is the electricity output marketed? An assessment of costs of governance and fund management for the CIF

http://islayenergytrust.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/community-investment-fund-summary-discussion-paper-031011.pdf

Letter to John Swinney

John Swinney
Minister for Finance and Sustainable Growth
Scottish Parliament
Edinburgh
EH99 1SP
11/3/10

Dear Mr Swinney

Scotland’s share –  Dormant Bank Accounts

The Scottish Government has demonstrated a clear strategic commitment to there being a vibrant and diverse third sector in Scotland and indeed is making significant levels of investment in the sector through the Enterprising Third Sector Action Plan. Many local and national organisations have already benefited from this support and will undoubtedly become more financially sustainable as a result.

We all recognise that the constraints on public expenditure are going to become increasingly difficult to withstand over the next five to ten years and consequently we believe there is an urgent need for some fresh thinking to be applied to the challenge of how our sector is supported and developed in the future. Specifically, and this is wholly consistent with the principles underpinning the Enterprising Third Sector Action Plan, we see the need to transform the dependency relationship that our sector has with grant support and in particular,  grant support from government.

We expect Scotland’s share of the funds that are generated by the Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Act to be somewhere in the region of £40m.  The Act provides Scottish Ministers with the discretion to instruct BIG as to what the priorities should be for the distribution of these funds.   On the basis of past experience, it is reasonable to assume that BIG will seek to allocate these funds in the form of grant support across a range of worthy causes.  However, we believe this windfall comes at a time when there is a pressing need for a more imaginative and radical alternative.

We propose that a significant proportion of this windfall – as much as 50% – should be used to create an endowment for the future development and support of Scotland’s third sector.  Furthermore we would like propose that the endowment should take the form of an equity investment in the future of Scotland’s renewable energy capacity. For example, there are currently a number of investment opportunities that have arisen in the development of off shore wind farms.

The long term income stream that such an investment would generate, would provide a significant part of the third sector’s supporting infrastructure with a degree of stability that has never before existed. We estimate that such an endowment would generate a minimum of £50m in income over a twenty year period. Furthermore, if such an endowment were to be owned and managed by a Trust which was independent of government, it would not only ease the burden on the public purse but fundamentally correct some of the imbalances in the current relationship between the third sector and the state.

Local People Leading is a broad coalition of community sector networks working across Scotland and we urge you to give the broad principles underpinning this proposal your active consideration.

Yours sincerely,

Local People Leading –  the voice for strong and independent communities 

GWSF and EVH recently published a summary of the Consultation Document published by the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR), “The Regulation of Social Housing in Scotland”.  As promised, we have written a follow-up Briefing, with SHARE joining us as co-publishers.

Many aspects of the Consultation Document are technical or reflect established regulatory practice.  But some parts of the Document involve major changes for housing associations and have generated widespread discussion among GWSF, EVH and SHARE members.  

This Briefing covers four of the big issues thatcommunity based housing associations have been raising: 

• Monitoring and reporting against the Scottish Social Housing Charter

• Regulatory standards and guidance on housing association governance 

• The SHR’s statutory duty to carry out its functions in a proportionate, transparent and accountable way

• How the proposals as a whole meet the SHR’s stated aim

The Briefing sets out our shared perspective on each of these issues. 

For a copy of the briefing click here 

The new chair of the Scottish Housing Regulator will be speaking at the GWSF conference on 11/11/11. For more information on the conference click here 

Author: Open Letter from Nick Hurd. M.P. 11 October 2011

Dear Colleague, 

In recent months, the Coalition Government has made a number of policy announcements which have important implications for charities and social enterprises. I thought it would be helpful to update you on the strategic framework in which they sit. 

Context 

Few would argue that the country faces serious economic and social challenges. The debate is about how we best overcome these challenges and secure the positive future we all want. As you know, the Big Society vision is based on the argument that we have given too much power and responsibility to Government and have too little to show for it. We believe that the country will be stronger if we as citizens have more power and responsibility to improve our own lives, the communities we share and the public services we use. Too many people have given up on their power to make a difference. As a result, we are not making full use of all the energy, skills and experience that reside in communities across the country. We want to change that and encourage more people to get involved and work together to improve our communities. We should worry as a country that levels of social trust and interaction with neighbours have plummeted since the 1950s. We want to change that and encourage more positive social interaction. The opportunity to influence the world around you, to feel connected, to be able to make a contribution, and to trust those around you – these are the some of the most important contributors to our well-being. They form the foundation of both our society and economy. This is the thread that runs from the idea of building a bigger and stronger society through our focus on well being and the idea that Ministers and commissioners should consider the full value and effect of services they provide. This is about building on the large amount of inspiring work already done by Civil Society¹1 and communities across Britain and doing more to recognise the value of that work and encouraging and enabling more to happen. 

Government Action – the strategic framework 

To enable this long term culture change Government is focused on three strands of activity; 

1) Transferring power to communities – the Localism Bill provides radical new rights and powers for citizens and communities, not least the Right to Buy and the Right to Challenge. In parallel, our transparency agenda is giving citizens more power in the form of information, whether it be local crime maps or information on what our local authority is spending. 

2) Opening up Public Services to a greater diversity of providers and devolving power to local commissioners, not least through community and personal budgets and free schools; and 

3) Encouraging more Social Action2 and the building of Social Capital³. 

The focus of the Office for Civil Society 

Since May 2010, the Office of Civil Society has focused on developing and delivering programmes that have two priorities: 

1) Encouraging Social Action and building Social Capital, especially in communities that need more support. 

2) Helping Civil Society seize the opportunity to play a bigger role in shaping how communities work together and how public services get delivered. 

The key initiatives which are taking place to achieve these priorities are set out in detail here; 

1. Encouraging Social Action and building Social Capital 

More Giving 

We want to encourage more giving because we want to help charities improve the lives of more people. We also know that giving brings people together and can substantially boost the wellbeing of the giver. Britain is a generous country but giving has flatlined at best. Back in December we issued a Green Paper, to generate a debate on what was needed to significantly grow the giving of both time and money. In March, the Chancellor announced in the budget some generous new incentives for philanthropy and some welcome reform to simplify Gift Aid. This was followed by the Giving White Paper which set out our plans to make it easier and more compelling to give and provide better support to the charities that channel our generosity. Through our Transforming Local Infrastructure programme £30m has been set aside to rationalise and transform the essential support services provided by local infrastructure bodies, which have a vital role in enabling giving. Through our Community First programme £80m is available to help build local endowments and encourage people to get involved in their neighbourhoods. 

Other key initiatives included the Social Action Fund, an Innovation in Giving Fund and a series of Challenge Prizes, worth over £30m over the next two years. The Social Action Fund will support the scaling-up of proven models of giving in some key target areas such as people at, or approaching, retirement age, or National Citizen Service graduates. The Innovation in Giving Fund will support more experimental approaches in the development of social action that we believe have transformative potential and can be supported to grow across the country. There are a wide range of motivations that draw people into the satisfaction of helping others, from acquiring experiences that boost skills and CV’s, to the practical exchange of help and support for our children or elders. While for some, pure altruism and selflessness is motivation enough, we should also be open to harnessing these other motivations to encourage giving too. So we are particularly interested in testing models of reciprocity, such as time credits, that create what are called complementary currencies. 

This is an ambitious long term agenda, around which we believe there should be political consensus. The White Paper is not an end but a step on a journey which will be followed by a Giving Summit and other initiatives to encourage us to be an even more generous country. 

Cutting Red Tape 

Over time past Governments have allowed too much regulation to get in the way of people helping each other. This bureaucracy also soaks up time and money that could be better used. One of the most important things Government can do is get out of the way. 

