Three rural communities, Arrochar and Tarbet, Forth and Isle of Eigg are celebrating having been crowned the regional winners of the Scottish Calor Village of the Year Competition 2009. Each village was awarded a plaque and £2000 for community investment.

Further category awards were given to Arrochar and Tarbet, Glenlivet and Inveravon, Falkland and Cardross for business, sustainability, community and communication efforts, respectively. These villages have been awarded £500 towards a community development project.

Organised by Calor Gas Ltd., with support from the Association of Scottish Community Councils (ASCC) and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisation’s (SCVO) Rural Team, the awards are designed to allow Scotland’s rural communities to promote their success and achievements, share best community practice and demonstrate initiatives towards sustainability. Communities were judged on four categories this year: people, business, sustainability and communication.

“Nine communities made fantastic presentations to the judges at an event held recently in Stirling,” said Stephen Rennie, MD for Calor Gas. “The decision was made to award separate category accolades in addition to the regional awards as entries were of a very high standard.

“Calor is proud to support communities which make considerable efforts to improve and create a sustainable community for the future – all of our nine short-listed entrants were worthy of an award and made the judges’ decision a very difficult one. I would like to congratulate them all on their efforts.”

The three regional finalists will now go head to head to vie for the title of Scottish Calor Village of the Year 2009. Judges will visit each of the three villages in mid-August before determining the final winner.  Each regional winner will be presented with their regional winner’s cheque and plaque during these visits.

The full list of category and regional winners are:

The Regional Winners:  each awarded a commemorative plaque and £2000

North region:               Isle of Eigg
Central region:            Arrochar and Tarbet
South region:              Forth
 
The Category Winners: each awarded £500

Business:                    Arrochar and Tarbet
Community:                Glenlivet and Inveravon
Communication:          Cardross
Sustainability:             Falkland
                                   
The overall Scottish Calor Village of the Year will receive a further £7,000 for community investment, a commemorative plaque and a community celebration on 26 September. The winner is set to be announced in late August.

• For more information on the Scottish Calor Village of the Year 2009 competition, contact Lynsey Shepherd on 01224 217345 or email: info@calorvoy.org.uk

• For further information on Calor and its sustainability commitment, visit www.calor.co.uk

Author: Herpreet Kaur Grewal, Regeneration & Renewal

The long-awaited Communitybuilders fund is intended to help third sector organisations gain long-term financial stability and move away from grant dependency.

Organisations will be able to apply for loans and grants and have access to expert support and mentoring services. Communitybuilders is specifically designed to strengthen the financial base of “community anchor organisations” such as development trusts. The fund will open for applications later this summer.

The Department for Communities and Local Government has picked ACF to lead the scheme in partnership with third sector fund Futurebuilders England and third sector consortium the Community Alliance.

ACF has also secured a commitment from Unity Trust Bank to provide up to £40 million match funding for the programme.

The Communitybuilders fund was first announced in July last year by then communities secretary Hazel Blears.

However, earlier this year the Conservative Party attacked the DCLG for the length of time it had taken to start the fund (R&R, 1 June, p6).

Third sector minister Angela Smith said the fund would support community organisations through the recession and help them to “emerge stronger”.

Author: SCVO

Introduction

A civil society roundtable, chaired by Dr. Alison Elliot, Convener of SCVO, was held in Edinburgh on 25th June 2009 to test the appetite for a shared response from civil society to the global crises: economic, environmental, of civil liberties and of poverty. Around 20 participants were selected as individuals from a wide range of civil society backgrounds to start a conversation from a civil society perspective on Scotland and the global crisis.  An initial paper drafted by Stephen Maxwell, SCVO, was used as the starting point for this discussion.  This paper aims to capture some of the key elements of this initial discussion.

Is there an appetite for a shared response? Yes

• There was an evident concern shared by the participants around the multiple crises affecting our economy, environment, politics and growing inequalities affecting both our own society and countries around the world.  We identified an appetite for harnessing that concern and several possible courses of action were proposed.
• There was agreement that the normative role of civil society, in offering alternative visions of the good society, had been neglected and could be recovered and developed.
• It was suggested that the principles of sustainable development, (in its fullest sense, which captures economic, social and environmental dimensions) alongside good governance and sound science, could underpin a shared response to these crises by civil society.  It provides a ready-made and considered framework.  More analysis of its potential in this respect would be useful.

Form vs. occasion

• The global crisis needs a response that goes beyond Scottish Parliament or UK Government and beyond the party political sphere.
• Should structure precede vision, such as a civil society forum e.g. a renewed Civic Forum or an Open Democracy style website?  Or should vision precede structure, such as shared cause to bring civil society together e.g. Make Poverty History, Stop Climate Chaos?
• A structure-based approach could be a forum or a website, but crucially involves people as individuals rather than as organisations and thereby avoids difficulties with representing organisational positions/remits. There is a danger however of all talk-no action or resorting to the lowest common denominator position.
• A vision-based approach would involve reacting to the global crisis on specific ventures such as climate or poverty, where the vision statement is formed before any structure is put in place.  The advantage here is that civil society itself is transient, of the moment and can make a big impact if its energies are focused over a short space of time.

Structure and vision

• The global crisis needs a response that goes beyond Scottish Parliament or UK Government and beyond party politics.
• Should structure precede vision, through the creation of a civil society forum e.g. a renewed Civic Forum or an Open Democracy style website?   Or should vision precede structure, as happens when a shared cause brings civil society together e.g. Make Poverty History, Stop Climate Chaos?
• A structure-based approach could be mediated by a forum or a website.  A crucial issue here is whether people come together as individuals or as representatives of organisations.  Acting as individuals allows for more creative thinking but also limits the potential for collective action.  Being bound by organisational remits creates the danger of resorting to the lowest common denominator position.
• A vision-based approach would involve reacting to the global crisis on specific ventures such as climate or poverty, where the vision statement is formed before any structure is put in place.  This capitalises on civil society’s capacity to be transient, of the moment and to make a big impact if its energies are focused over a short space of time.

Building a wider response to the crises

• There is a sense that civil society in Scotland, as in other parts of Western Europe, has fallen back from offering alternative visions of the ‘good society’. Significant parts of it now work more closely to the State and some are increasingly market-driven.
• Civil society at an institutional level can be economically and politically elitist.  Just as it is important to have more economic engagement of the wider public in order to democratise business, so civil society needs wider political engagement to reduce its dependency on elites.  Can civil society learn from mutualism here?
• What civil society organisations have in common is their associational nature where people come together to make a difference. The lifeblood of civil society therefore comes from its involvement of people from the grassroots of society. Yet attendance within faith communities has been falling, trade union membership has been in decline, co-operative movements such as credit unions are stronger in neighbouring countries, the Scottish Press has been in decline and there is a continuing effort to ensure the supply of new volunteers and trustees for voluntary organisations.  Is there a collective ambition for civil society at an institutional level to enthuse and build its constituencies to respond to the multiple crises we face?

Next steps

The roundtable was strong on energy, ideas and commitment but not on conclusions!  Some possible courses of action were identified which would require further consideration.

SCVO suggests holding a conference exploring all of these issues and taking the discussion to a wider civil society audience to test the appetite for a shared response to the crises. Would colleagues be willing to be involved in setting the agenda for such an event?

Issues to be covered could include:

• How can civil society in Scotland be mobilised round a specific issue?
• What kind of forum is needed to foster opinion forming at a civil society level?
• How do we connect the economic and political energies of the wider public to the issues and challenges society faces?
• Others…..? 

Over recent years the English Govt. has introduced both legislation and policy with the intention that the transfer of publicly owned assets to communities should become mainstream rather then exceptional as it is in Scotland. Two new studies evaluate the pros and cons – A UK report commissioned by Rowntree and a Scottish one commissioned by our Lottery.

