Soapbox: Government treats the sector like an irresponsible child

By Alison Baxter, Chief Executive, Oxfordshire Community and Voluntary Action

At a recent conference, a senior representative from Communities and Local Government compared the development of partnership working to an autocratic father gradually relinquishing control over his family.

I thought this was a good, if patronising, analogy. The voluntary sector has in many ways been treated like an irresponsible child by government.

We used to be given pocket money (grants) if we were good. Then our parents started to ask us to do things in return for our pocket money – like making our bed or doing the ironing (Service Level Agreements, they called this).

But now, our parents have clubbed together with all our friends’ parents and issued a competitive tender for all the cleaning and washing and ironing in all the houses in the street.

So the contract is probably going to go to Clever Cleaners (based in London) or the Thames Valley Laundry Consortium. We can’t realistically compete because we don’t want to do the whole lot – we just wanted to carry on doing a good job of tidying our own bedroom. And what’s going to be lost is that feeling of shared family responsibility for our home.

I’m not going to carry on with this comparison because like all figures of speech, it will fall apart if pushed too far.

But I do think there is a serious point about the value of small and medium sized local charities, which is getting lost in the national rhetoric about public service delivery. This is why OCVA has commissioned and published a piece of research into the impact of procurement on our local voluntary sector in Oxfordshire. It is available to download from www.oxnet.org.uk.

We identified an apparent policy contradiction. Because our statutory colleagues are obliged to look for efficiency savings, they are constructing bigger and bigger contracts that are less and less appropriate for local voluntary organisations. Yet at the same time they are expected to declare their commitment to local partnership working.

Furthermore, when the local voluntary sector does engage in the procurement process, it can feel like a talent contest where superficial gloss will win over genuine ability.

Procurement professionals might have something to learn from their colleagues in HR. When managers are taught how to recruit staff, they are warned that the interview is the least accurate way of predicting future performance. They are encouraged to set tasks and look carefully for evidence of past achievement. So why are tenders awarded on performance at interview, which we all know can be a successful bluff?

It’s not entirely the fault of the commissioners, although they could be better at devising and testing against ‘job descriptions’ that pin down the four or five essential criteria instead of creating long lists of questions designed to ensure that noone ever takes a risk.

We in the voluntary sector must also learn how to show off our track record so that we can compete successfully for those jobs that we actually want to do. My fear is that in doing this we will focus our attention on learning how to win contracts instead of concentrating on delivering better services.