Memorandum by the Voluntary Organisations'
Network North East (VONNE) (DRA 32)
1. VONNE is the regional infrastructure
organisation for the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) in the
North East of England. It aims to inform the sector about policy
developments; promote its involvement in decision-making at a
regional and national level and articulate its views. VONNE is
a voluntary organisation with five members of staff and a Management
Committee composed of representatives of the VCS from across the
North East. We act on behalf of a large and diverse sector which
employs 4.4% of the region's workforce and is supported by the
work of 143,600 volunteers (figures from the research paper "The
Contribution of the Voluntary and Community Sector to the Economic
Life of the North East Region"—VONNE 2000).
2. VONNE has adopted a position of political
neutrality in the forthcoming referendum on the establishment
of an elected regional assembly in the North East and this document
reflects this position. We would not wish to comment on whether
we approve or disapprove of the government's intentions as outlined
in the draft Bill. There is a wide range of views within the sector
on this and it would be impossible to take a position that would
be adequately representative. Our focus will therefore be on the
provisions that the government is making for stakeholder involvement
in regional assemblies.
3. Clause 43 (1) of the draft Bill states
that "the general purposes of an assembly in relation to
its region are:
The Bill therefore puts economic, social and
environmental development on an equal footing. This essentially
means that an assembly would have as its main aim sustainable
development and the improvement of the general quality of life
of the region's inhabitants. Voluntary and Community groups are
set up to improve the quality of life of their members and clients
and should be recognised as essential partners for any body seeking
to deliver such aims. A robust system providing for VCS involvement
in the work of any future elected regional assembly is therefore
essential.
4. Clause 53 of the Draft Bill provides
for stakeholder involvement in regional assemblies by placing
a duty on assemblies to make arrangements to encourage and facilitate
the participation of various stakeholders, including voluntary
and community groups. We welcome the government's intention to
include the VCS in policy making and the recognition that this
involvement can help improve the quality of decision-making and
ensure that communities feel able to influence policy and be involved
in the political process. There is a generally recognised need
to reconnect communities with policy-making bodies and the VCS
reaches a huge swathe of the population through its work. The
relationship between the existing North East Assembly and the
sector has developed over the past few years and the VCS would
seek to build on these links in the event of the establishment
of an elected assembly.
5. The type of elected Assembly described
in the draft Bill would have a small number of members and a small
executive. It is therefore likely that members will have a demanding
workload as they deal with setting up a new organisation and defining
a new agenda. This could lead to priority being given to the assembly's
own organisation and statutory duties at the expense of harder
to quantify issues such as the involvement of others organisations.
Detailed requirements to put stakeholder involvement at the heart
of any elected regional assembly would seem to be the only way
of addressing these concerns.
6. To ensure that stakeholder involvement
and engagement with the VCS is a non-negotiable feature of assemblies,
there should be a statutory requirement for an elected assembly
to forge links with the VCS. Section 114 of the Government of
Wales Act, for instance, enshrines an obligation for the Welsh
Assembly to "promote the interests of relevant voluntary
organizations" and requires the Welsh Assembly to work with
the VCS to draw up a Voluntary Sector Scheme which will specify
how the Assembly proposes to provide assistance to the VCS, how
it proposes to monitor the use made of assistance provided to
the VCS and how the Assembly proposes to consult with the sector.
We would commend a similar approach in the English Regions.
7. The VCS is not, of course, the only stakeholder
group and there will inevitably be issues where the interests
of other stakeholder groups need to be satisfied, perhaps through
other sector specific schemes. There are also likely to be times
when the views of stakeholders as a whole need to be sought and
the establishment of a Civic Forum, as found in London and Scotland,
could be a useful mechanism to facilitate this. It is not an alternative
for sector specific schemes, but can be complementary to them.
8. Whatever the arrangements there needs
to be a statutory requirement for government to provide funding
for mechanisms that will support stakeholder involvement and identify
and deal with barriers to its development. Research commissioned
by the existing North East Assembly states that:
"Regional Government is not at the top
of the agenda of many organisations. For many in the voluntary
sector, for example, day-to-day survival is the priority. Strategic
thinking, beyond local user group level simply doesn't happen.
It would require levers from a DERA for this to change. Providing
such levers should be a priority since the voluntary sector covers
huge constituencies of interest as well as direct contact with
the most vulnerable people in the region. Equally it is an important
source of service delivery, expertise and public opinion."
(The Engagement of Stakeholders in a Directly Elected Regional
Assembly for the North East, Lynne Humphrey and Dr Keith Shaw,
Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies University of
Newcastle upon Tyne/Sustainable Cities Research Institute, Northumbria
University October 2003).
9. The researchers go on to suggest that
the creation of a regional engagement fund to support the involvement
of civic groups and networks would help address some of these
issues. Ideally there would be provision for this funding to come
from central government so that stakeholder involvement schemes
can be seen to be independent from the Assembly.
10. VONNE's main concern is therefore that
any further version of the Bill provides clear leadership on the
importance of stakeholder involvement in general and of the VCS
in particular. The government's desire to promote stakeholder
involvement is laudable but needs to be backed up by a clear statutory
framework. In addition voluntary and community groups will only
be able to make a meaningful contribution to the work of any future
elected regional assembly in the North East if adequate resources
are made available to support this involvement.
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