Asset ownership may not be vital
Big Lottery Fund Scotland

Background
Project: Growing Community Assets.
Period of evaluation: November 2007 to March 2009.
Evaluating organisation: SQW Consulting.
Evaluation commissioned by: The Big Lottery Fund. Aims and outline of project: The programme was developed by good causes distributor the Big Lottery Fund to enable communities in Scotland to gain more control over their future by owning and developing their own assets. Community groups can apply for funding of £10,000 to £1 million. The programme started in May 2006 and the last grants are due to be awarded in March 2010

Key Lessons
The key lesson to be drawn from the evaluation of Growing Community Assets is that a community group may not need to own an asset to be able to use it to its advantage. Some of the projects funded by the programme decided against buying an asset, while some bought assets only because they had to act short notice and there was no alternative.

One of the projects that chose not to buy its asset was Balgonie Bleachfield in Fife. This project was concerned with turning a former landfill site into a public park and wildlife habitat. Balgonie Bleachfield chose not to buy the land because the group risked becoming liable for the cost of remedial works to remove pollutants from the former landfill if it owned it.

The evaluation also concluded that projects such as Balgonie Bleachfiles showed that ownership of assets was not a crucial factor in ensuring desired outcomes such as an increase in community confidence. The report says this has been demonstrated by other similar schemes that had been funded under a previous Big Lottery Fund programme. In such instances, community ownership was achieved in a metaphorical, rather than financial, sense.

The report adds that projects applying to the programme found its approvals process much slower than that for other funding streams, with the resultant risk that any additional funding that was dependent on getting match funding by a certain time could be lost before a decision was made on bids for Growing Community Assets cash.

Another lesson to be learned is that bidding for funding as a consortium tends to work less well than bids from individual bodies as, with more links in the chain, it takes a long time for information to filter up and down. Consequently, projects involving consortiums experienced long delays before they heard whether their bid was successful.

Evaluation of Growing Community Assets: First Year Baseline Report is available via www.regen.net/doc

Community Assets: What is the Future
Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Community assets go back some 400 years and they sound like a good idea. But there is a downside to the community owning and managing assets. The authors look at the challenges that community ownership of assets bring to the organizations charged with the job of managing them. They suggest a way forward to securing the benefits of community assets for the community. There has been a high degree of policy interest in community ownership and management of assets such as buildings and land in recent years, and a significant amount of community activity has taken place to justify this interest. It has been less clear how much was known about the issue, particularly from independent evaluations and research. This study reviewed the evidence base to identify gaps in existing knowledge. It was undertaken by analysing a wide range of documents from policy, research and community organisation sources and through discussions with practitioners in the field.

Policy interest and initiatives

Since 2002 there has been an acceleration across the UK in government policy initiatives, particularly in England, which have encouraged community organisations to own and/or manage assets. By 2007 the Quirk Review of community management and ownership of public assets had signalled that the transfer of public assets to community-based organisations should become a mainstream rather than an exceptional activity. The 2006 Local Government White Paper, the 2007 Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act and the 2008 Community Empowerment White Paper are just three recent examples of legislation and policy in this arena. These, alongside dedicated funding programmes (including the Adventure Capital Fund, Futurebuilders and Community Assets Fund), have given a prominent role to community asset ownership.

There are some differences in the policy frameworks between the four countries of the UK. In Scotland, the 2003 Land Reform Act gave communities the right to buy land and buildings in certain circumstances. The Welsh Assembly’s 2005 Social Enterprise Strategy set specific targets for contracts, asset transfer and asset refurbishment for social enterprises. In Northern Ireland, the 2007 Community Support Programme was targeted at community centres and other facilities to underpin economic and social development. Despite these initiatives, the assets agenda has been developed most proactively in England.

