Agenda item

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance submits a report providing an update on the arrangements for citywide support to the voluntary and community sector.  The Commission is recommended to consider these arrangements and make any necessary representations around the future of the support arrangements, which will then be formally considered as part of the consultation process.

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance submitted a report providing an update on the arrangements for citywide support to the voluntary and community sector (VCS). 

The Head of the City Mayor’s Office introduced the report, explaining that the current three year agreement with Voluntary Action LeicesterShire (VAL) to provide support services to the VCS in the city would end in September 2017.  Consideration therefore needed to be given to what support the market required for the future and how this should be structured. 

In addition, the current co-funders, the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner and the Leicester City Clinical Commissioning Group, were being consulted on whether they wished to assist with the funding of any support provided in the future.

The Voluntary and Community Sector Engagement Manager gave a presentation on the review, a copy of which is attached at the end of these minutes for information.  During this, he drew particular attention to the following points:

·           At present, responses were fairly evenly distributed across the three different response methods;

·           In an earlier review, the VCS had identified the support of collaboration as very important and wanted the Council to sustain this.  The commissioning of VCS support services at that time accommodated this, but it did not appear to have been used much;

·           The traditional roles of volunteers and volunteering were still very important;

·           The consultation was not an inquiry in to VAL’s performance under the current agreement, but asked the respondents how they valued the services and whether they had been beneficial to them.  VAL was not referred to anywhere in the survey;

·           Individuals responding to the consultation were not asked to identify themselves.  Those responding on behalf of an organisation were invited to say which organisation they were from, which some had done; and

·           To date, 79 responses had been received, which was considered to be good.  Although a large number of groups were eligible to respond, they were very diffuse and it could be difficult to get them to engage with things such as the consultation.

Members noted that the Council’s Libraries service maintained a list of volunteers, to which organisations had free access.  The Head of the City Mayor’s Office confirmed that volunteering was an area in which new approaches could be tried, such as using social media platforms to attract volunteers.

Some concern was expressed that VAL had not evolved to meet the current needs of the VCS and so did not fully appreciate the problems faced by VCS organisations.  It also was felt that VAL could be hard to engage with, particularly as they did not appear to be active within the community.

It was noted that Council officers worked with a wide variety of VCS groups and organisations, many of which worked in areas that related to specific Council service areas.  A list of these groups was compiled for the Service Analysis team, to assist with contract and performance monitoring, but the groups were not managed centrally and contacts were not yet available for all of them.

VAL had included notification of the availability of the consultation in the regular briefing that it circulated to organisations on its database.  Some concern was expressed that this could result in contact only being made with long-established groups and miss newer, possibly “grass roots”, groups and organisations who did not use VAL’s services.

Members were assured that the briefing circulated by VAL was only one of the ways in which contact was maintained with groups and organisations.  For example, details of all groups contacting the Council were kept, as it was known that various groups did not have contact with VAL for various reasons. 

The Commission noted that the situation had changed for many VCS groups and organisations over recent years, as many now had to spend a lot of time sourcing finance and following processes, such as training and paperwork.  This review of the support given to such groups and organisations provided an opportunity to manage the perceived cultural change in their relationship with VAL, by ensuring that any future services commissioned through VAL reflected this cultural change.

Councillor Dr Chowdhury reminded Members of the interest he had declared in this item.  (See minute 63, “Declarations of Interest”, above)

AGREED:

1)    That the Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance be requested to:

a)     Ask Members and service directors to promote the consultation on arrangements for city-wide support for the voluntary and community sector with the groups they are aware of, the link to the on-line consultation to be included in this request; and

b)     Invite groups and organisations who may not be in contact with Voluntary Action LeicesterShire, but could usefully contribute, to participate in the consultation on arrangements for city-wide support for the voluntary and community sector;

2)    That, in view of 1) above, the Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance be asked to extend the deadline for the consultation on future support arrangements for the voluntary and community sector in the city by at least one week; and

3)    That a further report on support arrangements for the voluntary and community sector in the city be submitted to this Commission at a time to be agreed between the Chair, Vice-Chair and Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance.