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News
Liverpool City Council Proposes Cuts to Voluntary Organisations Again
LCVS News, News
Article Published : 27/01/10
Update 1.30 p.m. Wednesday 27th January 2010.This release includes additional information relating to the Council’s Cultural Events Programme.
The City Council’s Executive Board is proposing a budget for 2010/11 that includes proposed cuts on discretionary funding of voluntary and community organisations. This proposal will be debated at the Council’s Budget Meeting at 5pm on 27th January in the Town Hall.
LCVS was concerned that the cut of £400,000 from the cultural events programme by maximising known sponsorship opportunities and costs reduced on non-key activities would impact on community arts and culture organisations. We expressed concern that smaller community and grassroots organisations might bear the brunt of these cuts as these organisations are least able to attract sponsorship and are key to delivering much of the ‘Year of Health and Wellbeing’ programme throughout 2010/11.
We have received clarification that the cultural grant programme to third sector organisations is not affected by this proposal. We apologise for any that misapprehension.
We remain very concerned at the proposal to cut £250,000 from the City Council’s discretionary financial assistance to voluntary organisations.
This would represent a cut of 6%. on a budget of £4,167,950.
The Executive Budget Proposal report reasons this reduction is acceptable as organisations have benefited from low levels of inflation over the last 12 months.
LCVS understands that the City has to balance its budget and that hard choices have to be made. However, the report includes substantial cuts to voluntary and community organisations which will be disproportionately and adversely affected by the decisions.
The suggestion that voluntary organisations have benefited from low inflation is mistaken. The low inflation is primarily influenced by mortgage and house prices which do not impact on voluntary sector costs. In fact, voluntary sector organisations have had to absorb the inflation of wage and fuel and other business service costs because there is no increase in grant support from year to year. Most of the organisations funded through discretionary funding are coming to the end of their second year of funding and grants do not include any annual increase to take account of inflation. Organisations get a fixed grant for each of three years. This means that in the 3 years to 30th Dec 2009 organisations have had reduction in the value of their grant support of 9.5%.
The City Council has offered the further explanation that savings will be re-couped from organisations that are ‘not performing, under spending or non-compliant organisations”. Although this looks a painless saving it represents a further permanent cut in funding voluntary organisations.
As an example the Community Services pot was:
2001 - £5.8 million
2003 - £4.7 million
2008 - £4.167 million
2010 - proposed £3.917 million
The decision seems somewhat arbitrary rather than strategic. If organisations are not performing then there are others able to deliver to those beneficiaries apparently being failed by some funded organisations. There is no evidence that the need for services has diminished rather, at best, that some organisations have not met that need.
A more strategic review is needed, matching resources to need and considering all discretionary funding, including the Councillors' Initiative Fund. This would enable the City and its partners to identify the real priorities for funding.
The proposed measures could simply cut the cake and leave some icing.
Alan Lewis
Chief Executive
Liverpool Charity and Voluntary Services