History

The idea that communities might own or manage physical assets goes back at least 400 years in the UK. The Diggers in the 17th century aimed to take on under-used land for the common good. Early charitable organisations owned land and buildings (for example, almshouses) to support poor people. The collective ownership of assets also had roots in the co-operative and mutual tradition of shared ownership by members. Settlements and social action centres, community centres and village halls have frequently managed a building as part of delivering their service.

From the 1970s a new community economic development movement arose that used assets as a way of meeting social and income-generating goals. It included co-operative housing, development trusts and other local community-run facilities. City farms, community gardens, village halls and community land trusts are also an important part of the contemporary shared-ownership sector.

Scale and type of community-owned assets

The scale of asset ownership by community organisations is not clear. Research by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) calculates that charities in England owned assets (defined as land, buildings, shares and investments) of over £86.1 billion in 2005/6, with just four charities holding 20 per cent of the entire amount. Three-quarters of assets held by the largest charities were in the form of investments rather than tangibles such as land and buildings. The Development Trusts Association (DTA) is a network of practitioner organisations engaged in ownership of buildings and land with the aim of bringing about long-term benefits to communities. Its mapping exercise suggests that DTA members held £436 million of assets in mid-2007.

There is limited evidence concerning the scale and type of community ownership of assets. There is no consensus on what an asset is or which organisations can be included as ‘community-based’.

Benefits

The potential benefits of asset management and ownership are clearly spelled out by practitioners, although they focus mainly on the advantages gained by organisations. There is less evidence on benefits accruing to communities.

Policy initiatives have often implied there are benefits that may occur as a result of transferring the ownership or management of assets to community organisations. Where benefits have been described, they include improved public services, increased local employment, restoration of unused buildings, organisational and financial sustainability and greater independence for community organisations. At times the empowerment of a local community has been cited as a possible outcome.

There has, however, been little independent evaluation of benefits. Such work as there is has suggested, cautiously, that organisational benefits might include increase in turnover, capital assets and financial reserves. There is also a lack of research that shows the combinations of factors that may lead to good results – either in the technical aspects of asset management or in improved outcomes for local people.

Risks and difficulties

Very little information has been published on the risks and difficulties associated with community ownership or management of assets. The available evidence highlights concerns about the liabilities of asset management. In some locations there can be an imposition of rules by local authorities that effectively prevent community organisations benefiting from revenue streams they derive from an asset, and the dilapidated condition of some assets. In addition, community organisations may be drawn away from their main work and become preoccupied with the technical and regulatory burden of asset management.

There may be a lack of technical aid available from other organisations and expert advisors to provide support. Some organisations, including rural or black and minority ethnic groups in particular, may be too small to experience benefits.

Evidence from practitioner organisations

The largest volume of evidence on asset ownership and management comes from practitioner organisations. The DTA, which has had a consistent and specialist focus in this area for over 20 years, sees asset ownership as a means to achieve long-term social, economic and environmental improvements. Other accounts give more emphasis to the role of assets as just one form of engagement with communities or point out the high cost of maintaining buildings, which may detract from delivering services or organising activities. Elsewhere it has been felt that the extent and type of asset ownership in rural areas has been overlooked. In Scotland and Wales there is a particular focus on community assets connected to renewable energy, sometimes in conjunction with social inclusion activity, involving people from across the local community.

International perspectives

Asset ownership and management is not just a UK phenomenon. However, it is conceived and practised in different ways in other countries. The difference between community and public ownership is not seen as so distinctive in Poland as it is in the UK. In Sweden, the local state and community organisations co-determine policy and implementation to a higher degree so the ability to use, rather than to own, an asset is more important. The tradition of collective common land in Italy – private properties that are managed by a community for the benefit of all – presents a different kind of stewardship of community assets. In the USA, legislative mechanisms ensure that commercial and financial institutions engage with community organisations both as partners in local developments and as funders. In addition, there are a wide variety of support organisations that offer technical assistance. Meanwhile some indigenous groups around the world associate the notion of assets – such as land or fishing – beyond ownership to
a rights-based agenda concerned with self-determination.

