Devolving power from Whitehall should be a big opportunity for charities. So why are they worried?

The voluntary sector should be well placed to help deliver services in the devolution era. But, as Patrick Murray of charity think tank the New Philanthrophy Capital writes, many fear that fragmentation of services and opaque contracting arrangements could shut them out


By Patrick Murray

10 Aug 2016

The much hyped "devolution revolution" brings some optimism in an era of austerity. The devolution of a range of powers to a number of different actors – whether combined authorities, Police and Crime Commissioners or prison governors – offers a real opportunity to tackle two long-standing policy challenges.

The first is the thorny challenge of joining up public services around people and families who often face more than one interrelated challenge. 

Naturally, Civil Service World has focused here in the past, and we all know the stories – the ex-offender who has nowhere to live and, lacking the skills to secure sustainable employment, ends up having to tell their story multiple times to multiple public services. Each service concentrates on fixing one bit of a complex set of problems, with no agency ever taking responsibility for helping the individual to build the positive life they want. 


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The second challenge as the purse strings tighten is in building communities resilient enough to deal with challenges themselves – without needing to resort to public services in the first place.

In the devolution era, the voluntary sector has a big role to play in both.

Charities provide a vehicle for civic engagement, for people to put their skills and experience to positive use. At their best, charities provide good quality services focused on the individual, rather than one bit of a problem. And they already play an important role alongside the state: think of the volunteer working in a befriending service, helping to combat isolation for an elderly person who may otherwise end up in residential care.

"If the sort of mega-commissioning contracts already popular in Whitehall are replicated in the devolved regions, we will also see the replication of the big Transforming Rehabilitation and Work Programme model, both of which brought substantial challenges for the voluntary sector"

So charities should be well placed as key partners in the devolution era. But many are worried. For some larger charities, it is the concern of working out how to engage with a fragmented agenda, involving multiple agencies with competing priorities. For smaller, more community-based organisations, the challenge is perhaps even tougher: having worked to build good relations with local councils, are combined authorities about to suck up all the power and leave them high and dry?

The trends in commissioning provide even more cause for concern. As austerity bites, many local authorities have moved to larger, more generic contracts. Smaller, more specialist organisations are losing out. Often these small contracts (which would once upon a time have been grants) were the lifeblood of local charity embedded in their communities. Now that those sorts of contracts are disappearing, the same organisations are left on a knife-edge. 

These are some of the issues NPC warned about in our recent paper taking stock of the voluntary sector. Amid all the devolution hype, it is easy to forget that the population of Greater Manchester is larger than Wales. If the sort of mega-commissioning contracts already popular in Whitehall are replicated in the devolved regions, we will also see the replication of the big Transforming Rehabilitation and Work Programme model, both of which brought substantial challenges for the voluntary sector. The vital contribution charities can make in building social capital and providing integrated solutions could be lost.

Much of the devolution agenda thus far focused on the deals negotiated between Whitehall and The town Hall. Now it is time for local leaders to broaden the tent and bring the voluntary sector into the discussions around public service transformation and civic renewal. There is a huge opportunity to tackle these longstanding policy challenges. Let’s not waste it.

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