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Government 'should be clearer on public service delivery'

By Paul Jump, Third Sector Online, 2 August 2007

The Government needs to be clearer about the distinctive contribution it expects from voluntary sector organisations that deliver public services, according to Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the umbrella body the NCVO.

Etherington was responding to Hearts and Minds, the Audit Commission’s report on commissioning from the voluntary sector, which called on charities to provide commissioners with better evidence of the added value of their services.

The report, which was released earlier this week, found that the relationship between many councils and the voluntary sector is blighted by poor commissioning practices, which are perpetuated by a lack of information on important issues such as comparable unit costs for services and the sector’s added value.

The report states: “There is very little evidence, at either a national or a local level, on the performance and value for money secured from voluntary sector providers.” It calls on charities to “improve their understanding of their costs and submit high-quality, fully costed bids for service delivery contracts that address commissioners’ service objectives.”

Michael O'Higgins, the chairman of the Audit Commission, who is also the chair of homeless charity Centrepoint, said: “It's up to the sector to help councils select the best organisations to deliver local services. What the voluntary sector needs is clarity, not charity, and that means improving bidding processes and demonstrating its worth in clear and measurable ways.”

But Etherington responded: “While we accept that voluntary organisations should be able to demonstrate the value they bring, the real point is that government must be clear about what qualities, values and skills it wants voluntary sector partners to bring to the table when delivering public services.”

However, Etherington welcomed the report’s emphasis on involving the sector in the design of both services and “commissioning processes that balance the need for short-term efficiency gains with encouraging a diverse supply base”. He also said he was encouraged to know that “the days of Government advocating a whole-scale transfer of services to the voluntary sector are over”.

Head of business planning and performance management at Barnardo’s, Richard Allen, said he was “completely behind” the report’s calls for better evidence of added value. He said: “It is not only commissioners who need this information: we need it as well in order to understand whether we are delivering what is needed by the children, young people and families who use our services.”

He was more cautious about the report’s calls for more “pragmatism” over full cost recovery, which he described as “a necessary countermeasure in grappling with the problems of sustainability created by short term funding”. He said charities needed to ensure that funded work covered their basic infrastructure, but said there was still “plenty of opportunity for pragmatism”, such as efforts to drive down infrastructure costs.

Emily Frith, public affairs manager for social care charity Turning Point, applauded the commission’s emphasis on intelligent commissioning. She said: “Turning Point is working very hard to ensure that we can evidence how we turn lives around.” She said the Audit Commission was also right to point out that "both commissioners and providers need to be realistic within contract negotiations about what services can be provided for the available resources”.

The report also describes the evidence for the impact of the Compact and capacity-building exercises such as ChangeUp and Futurebuilders as “very limited”. But it rebuts the common perception that service contracts are replacing grants, and notes that councils are not spending less on grants, but are attaching more service-level agreements to them “for sound, value-for-money reasons”.