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Policy briefing 16 August 2010
(2nd August - 16th August)
The past two weeks have been eventful on the political front, with myriad consultations flowing out of the major government departments.
Among the new consultations announced this week are Business, Innovation & Skills on the employee right to request training and corporate governance; the Department for Education on capital spending projects and early year’s development; and Work & Pensions on reforms to the Employment Support Allowance and Housing Benefit. This takes the total number of “live” consultations to a massive 66 and will lead to a deluge of publications this autumn.
Following last week’s £11m cuts to the Office for Civil Society, it has been announced that the strategic partners will be trimmed down in number from 42 to just 15, with maximum grants of £500,000 each.
Other sources of pessimism include this year’s National Employer Skills Survey, which suggests that employer-funded training has waned and the latest NCVO research, which has highlighted the precarious financial situation of many voluntary organisations.
On the plus side, however, the recruitment specialists Reed have published statistics which suggest that jobs in the third sector have risen by 47% in the past six months (according to the vacancies listed on their website).
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Skills
The full results of this year’s National Employer Skills Survey have been published by UKCES. The survey’s main findings give little cause for optimism, however. Vacancies have decreased, skills gaps have increased, and the amount spent on training has decreased by 5% in real terms. Meanwhile, there has been no change in the proportion of employers offering training (68%) but there has been a 1.2 million decrease in the number of workers who receive training.
The National Institute for Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) have published a briefing paper which argues current tax reliefs for training could be more effective and equitable. No conditions are currently attached to the granting of tax relief for training, meaning that employers do not have to account for how it is spent. NIACE argue that the £3.7bn of public money spent to subsidise such workforce development could be used more effectively if greater onus was placed on employers demonstrating its value.
The latest annual report from the Office for Fair Access has found that English universities and colleges spent £304 million on bursaries and scholarships for lower income and under-represented students last year. Over 346,000 students received a bursary or scholarship in this period and 97% of universities and colleges reported that they had made progress towards on key targets for applicants or entrants from under-represented groups.
Record numbers of A-level students are expected to miss out on a place at university when A-level results are published later this month. This is because the residual effects of the recession have increased the competition for places at a time when many universities are cutting the number of places available due to their own financial problems.
Ofqual, the body responsible for the regulation of vocational qualifications, are seeking to recruit for an external advisory group to investigate how to promote equality and inclusion in qualifications and assessment.
Politics
The 2010 Budget is currently being challenged on the basis of its potentially detrimental effect on equalities. This was exposed in an equality impact assessment carried out by shadow work and pensions secretary, Yvette Cooper and is being challenged by other politicians such as Caroline Lucas.
The first wave of public services to be run as mutuals have been announced. A total of twelve pathfinders have been established to determine the best type of support and structures for their wider deployment. The pathfinders will be supported by pro-bono mentoring from the private sector, including PWC and KPMG. One of the pathfinders is the 157 Group, a consortium of further education colleges working to set up a qualification awarding body.
The Office for Civil Society is set to reduce the number of strategic partners down from 42 to 15. The announcement was made in a letter penned to the current partners which also announced that their budget would be cut from £12.2m to £7.5m with maximum grants of £500,000 per year. The Office also released a list of all current partners and the funding that they recieve.
The business mogul Sir Phillip Green is to conduct an external review of government spending. The review’s remit is to scrutinise government spending over the last three years in order to identify inefficiencies and potential savings.
A consultation has been launched on the legal right for workers to request the time to take up training. The right to request training for workers in businesses with more than 250 employers has only existed since April 2010 and the Government are seeking views on whether the right should be retained and if it needs to be extended to smaller organisations too. The consultation closes on 12 September.
Government have launched a consultation on corporate law and governance. The consultation is seeking views on how to ensure that social and environmental duties are covered in company reporting and ways to improve corporate accountability and transparency. The consultation closes on 19 October.
The Audit Commission is set to be cut as part of government plans to “replace bureaucratic accountability with democratic accountability”. The Audit Commission’s responsibilities for overseeing and delivering local audit and inspections will stop; its research activities will end; audit functions will be moved to the private sector; councils will be free to appoint their own auditors from a competitive open market; and there will be a new audit framework for local health bodies. Meanwhile, the National Audit Office’s role lookes likely to expand and new legislation will be put in place to secure a new audit framework.