Conclusion

The authors conclude that the available information and data (the evidence base) on community ownership and management of assets should be improved in order to help shape and guide future policy and practice. The focus should be on an inquiry into the wider importance of assets for rebuilding society; learning from the experience already gained in asset ownership and management; identifying the needs of existing practitioners; and examining the benefits for communities.

Proposals for building the evidence base

The following recommendations will address gaps in existing information and help to build a strong evidence base:

• a multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder inquiry to examine how asset ownership and management relates to the wider issues of rebuilding societies in the four countries of the UK and internationally.

• research into study areas identified by the authors:

– Learning the lessons of asset development. Capturing the retrospective experience of practitioners, organisations and communities of asset management and ownership would help new entrants.

– Identifying the key variables associated with the organisation of asset ownership and management to achieve good outcomes. Testing and refining the assumptions underpinning asset development would assist practitioners and policy-makers.

– Developing an effective supportive infrastructure for asset ownership and management. Finding out what kind of organisational infrastructure needs to be developed to support communities in areas where it is weak or absent would support existing initiatives and new entrants.

– Examining the benefits of asset ownership and management for communities. An examination of benefits accruing to communities would offer evidence to policy-makers and support practitioners engaged in existing and future asset transfer initiatives.

– Knowledge sharing. Data and evidence collected through this and other studies should be made easily and openly available to practitioners, academics and policy-makers in one location, probably online.

About the project

Evidence was examined from a wide variety of sources in the four UK countries, including policy documents, accounts from community organisations, evaluation reports and academic commentaries. Over 200 UK documents were studied and analysed, a selection of key practitioners were contacted directly and the review was informed by discussions at three stakeholder forums organised by Renaissance Consultancy. In addition, a small sample of evidence was collected from documents and informants in mainland Europe (Poland, Sweden, Germany and Italy) and the USA. The review was carried out between April and July 2008 and was led by Mike Aiken and Ben Cairns (Institute for Voluntary Action Research, London) and Stephen Thake (London Metropolitan University).

For further information

The full report, Community ownership and management of assets by Mike Aiken, Ben Cairns and Stephen Thake, is published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and available as a free download.

Author: Andy Wightman

Community Land Rights is the first comprehensive overview of land rights that belong to communities in Scotland. It focuses on the range of common land that exists throughout rural and urban Scotland and provides a how-to guide to undertaking research into common good land, commonties, commons and other forms of commonly held land.

The Guide explains how to use sources such as the Register of Sasines, Land Valuation Survey 1909 and the National Farm Survey to identify community land rights as the first stage in a process of asserting and restoring rights that belong to the people.

Read more here and buy the book http://www.andywightman.com/shop.htm

Author: Chrisanthi Giotis, Social Enterprise Magazine

The message from the room was loud and clear. The banks have had it their own way for long enough. Now they must do more for communities, says Naomi Kinsley

Last week we convened a group of some of the most influential figures in social investment and community development to look at how we can get banks to be more transparent about their activities and do more for disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

A wide range of activists, thinkers and community investors – including representatives from ACEVO, the Campaign for Community Banking Services and Urban Forum – joined us to sow the first seeds of what we hope will be an influential coalition for banking reform.

The main topic for discussion was the US Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which compels banks to reinvest in communities where they take deposits.

Social Enterprise readers will no doubt be familiar with the debate, but it is worth recapping. US banks’ CRA ratings are made publicly available. If the regulator finds that a bank is not serving low and moderate income neighbourhoods, it can prevent it from merging with another lender, opening a new branch or expanding any of its other services.

As a result, banks are encouraged to provide services in disadvantaged communities, or to invest in non-profit lenders such as community development finance institutions (CDFIs), which provide personal loans and business finance to those who struggle to access credit on the high street.

Our interest in this is clear. The CDFA is the trade body for CDFIs in the UK. From our study tours to the US, where we have spoken to regulators, practitioners and community groups, we have seen at first hand the massive impact the CRA has had on American CDFIs – and more importantly, the neighbourhoods they serve. Financial institutions in the US routinely invest well over $1.5bn into the US CDFI sector every year.

