The government should set up a new cross-governmental team to speed up the transfer delivery budgets and assets from the public sector to the third sector. This is according to a new report from the Social Market Foundation (SMF) and acevo, which puts pressure on government to significantly increase the role of the third sector in delivering public services.

Communities in Control: The New Third Sector Agenda for Public Service Reform calls on examples from Australia where the two largest providers of employment training services are third sector organisations: the Salvation Army, with around 10% market share, and Mission Australia, with around 9%. Nick Aldridge, director of strategy and communications at acevo, and author of the report, says that ten years ago provision in Australia was shared between the public, private and third sectors in roughly equal proportions, but since then the government has withdrawn from direct service provision.

”If Australia can revolutionise the delivery of its public services through greater use of third sector providers so can we,” he said. “We want to see the Cabinet Office coming up with concrete proposals within 18 months.”

Aldridge added: “We want the government to commit itself to transferring assets and budgets to the third sector.  We want to see the State transferring substantial sums of money to third sector organisations to enable them to take over the delivery of public services as happened with housing associations in the 1980s.” 

Ann Rossiter, acting director of SMF said: "Giving charities a bigger role in direct service provision will have the benefit of building social capital and building a robust civil society - it could break down the barriers between "them" - those outsiders with power and control who intervene in communities, for good or for ill - and "us" - those who have things done to them."

For further information visit acevo's website at www.acevo.org and the Social Market Foundation's website at www.smf.co.uk