Office of the Civil Society Consultations

ACRE responds to a range of consultations from Government and other bodies. Responses to consultations released by the Office of the Civil Society (OCS) are located here.

OCS Stronger Civil Society Support Consultation

The consultation seeks a strategy for OCS's future investment in support services to be guided by principles which aim to catalyse efficiency, reduce long term dependence on the state and is driven by front line needs. The stated principles acknowledge the role of infrastructure organisations in strengthening local networks and the need to enable access by diverse organisations.

The purpose of the consultation was to find out how central Government could best play a role to support building infrastructure services in the voluntary and community sector. The proposals include

Easier access to advice through better use of online support,
Encouraging better connections between small organisations and skilled volunteers or mentors from business or larger charities,
Enabling infrastructure organisations to rationalise and become more effective,
Direct support to frontline organisations to help them get ready for the new opportunities ahead.

ACRE responded to the Stronger Civil Society Consultation on behalf of its member organisations that together form the Rural Community Action Network (RCAN), following their input on their experience and provides examples of outcomes achieved to illustrate points made in response to specific questions.

In our response we argue that there needs to be a refocusing of infrastructure support towards the needs of whole communities, we state that what is required is a more proactive model, more akin to a role as a local development agency for the civil society sector.

However we are particularly concerned that any government investment in civil society support adds value to other government measures aimed at building the Big Society in a way that provides better value for money. In particular, civil society support should integrate activity on the ground under the following initiatives:

Neighbourhood planning and the role of communities
Community budgeting
Implementation of the Rights to Build, Buy and Challenge
Catalysing community action via the investment in Community Organisers

We also point out that whilst social networking and the use of internet technology has the opportunity to strengthen networking and information access, there are many areas of England where broadband speeds are inadequate or non-existent and which prohibit participation or downloading information.

The Office for Civil Society strategic partners grant programme began in 2006 and is due to end in March 2011. Question 9 of the consultation asked: How can central Government best work with national infrastructure to support and deliver the Big Society? We submitted our response to this question on 24th November 2010