It
would be a strange year that did not feature some initiative
to cut red tape in the voluntary sector, but 2006 still stands
out. The focus on this topic by government has rarely been
so intense.
Of course, they left it late. Even at the start of November,
NCVO, NAVCA and the National Federation of Community Organisations
were complaining that, one year on from the Better Regulation
for Civil Society report, little had changed. “A wall
of red tape remains,” warned NCVO’s Stuart Etherington.
However, when it came the government’s response was
substantial. Not only did it finally respond to the Better
Regulation Task Force report a couple of days later –
accepting most of the recommendations – but in December
its “simplification plans” were published (see
below). Massacring a small forest, 19 government departments
and agencies outlined proposals that promise to cut the administrative
burden facing businesses and charities by £2bn a year
by the end of the decade – a reduction of at least 25
per cent.
Many of the proposals, including those on company law, employment
regulations and health and safety, should touch at least some
charities, and two of the plans – by the Charity Commission
and the Cabinet Office – are focused on the third sector.
These two alone promise savings to the sector of about £20
million a year.
And it’s not just warm words. Introducing the plans,
Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden admitted that some would
feel they had heard it all before, but promised the proposals
constituted “not a new pledge but a detailed and specific
plan of action”.
That is, in fact, true: much of it is not new. As Belinda
Pratten, the policy officer leading on the issue at the NCVO,
explains, while the initiatives are welcome, many of them
have been heard before – a good chunk of both the Cabinet
Office and the Commission’s plans either detail savings
from measures already announced or in place, particularly
those arising from the Charities Act.
“A lot of these things were in the bill, so while we
welcome them, they’re things we’ve already been
welcoming for quite some time,” she says.
Of the £14.3 million savings identified in the Commission’s
plan, most relate to changes to the accounting and reporting,
and almost £4 million is attributable to measures planned
as a result of the 2006 Act or measures already in place.
Similarly, while the greatest impact is likely to come from
a future review of the financial reporting thresholds, this
again was a commitment written into the Act. Likewise, about
half the savings to the sector identified in the Cabinet Office
plan can be put down to the Charities Act.
Not that this should necessarily bother charities. The Commission
says it’s legitimate to include these measures because
the calculation of the total regulatory burden it puts on
the sector was taken in May 2005, pre-dating the Act. And,
according to the Commission’s chief executive Andrew
Hind, charities are likely to be more concerned with the impact
the changes have than their origin. For instance, one proposal,
to increase the threshold for submitting an annual return
from £10,000 to £25,000, would save 22,500 smaller
charities a total of £3.4 million a year. Meanwhile,
the threshold for independent examination for charities’
accounts could be raised from £10,000 to £25,000,
saving another £1.2 million a year for 37,350 charities.
“These are not theoretical burdens; these are major
burdens on very small organisations,” says Hind. “What
we’re proposing will make a dramatic difference to the
life of trustees.” Nor, he adds, is the Commission limiting
itself to the proposals identified, and is consulting on how
it can further improve – all part, says Hind, of a “crusade”
the Commission has embarked on to reduce the burden of its
oversight – particularly for smaller groups. NAVCA,
for one, have welcomed the Commission’s efforts.
Similarly, the government’s response to the report of
the Better Regulation Task Force has also been generally well
received. Most of the report’s recommendations have
been accepted, and work has already begun in some areas. The
Charity Commission, for instance, is being more careful to
distinguish between regulatory requirements and best practice
in its guidance, while the Home Office funded Volunteering
England to produce its guide to volunteers and the law and
hold workshops on the topic throughout the country last year.
“It’s a good start,” says Lynne Berry, chief
executive of General Social Care Council, and a member of
the Better Regulation Commission (which took over the task
force’s work). “Obviously there’s more to
do, but we are moving forward.” Berry has also been
encouraged by positive sounding noises to the BRC’s
most recent publication Risk, Responsibility, Regulation:
Whose Risk is it Anyway which proposes a less risk-averse
approach on the part of regulators (the official response
is due shortly).
Meanwhile, the creation of the Office of the Third Sector
in the Cabinet Office has helped give the sector a central
voice in the department that’s leading on the drive
for better regulation. “I think there’s a real
sense that the government is taking these issues seriously,”
says Berry.
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The cultural challenge
And yet the reservations remain. Sukhvinder Stubbs, who
authored Better Regulation for Civil Society, says while
the responses are all very well, she sees little sign yet
of the radical change in approach that’s needed. She
suspects the implementation will “lack imagination”
relying on yet more bureaucracy to ensure changes are made,
rather than offering any real discretion to respond to changing
needs on the ground.
