Review of hubs of expertise
15th September 2006, 9:58 am
Capacitybuilders, the body which took over managing the government’s ChangeUp funding in April, has considered a review on the National Hubs produced for it by Jo Durning. The consultation exercise, which ran from mid July to mid August, was largely confined to sector infrastructure bodies - just a handful of frontline organisations are recorded as making a submission. (VolResource found details on the web too late to publicise.)
The Durning report says that the national ChangeUp programme should aim “to do less better, with a stronger focus on users, more integration between the different strands …….., stronger emphasis on celebrating good practice within the sector as well as drawing from outside”. It identifies three main options for delivery of national ChangeUp services to local, sub-regional and regional infrastructure organisations in the voluntary and community sector: 1) Improvement of the present system, 2) a central agency (along the lines of IDeA for local government), or 3) centralisation of commissioning within Capacitybuilders. The second option was rejected at the Capacitybuilders board meeting last week, while they will discuss the implications of the other two at their next meeting on 22nd November. Durning clearly prefers option 3, but not all the hubs are happy with the idea of losing their commissioning powers and being left to “continue as centres of excellence and advisory bodies, with small budgets to enable them to identify and promote good practice.”
Documents (in a mixture of pdf and Word formats) are now available on the Capacitybuilders web site at http://www.capacitybuilders.org.uk/info/story/default.asp?item=7. The ‘Stakeholder Statement’ gives an overall picture, summarising the recommendations and the board decisions - pdf file, 42kb.
Third Sector new item at http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity_news/full_news.cfm?ID=19922. Volunteering England; NAVCA: http://www.navca.org.uk/news/capacitybuilders.htm.
The six national hubs cover Finance, Workforce Development, Performance Management, Governance, Volunteering, IT. See http://www.hubs.org.uk/page.asp?id=3.