But this is not just about capitalising the CDFI sector. The whole of civil society stands to benefit from fairer, more transparent and more inclusive banking.

It doesn’t mean we have to replicate the CRA in this country. The CRA operates in a very different policy landscape from ours, with its main sanction, the denial of mergers and expansion. But there is so much we can learn from it.

We have a challenge to convince the government and the banks that this is in their interests.

Regulators have been swayed by scare stories that the CRA caused the global credit crisis. There is a wealth of evidence available the contrary – which we can produce to dispel the myth once and for all.

Banks, naturally, are concerned about the impact on their bottom line. But no bank operating in the US has been hurt by the CRA. Following the same principles of transparency and community investment will deliver something the industry sorely needs, even if it does not realise it, it will restore trust between the banks and their customers.

Building the coalition is the easy part. Convincing policy makers and the banking industry of the need for change will be infinitely more difficult. But the prize is worth the fight.

Naomi Kingsley is chair of the Community Development Finance Association (CDFA) and CEO of the London Rebuilding Society

A new state-backed ‘people’s bank’ based in post office branches could be formed using the government-owned Northern Rock, a new report claims.

A coalition of groups including unions and businesses have released detailed proposals of plans it claims would protect the post office branch network from further closures and support local communities and smaller firms.

In its report, the Post Bank Coalition outlines four options the government could follow including using Northern Rock as a foundation to a mutually structured people’s bank, and buying out the Bank of Ireland’s stake in the Post Office.

Lindsay Mackie, campaign coordinator at the New Economics Foundation, said the government had overlooked the value of the Post Office as a vital national resource for too long.

‘Now it must act to establish a Post Bank to help to build strong, resilient local economies that can bind communities together, survive hard times and flourish in good ones,’ she said.

The coalition argues that a Post Bank would support government targets to combat financial exclusion, introduce much-needed diversity into the retail banking system and address the need for finance for small businesses, as well as providing crucial new business for post offices.

Billy Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, which is part of the coalition, said: ‘We have met the challenge to create a workable model for the creation of a Post Bank. There’s never been a better time to set up a Post Bank.’

The coalition’s proposals were released ahead of the Berr select committee’s report on the future of post offices.

The Purpose of the Away Day

The Think Tanks Project is one of the cross-cutting strands of the SVA Programme portfolio of work. This project is designed to bring senior staff from across local and national third sector infrastructure to consider the key aim of the SVA programme which is:
“to develop a shared vision, purpose and direction for the voluntary sector support infrastructure in Scotland”.

The Think Tanks comprise two small groups from local and national infrastructure support agencies. These two groups have therefore been tasked with a far-reaching aim and remit. They are taking this forward through residential meetings where the participants are truly engaged in a process which encourages exploration out with the boundaries and constraints of the day job. To support this, the Think Tank participants hosted an Away Day with senior staff and board members from community, voluntary, social enterprise, intermediary and infrastructure organisations. The purposes of the Away Day were to:

* Share information and insights into the Think Tank project;
* Consider what a vision and purpose for local and national support for the third sector should look like; and
* Get ideas and insights into purpose and direction of infrastructure in Scotland.

Purpose and Vision Statement for Third Sector Support Services

The Think Tank participants have been discussing vision and purpose and have produced a draft vision and purpose statement to encapsulate the current and future vision and purpose of third sector support infrastructure. This was presented to the delegates at the start of the Away Day and insight and comment invited.

The draft statement is as follows:

Vision
An independent infrastructure which has the capacity, capability, and confidence to lead a strong and thriving voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector, in Scotland.

Purpose
To provide an enabling and supportive environment, where voluntary organisations, communities and social enterprises can flourish.

The discussions in the workshops elicited feedback on this and no major comments were received.