Lord Hodgson has produced an excellent report – Unshackling Good Neighbours – which contains a set of very practical ideas which we are keen to implement where possible. This report complements Lord Young‟s radical review of Health and Safety regulation and the Home Office and Department of Education reviews of the CRB and Vetting and Barring regimes. The latter resulted in welcome reforms of the CRB process which will become law once the Protection of Freedoms Bill completes its passage through Parliament. 

In addition, the Government is conducting a rolling Red Tape Challenge to review the validity of regulation across the economy. An important outcome of this challenge will be to reduce the burden of regulation that can hurt enterprise within the sector and often affects the ability to engage volunteers and encourage more individuals to behave with greater responsibility for our society. 

National Citizen Service 

In the context of changing cultural attitudes to giving and getting involved, the attitudes of young people are critical. That is why we attach such importance to National Citizen Service (NCS) pilots that we have run this summer across the country. NCS is about throwing young people together from different backgrounds and challenging them with new experiences. They are then encouraged to work together in setting up a social action project to make a positive difference to their communities. We are still learning but the feedback from this summer has been very positive and we are now commissioning up to 30,000 places for next year. We are also working with our partners to make sure that NCS graduates are given every opportunity to connect with local charities and community groups so that they can continue to contribute. The Government has shown it‟s commitment to the further development of the programme by indicating that we will sign up around 90,000 young people on the programme in 2014. 

Community Organisers and Community First 

We are very aware that some communities will need more help than others to take advantage of the new opportunities to take more power and responsibility. That is why we are investing in Community Organisers and the Community First programme. Both will be focused on areas of relatively high deprivation and low social capital. Community Organisers will listen and create networks of people and organisations that care about the same thing and want to drive change. They can transform the confidence of neighbourhoods in their own ability to tackle problems that undermine the area. The Community First programme has two elements. A £30m grant programme which will put money into the hands of neighbourhood groups to help them implement their own plans (with the support of Community Organisers). It will contain a match requirement (time and/or money) because we want taxpayers money to be a catalyst for real community action. The second element is a £50m matched fund to incentivise the building of local endowments to create a sustainable source of local grants for the future. We are working with Locality to bring the first organisers on stream by October 2011.Our partners on Community First are Community Development Foundation and Community Foundation Network and the funds are now open for applications, with work on the building of local endowments already underway. 

Helping Civil Society seize the opportunity to play a bigger role in shaping how communities work and how public services get delivered. 

Looking forward, we believe that the Big Society agenda contains three major long term opportunities for civil society :- 

Our commitment to open public services creates the opportunity for charities and social enterprises to deliver significantly more public service contracts. Indeed we have an explicit Coalition Government commitment to “support the creation and expansion of mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises, and enable these groups to have much greater involvement in the running of public services.” 

The localism agenda creates more opportunities for civil society organisations to shape local priorities and give voice to those who need it. 

An ambitious agenda for growing giving (of time and money) and social investment creates the opportunity for charities and social enterprises to access significantly more resource. 

We want to help the sector take full advantage. In this context our work is focused on three objectives: 

• Making it easier to run a charity of social enterprise; 

• Making it easier to work with the State; and 

• Getting more resources into the sector. 

Making it easier to run a charity or social enterprise 

In addition to the cutting red tape agenda already discussed, we want to encourage Better support for front line organisations. In December last year, we ran a consultation on what was needed to improve the effectiveness of the infrastructure that exists to support front line organisations. The result of that consultation is a new £30m fund to be invested over the next two years. This fund will in effect offer transition funding to local support organisations who see the need to find a more efficient and sustainable model of delivering the services that local civil society organisations will need in the future. This includes the local infrastructure, such as volunteer centres, that exists to support volunteering. For the first time we are integrating our work in this area with the Big Lottery Fund (BIG) who will deliver our programme and invest themselves in distinct but complementary streams. We both want to see front line organisations have access to more effective support both online 

and offline. We both want to see infrastructure organisations increase their value to local customers and partners and reduce their dependence on BIG and Central Government. 

