[WiLT] Compact reality belies the rhetoric

[WiL Admin]

Compact reality belies the rhetoric

Progress on the Compact is patchy at best, the Commission for the
Compact has found.

Nine days ago, Ken Livingstone took time out from discussing the
police and London's creaky transport system to talk about the rather
less politically explosive subject of the Compact.

The London mayor joined other senior public sector figures, including
third sector minister Phil Hope, at a reaffirmation of support for the
London Compact, which was first signed in 2003.

Livingstone lauded the Compact, which outlines how voluntary and
public sector organisations should behave towards each other, for
everything from improving public services to lowering the capital's
murder rate. Hope and other senior public sector figures joined the
chorus of praise.

But in the High Court the next day, Age Concern South Lakeland accused
Cumbria County Council of acting unlawfully by running a consultation
that did not adhere to the Compact.

On the same day, the Commission for the Compact published a report
showing how Government grants programmes often breach Compact
principles. It revealed that of 41 grants programmes since 2005, only
22 had followed ministers' urgings to make three-year funding the
norm, 16 accepted full cost recovery and 33 paid in advance.

Considering it will soon be a decade since former prime minister Tony
Blair said the Government would abide by the Compact, some of the
findings were disturbing.

The Home Office's Connecting Communities Plus scheme, which gives
grants to community cohesion schemes, funds for less than a year. The
Department for Transport's Road Safety Grant Challenge pays for one
year, doesn't offer full cost recovery or guarantee advance payment
and gives little feedback on funding decisions. Supporting People does
not follow voluntary sector policies on full cost recovery. Progress
on the Compact, the commission concluded, was patchy.

All this activity came during Compact Week, which adopted the theme
'What has the Compact ever done for us?' Compact Voice, a network of
300 local voluntary sector representatives that organised the week,
claimed the nation was "gripped by Compact fever". Not everyone is so
sure.

"There is no awareness of it in North Yorkshire," says Keith Williams,
social enterprise administrator for the North Yorkshire Forum for
Voluntary Organisations. He says councils regard voluntary
organisations as unreliable because they recruit volunteers, and the
Compact has made little difference to their attitude. "The Compact is
irrelevant, as far as I can see," he says.

The commission's research revealed how strongly councils are guided by
their own needs; only eight of the 41 grants programmes it studied
gave recipients a Compact-compliant, three-month lead-in time before
the start of projects, and most of those that did were National
Lottery grants, which do not conform to financial years in the way
local authority budgets do. In town halls, working to budget deadlines
appears to come before pleasing charities.

Kevin Curley, chief executive of Navca, the umbrella group for small
charities, says the survey's findings are disappointing, and the
picture is even bleaker at local government level. "Making grants
Compact-compliant will be a key test for the Office of the Third
Sector over the next three years," he says. "The Compact is a useful
tool and provides a framework that local authorities and the sector
can use, but when there are breaches it doesn't contain the means by
which local authorities can be held to account."

The Commission for the Compact does not have a full-time chief
executive or chair at present, and Curley says much will depend on the
abilities of whoever is chosen and whether or not they are given more
effective powers to bring recalcitrant local authorities into line.

Although progress on implementing the Compact sometimes seems
tortuously slow, 99 per cent of local authority areas are covered by
agreements. Last week, Suffolk showed its enthusiasm by launching a
new Compact: representatives from the Government Office for the East
of England, Suffolk Strategic Partnership, primary care trusts,
Suffolk County Council, the Learning & Skills Council and voluntary
organisations signed up in Bury St Edmunds.

Newcastle's Compact has been going for five years. Carole Howells,
director of Newcastle CVS, says it has helped. "We already had a good
relationship with the local authority," she says. "But it has made a
difference."

Newcastle City Council, she says, now pays grants on time and gives
proper notice of cuts. "I don't want to say things are perfect, but
the Compact is a good way for trying to sort things out."

http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/News/766491/News-analysis-Compact-reality-belies-rhetoric/

See also High Court ruling 'boosts Compact'
http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/channels/Management/Article/766472/High-Court-ruling-boosts-Compact/

Earlier posting about the Compact at
http://www.freecharity.org.uk/~womeninlondon/?p=447

Posted on WiLT blog at
http://www.freecharity.org.uk/~womeninlondon/?p=456