“There’s still a danger that the essence of
the report will be missed, and the voluntary and community
sector remains at risk of being captured by the public sector
culture,” she says. What’s needed, says Stubbs,
is a “fundamental rethink of the way government works
and the culture civil servants operate in”. This is
not lost on the Cabinet Office. Its simplification plan
makes this very point, and says it is working to develop
“a culture of better regulation” across government.
But the doubts are not so much over its commitment, but
rather its ability to deliver – particularly at a
local level.
“As ever the concern is about the gap between good
policy generated by central government and its implementation
by local authorities and other public bodies,” says
Kevin Curley at NAVCA, who was one of the three charity
sector representatives (along with Etherington and Acevo’s
Stephen Bubb) at the launch. “There’s no evidence
local officials will buy into that agenda.”
As ever, the problem remains the “quasi regulation”
identified by Stubbs’ report – the onerous and
largely pointless reporting requirements attached to local
public sector contracts and grants that so many in the voluntary
sector complain about. NAVCA’s report last summer
For Good Measure illustrated that this remained an issue
with two case studies – one of which concerned local
charity Rydale Voluntary Action, which was audited eight
times in six weeks by its local statutory contractors, despite
the fact that the charity has to have its accounts audited
anyway.
What’s missing, says the charity’s chief officer,
Paul Haywood, is any sense of proportion, with officials
demanding onerous reports for even small grants. “It’s
almost getting to the stage with some small grants where
the money is getting eaten up administering them,”
he says. “There’s got to be an element of trust.”
Here again the government says it is acting. As well as
the BRTF response and the simplification plans, the end
of last year saw the publication of the Public Service Delivery
Action Plan (see below). According to Jitinder Kohli, chief
executive of the Better Regulation Executive, the Cabinet
Office group responsible for regulatory reform, this is
designed to tackle the concerns around commissioning and
contracting; “precisely the kind of issues that drive
third sector organisations mad on a day-to-day basis”.
As for the scepticism some charities feel about the moves
to cut regulation, Kohli says he understands it only too
well: the former head of the Active Communities Directorate
in the Home Office, he is a chair of care charity Epic Trust.
“I know what it’s like to be on the receiving
end of government bureaucracy,” he says, adding that
the government has admitted it has “not been entirely
successful” in its previous attempts to cut the burden.
Nevertheless, he says the targets for reducing red tape
are ambitious, and – because that burden has now been
measured – unless the initiatives published in December
reduce the time and money spent on compliance by a quarter,
the government can be held accountable for failing.
“It’s one thing to set out the plan; it’s
quite another to deliver it,” he says, “but
that’s the challenge we must rise to.”
Hopefully by the time the Cabinet Office comes to review
its progress at the end of this year, the resulting report
will be less interesting than what’s actually happening
on the ground.
Going Dutch
Following the Dutch government’s example, the Cabinet
Office launched the simplification programme in September
2005.
The exercise first involved establishing the cost of the
regulatory burden of complying with government regulations
through interviews with businesses and charities. The consultation,
by consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers, measured this as
£13.8bn – a figure the government has committed
to cut by a quarter by 2010.
Of the burden, only £15.4 million is attributable
to the Cabinet Office, and £49.4 million was put down
to the Charity Commission, and together their reductions
will add up to only about £20 million. However, charities
should also benefit from the plans drawn up by others, such
as the Health and Safety Executive, whose plans will cut
bureaucracy for all organisations.
Partnership
Published in December, Partnership in Public Services:
an action plan for third sector involvement introduced
a range of commitments to improve the contracting and commissioning
process, including:
- Training for 2,000 of those who commission public services
on how to involve the third sector
- The creation of standardised procurement contracts
- The alignment of ‘commissioning frameworks’
across government departments, and
- A commitment to streamline the assurance process for
charities that work across government departments
The document was broadly welcomed – Acevo and others
have been arguing for standard contracts for a while –
but, again, there are doubts about the difference it will
make.
Ian Charlesworth, managing director at the Shaw Trust
(which has featured in a number of reports on the problems
of public service delivery), isn’t so optimistic.
“We’ve had so many initiatives,” he says,
“but on the ground most of it seems to fail to get
through.”
Part of the problem, he suggests, is staff churn in the
public sector – those commissioning the services rarely
stay long enough to build up any expertise. Good guidance
may help here, but Charlesworth reckons it will be a challenge
to see that it’s followed.
“The bureaucracy has decreased in some quarters, but
it keeps fighting back,” he says. “You think
you’re winning and then you get a contract that’s
outcome funded and they want to know how many postage stamps
you’re going to use. You despair, really.”
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