Making it easier to work with the State 

One of our first actions in Government was to renew the Compact, which sets a framework for the relationship between State and Sector. We also introduced new measures to strengthen transparency and accountability around implementation. 

We also launched a Green Paper to generate a debate on what changes were needed to commissioning in order to make it easier for charities and social enterprises to compete for public sector contracts. The results of this consultation fed into the Public Services Reform White paper and helped inform our recent announcements on the Investment and Contract Readiness Fund and the development of a new programme to support more innovative and intelligent commissioning . In November the Government will set out how departments will take forward ideas to implement open public services over the rest of this Parliament in line with the principles and policies set out in the Open Public Services White Paper. 

We recognise that it vital to have a strong and fair relationship between Local Authorities and the Voluntary and Community Sector which is why the Department for Communities and Local Government published the Best Value Guidance recently. The guidance makes it clear that councils should consider overall value – including social value – when considering service provision. This guidance sets out our desire that public agencies and civil society collaborate more in the running of public services. 

Over this period, our colleagues at Department for Work and Pensions announced the new Work Programme structured on a payment by results framework. Almost 300 charities and social enterprises have won contracts with the potential to earn many hundreds of millions of pounds over their life, subject to their performance. 

As part of our intention to give ownership and control to empower employees to innovate and redesign services around service users and communities, and drive up quality, we have launched our plans on „Right to Provide‟. We have also launched our Mutual Pathfinders Programme. The Mutual Pathfinders are led by entrepreneurial public sector staff who want to take control of their own services. They are trailblazers for the rest of the public sector – helping Government understand, by learning from the front line, what type of support and structures will best enable the development of employee-led mutuals on an ongoing basis. The Pathfinders cover a range of different sectors, including health, learning disability, social care and youth services. Each Pathfinder is supported by an expert mentor from some of the country‟s most successful businesses and leaders in employee ownership models. 21 organisations have been announced as Mutual Pathfinders and a further organisation taking part in the Department for Education Social Work Practice Pilots is also participating. 

Getting more resources into the Sector: 

Growing the Social Investment Market 

Philanthropy and the State have been the two core pillars of funding for the sector. We want to help build over time a third – social investment. The mission is to make it easier for social entrepreneurs to access capital and to give savers more opportunities to invest for good. The prize is to make an effective connection between 

mainstream capital and the social sector which does not exist today. We are under no illusions about the scale of the challenge or the length of time it will take. However we set out our stall in the Social Investment Strategy document and are now delivering on those words. 

The recent announcement on the formation of Big Society Capital (BSC) and the agreement with the Merlin banks has been acknowledged by many commentators to be groundbreaking and a world first. We are working closely with Big Society Capital to establish an institution that can use up to £400m that we estimate will be released over time from dormant accounts, and up to £200m from the banks, to catalyse the social investment market and provide a permanent boost to civil society. We are very grateful to everyone involved in the process, not least Sir Ronald Cohen and Nick O‟Donohoe. It is an exciting opportunity to build the market In the meantime, we are delighted that the investment committee set up by BIG has announced its first investment. 

We know that the creation of BSC is not in itself enough to grow the social investment market. A number of organisations need help to become more investment ready, which is why we have announced a new Investment and Contract Readiness Fund. This will provide grants to help ambitious social entrepreneurs buy in services from relevant intermediaries. Our ambitions go further. We recently announced that we are working with four local authorities to develop social impact bonds to help finance a new approach to supporting chaotic families suffering multiple problems. 

Building better connections between Businesses, and Civil Society. 

We see great potential to make better links between business and civil society, not least because the value can be two way. This is particularly true when we talk about the transfer of skills. In his speech „Every Business Commits‟, the Prime Minister made it clear that businesses are an integral part of the locality where they are based and he encouraged businesses to further support these communities. One consequence of that speech is that Business in the Community are developing a network of Business Connectors whose role is to make better connections between what communities need and what local businesses have to offer. This role clearly complements the work of the Community Organisers we will be training to help communities do something about the problems that undermine their neighbourhoods. 

