Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260-265)
MR ANDREW
COGAN, MS
JENNY KARTUPELIS
AND MR
RICHARD BOYD
27 MARCH 2006
Q260 Martin Horwood: Do you feel
that they are listening more to each other than they are to you,
as a sector?
Ms Kartupelis: Yes, but not necessarily
because they wish to, but possibly because they feel they have
to, in order to deliver back to central government the policy
that they feel they need to interpret on the ground.
Q261 Mr Olner: It appears to me that
you are fairly well frustrated with what is going on at the moment.
Are you frustrated because of the structure of what is there at
the moment or are you frustrated because they have got very few
outcomes?
Ms Kartupelis: The structure I
think can be frustrating to everyone, not just to us in the voluntary
sector but to the people in the bodies of governance as well,
insofar as they may not have the manoeuvrability and flexibility
they might feel that they need to act on a regional, as opposed
to a central, level.
Q262 Mr Olner: There is a minimal
level and I was listening with great interest when you were talking
about sometimes the level of continuity at the Government Office
in the region, but there is a tremendous amount of continuity
in local authorities, particularly county councils, and I would
suggest also regional assemblies, there is a fair amount of continuity
there. Why is the thing breaking down? Where are you coming from
when you are saying to this Committee, "There's a lack of
continuity and that's what's spoiling all of the good things we
want to do"?
Ms Kartupelis: I would locate
it partly within Government Office and partly within the Regional
Development Agency, in terms, as I say, of interpreting central
government initiatives, because those are the things which have
a discontinuity.
Q263 Mr Olner: Your message to this
inquiry would be, "Forget the regional assemblies, forget
the regional councils now; let's take it back down to county councils"?
Ms Kartupelis: No; sorry. I have
not expressed myself well, in that case. I would say that regional
government stands a fair chance of giving us continuity, if they
were allowed by central government to have some flexibility in
interpreting central government policy such that it was appropriate
to the region.
Q264 Martin Horwood: Can I just pursue
that exact point and ask you to give us a precise example, and
that might be something like the Regional Spatial Strategy; is
that an example of something where you feel that the regional
bodies are interpreting a central policy rather than adapting
it to local needs, or regional needs?
Mr Cogan: That is quite interesting,
because I think there were something like 26,000 responses to
the Regional Spatial Strategy and I imagine most of them will
be hostile. What is surprising is how easily those large targets
went through the Assembly and all the constituent bodies; it was
quite surprising really.
Q265 Martin Horwood: There was a
remarkably similar experience in the South West, I have to say.
Mr Boyd: My organisation is funded,
to a greater or lesser degree, in the disability world, by grants,
although we are a social enterprise. Just to take Essex, which
I know well, I applied to 42 grant sources in order to run a county-wide
structure. The irony was that when I applied to Government Office
to do a regional review of disability and trends and demands over
the next 10 years I obtained more support more quickly there than
ever I had been able to obtain from the fragmented structures
of six counties and four unitaries. I will illustrate that more.
If you live in the north corner of Essex your nearest hospital
is in Cambridgeshire and so you are dealing with two authorities.
I am just giving an example. On the edges of each authority, at
the moment, which is where predominantly older people live and
disabled people, they are ending up talking to two providers,
or maybe three; if we talk to region we talk to one.
Mr Betts: Thank you very much indeed
for your evidence.
| 
