John Gillespie
John Gillespie of Acevo says his organisation wrote to 30 councils to assess their views and 10 expressed an interest
A third of local authorities are interested in supporting a project to develop charity bidding consortia in their areas, according to a straw poll of councils by the chief executives body Acevo.
Acevo wrote to 30 randomly selected councils to ask if they would be interested in participating in a project to set up a local consortium that could bid to run services, which would be jointly funded by Acevo, the Local Government Association and each council itself.
Ten local authorities expressed an interest and local authorities in Norfolk, Gateshead and Leicestershire have each agreed to a project to support a local consortium.
John Gillespie, a business planning consultant at Acevo, said several other local authorities were interested in helping local charities develop consortia, but were pursuing their own methods of doing so.
"Anecdotally, it appears to be something on the radar of most local authorities," he said. "A lot of councils seem to be quite receptive. They want local charities to form consortia."