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has published all items of CLG departmental spending over £500. All central government departments have been asked to publish spending over £25,000 but CLG has set the bar lower beacuse it will be imposing a similar rule on local government spending. So far 26 councils have followed suit.
A Public Sector Mapping Agreement will give councils and public bodies free access to government mapping data to “unleash a wave of fresh thinking and innovation in public services.” The scheme, which will be run in partnership with the Ordinance Survey, will allow the public sector to use the data to deliver or support any public sector activity, including where these are delivered in collaboration with contractors, third sector bodies or the public.
NHS Professionals, a limited company which provides flexible services to the NHS workforce, is seeking external private investment. The company currently works with over 77 acute, mental health, foundation and PCTs. It provides a range of services, including nursing, medical, Allied Healthcare Professional and Administrative and Clerical staff to Trusts across England.
Dame Clare Tickell, CEO of Action for Children, has launched a call for evidence to help inform an independent review of Early Years Foundation Stage education. The review will cover four areas – the scope of regulation; learning and development; assessment; and welfare. The consultation runs until 30 September 2010.
A consultation has been launched to review education capital spending projects. Its purpose is to change the way schools building is done so that waste is eliminated as far as possible. The call for evidence will last until 17 September 2010 and follows the controversial withdrawal of the Building Schools for the Future programme last month.
A consultation has been launched on proposals to reform the Employment and Support Allowance, which covers benefit claimant’s health and capability for work. The review is seeking to establish whether the ESA is achieving its aim of correctly identifying capability for work and how it can better account for an individual’s adaptation to their condition. The consultation closes on 10 September.
A consultation has been launched on proposals to reform housing benefit regulations. Further details are forthcoming.
The Department for international Development is calling for applications to its civil society fund, the Partnership Programme Arrangement. The fund is open to organisations which can demonstrate real and practical impact on poverty reduction, and significant capability across their systems and policy engagement.
The Voluntary Sector
There has been an increase in the number of third sector jobs according to the recruitment specialists, Reed. According to the number of jobs posted on the company’s website, roles in the voluntary and community sector increased by 47% in the last 8 months. A large majority of such jobs were in fundraising.
The Office for Civil Society’s decision to withdraw funding from its strategic partners without the usual 12 week consultation period was “not ideal” but does not constitute a breach of the Compact according to the Commission for the Compact.
A charity consortium led by 3SC is set to bid for the Department for Work and Pension’s new Work Programme. The other major partners involved in the bid are Groundwork, the National Housing Federation, and the Shaw Trust. DWP has indicated that it will be using an approved providers list with large contracts for the programme.
Charities may need to form consortia with other voluntary organisations and private companies to run the government’s new National Citizen Service programme. The Office for Civil Society have said that bids to run the pilots will only be accepted if they show that they can deliver all parts of the programme and that small grants to run the programme were unlikely.
Only a third of charities have reserves to draw upon according to figures published by NCVO. The research also shows that the average level of reserves for charities that receive state funding is only one month’s expenditure, meaning that cuts in state grants and contracts could result in the closure of many organisations. There is also wide variation in reserve levels for different types of voluntary organisation: housing associations typically have almost 20 months’ of spending in reserve, but playgroups only 1.4 months.
The Charity Commission has published a critical assessment of the appearance of Debbie Scott, the CEO employment charity Tomorrow’s People, in the Conservative Party manifesto. The commission remarked: “By agreeing to contribute to the manifesto, the charity has provided support to the party, and this is the case even if the contribution was only intended to support the single Work Programme.”
Think Tanks & Research
The Institute of Volunteering Research has launched a comprehensive online database of 200 research reports, bulletins, publications and journal articles on volunteering dating back to 1997.
PricewaterhouseCoopers assembled a “Citizens’ Jury” from the general public to consider the complex trade-offs and issues behind public spending cuts. The subsequent report’s findings showed a distinct lack of understanding of the challenge faced and approach to tackling the deficit. However, the report did lead to the participants feeling more active as citizens and highlighted the benefits of public engagement in key areas of policy.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index, recently published by Oxford University, has taken an important step in better understanding and measuring poverty and well-being. The index measures deprivation in terms of health, education and living standards rather than just traditional estimates such as income and consumption. This new measure also takes into account the detrimental effects of social norms and discrimination on impoverished people.