Opportunities and Risks 

This agenda of opportunity has to be reconciled with the urgent need to reduce Government borrowing. What is at stake is an economic recovery which the social sector needs to see as much as everyone else. A sector which receives £13 billion of taxpayers money a year cannot be immune from the painful but necessary process of reducing Government expenditure. With the support of strategic partners, we have worked hard to try and mitigate the short term damage to the capacity of the sector. The £107 million Transition Fund was created and executed quickly to support over 1000 of the most vulnerable organisations. Local Authorities could not have received a clearer message from Ministers about the tests of reasonableness and the need to prioritise internal savings before cutting funds to the local voluntary sector. Many have responded very positively and indeed have maintained or even increased investment. However we know that this is not the case everywhere and that cuts have created real frustration and difficulty for the significant minority of charities and social enterprises who rely heavily on public funding. 

In attempting to approach these issues we will continue to work closely with our strategic partners, who enable us to fully link with the sector and continually allow us to hear the front line. 

There is no doubt that we are working together in a very challenging environment. However this is also a time where tough circumstances are requiring us to think harder about efficiency and finding better ways of doing things. The proud history of Civil Society in this country is characterised by tenacity, inventiveness and the ability to adapt to change. These qualities are needed now more than ever. 

NICK HURD

Extract from an interview printed in Holyrood Magazine.  To read whole interview click here

……A leading exponent of land reform, Wightman argues that the transfer and value of land in Scotland is skewed in favour of established owners and property speculators, while community ownership and local accountability, which could provide greater transparency, flexibility and equality has been sidelined.

The situation is not new. In a political system in which the space for specifically Scottish legislation was limited and the House of Lords was stuffed with landowners, land reform in Scotland was left untouched for generations.

That changed with devolution. Wightman says the Scottish Parliament has “95 per cent” of the powers required to enact far-reaching reform, and praises the flurry of activity that followed its establishment. In its first years, the Parliament enacted the National Parks (Scotland) Act, the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 and the abolishing of feudal tenure, a policy Wightman first saw on a Donald Dewar pamphlet in 1968.

“It wasn’t just the legislative programme but the culture that they changed,” he says, “because I remember clearly the Scottish Land Owners Association coming to committee meetings in the Scottish Parliament. (It was) very, very uncomfortable for them because they hadn’t been used to being grilled by politicians.” However, momentum soon dissipated.

Wightman says that in the last parliamentary session the Scottish Government “basically did nothing”. “What’s happened is we’ve now got a culture where landowners feel very buoyed,” he adds. The problem, he says, is a culture where property speculation and land ownership as a form of wealth creation has become entrenched in the media and politics. Wightman argues politicians have failed to be adequately independent, allowing vested interests able to effectively control policy debate. “This is where we need strong political leadership,” he says, adding that “on many occasions” Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead “appears to be little more than almost a paid employee of the National Farmers’ Union of Scotland…because he’s strongly advocating the farming interest.” He continues: “So farmers effectively dictate farming policy, foresters effectively dictate forestry policy, fishermen effectively dictate fisheries policy, and they do that by capturing the political process, capturing the minister, dominating the process. In many cases the majority of things they are talking about are very complicated; no one really understands crofting law, no one really understands the intricacies of agriculture support, no one really understands the intricacies of the Common Fisheries Policy, etc. So, understandably, very few other people join in. I think it’s the role of government, of Parliament, to lay out the public agenda in all of this. But I think this government has got far, far too close to these producer interests.” Wightman says that by emphasising consensus and trying to reconcile completely divergent economic interests, too often the Scottish Government’s approach to land reform issues lacks conviction. The ultimate goal, he says, should be to dramatically reduce the cost and increase the availability of land. Denied an adequate say in the formulation of land management decisions and public policy, people’s economic opportunities are stymied……