Download full report here http://www.svathinktanks.org.uk/ShapingFutureSummaryReport.pdf

The Scottish Government will introduce a new Housing Bill to Parliament in 2010. To get things started, the Government has published a first draft of the Bill and a consultation paper. The closing date for responses is 14 August 2009.

The draft Bill deals with two main things. First, ending the Right to Buy for new social housing. Second, major reforms to how social housing is regulated. The Government may put more into the Bill before it is presented to Parliament. For example, more radical changes to the Right to Buy, as well as new ways of dealing with poor quality private housing and with bad practice by private landlords.

Download full document here http://www.senscot.net/docs/EVHBriefing3.pdf

An update from CREATE consortium…….

Well, we finally have some news from the DWP about the Community Allowance.
 
We (Steve Wyler, Executive Director of the DTA, Aaron Barbour, Head of Links UK at Community Links and me) went to a hastily arranged meeting with 6 officials from the DWP this morning to discuss our Right to Bid proposal that we submitted back in January.
 
We’ve got through two rounds of intensive scrutiny and evaluation from across the Department and they wanted to give us their feedback.
 
Because the last Secretary of State, James Purnell, said that people on Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) would not be eligible for the Community Allowance, our bid, which includes a lot of detail about people on JSA is not eligible for funding and they are rejecting our proposal as it stands.
 
While we are obviously really disappointed that this is the decision after all the work that has gone into getting this far, there is still hope.
 
They have asked us to write another bid (!) as they are keen on the Community Allowance concept and can see the value in piloting it to test the approach. They have given us some guidance as to how we should re-shape the bid to stand the best chance of being approved. This includes:
 
• Re-shaping what we would deliver through the Community Allowance only for people who are on Employment and Support Allowance and Incapacity Benefit
• Scaling back the pilot programme from 15 pilots across the UK to just 3 pilots as the Right to Bid process is targeted at funding small scale activity that can act as the DWP’s research and development arm to test out new ideas and add value to their existing work
• Choosing which three pilot areas it would be piloted in and having identified lead community organisations in each area before the bid is submitted
• Ensuring that each of these pilot areas fits within Job Centre Plus and Pathways to Work provider boundaries, which are different to local authority boundaries
• Beginning to develop a dialogue between the community organisation(s) running the pilot and local Job Centre Plus and Pathways/FND providers in each area
• Including more of a focus on how many people will move into jobs as a result of the activity, specifying which of these are part time, full time and sustained over a 26 week period
 
We have had lots of discussions about this today and we think it is worth being pragmatic at this stage and moving ahead with another bid as outlined above. At the same time we will continue our lobbying and campaigning work to convince politicians that the Community Allowance should be available to anyone on any benefit and try to get the scope of the pilots extended to include those on JSA at a later date. What do you think?
 
We would like to hear if community organisations are still interested in being pilot partners under this scaled back version of a Community Allowance pilot. If you are, or you’d like to discuss the practicalities of becoming a pilot partner please email me (and copy in Jess Steele the Chair of the CREATE Consortium j.steele@dta.org.uk). Jess is available to discuss your potential involvement by email over the next two weeks while I am away on leave. I will then telephone all organisations that have expressed an interest during the week commencing 20th July.
 
Depending on the level of interest, we will then set up a short selection process that enables us to choose three pilot locations and partners. The aim is then to get the new bid to DWP for their end of August selection panel, so that we have a decision in September and a contract signed and monies flowing to pilot partners by as soon as possible after that.
 
It’s a challenging timescale, especially as it’s over the summer and people will be taking leave, but if you’re up for it – we’re up for it!
 
We’ve come this far and have an opportunity to get something up and running next year that will begin to demonstrate how the Community Allowance could work. It may not be what we know is needed in our most deprived communities but it’s a start and we have no intention of giving up. With your involvement we will keep up the pressure on politicians to realise the full potential of the Community Allowance over the long term.
 
We look forward to hearing what you think.
 
Thanks so much for your support.

The CREATE consortium