Memorandum from Cambridge House
1. ORGANISATIONAL
BACKGROUND
Cambridge House is a registered charity founded
in 1889 in Camberwell as a philanthropic Settlement of Cambridge
University. We have remained there ever since, and have evolved
into a vibrant voluntary organisation that provides a range of
services and resources to our local community. Some are Southwark
wide; providing legal advice and advocacy services, and supporting
people with Learning Disabilities and their families. Some are
more local; acting as a provider of youth and community development
work in the Camberwell and Walworth neighbourhoods
2. ORGANISATIONAL
FUNDING
We have a turnover of £2 million and identify
ourselves as a medium sized local voluntary organisation. Over
50% of our income is from statutory authorities such as the local
authority, PCT and Legal Services Commission. We generate additional
income from our own freehold premises, donations and charitable
trusts. We are in the process of establishing a Trading Company
wholly owned by the Charity to increase the unrestricted and independent
income available to the Charity to protect its independence.
Many of our services and funding relationships
have already moved from grants to contracts and on the whole we
have a positive relationship with the local authority and other
public bodies.
3. CURRENT COMMISSIONING
ISSUES
Trustees took the strategic decision in the
summer of 2006 to actively tender for advocacy services outside
of Southwark. This was to build on our recent success of winning
a tender with Department of Health to pilot Independent Mental
Capacity Advocacy (IMCA) within Southwark.
Firstly, our experience of this pilot showed
us that we needed more than one advocate to deliver IMCA successfully
and Southwark alone would not be a big enough contract to warrant
more than one advocate. Secondly, we could see the advocacy landscape
changing to favour larger specialist providers operating over
a wider geographical area, particularly for IMCA services. We
felt that if we did not provide a larger IMCA service when our
existing advocacy contracts were due for renewal over the next
two years there was a danger that the specialist providers could
potentially then try to win those contracts as well.
We have therefore submitted tenders for 17 London
Boroughs, and as some have undertaken joint commissioning, submitted
8 different tenders. So far we have been successful in two, which
will cover four London Boroughs including Southwark.
4. RESPONSE TO
KEY QUESTIONS
As suggested we are responding to the particular
issues that we have experience of either through our recent IMCA
tendering or through other areas of our work which includes being
a resource for smaller community organisations.
It should be noted that IMCA by its very nature
cannot be provided by the public sector and has to be delivered
within the third or possibly the private sector.
Q3 Does commissioning benefit the third sector?
(a) Will contractual relationships with the
state improve stability within the third sector?
For some organisations it could as they tend
to be 3 year contracts which enable better forward planning, increase
retention of staff etc. It gives a strong basis to build on other
areas of work.
However, for those organisations who do not
have the contractual relationships it could be detrimental as
they can be forgotten, not consulted etc. In our experience, the
more work we do, the more we get offered. We get consulted and
included because we are known because of the relationships we
already have with the public sector.
There is a danger that larger third sector organisations
will secure the more favorable contracts and the smaller organisations
will be left with more difficult or not such lucrative contracts
which would potentially destabilise the sector further.
(b) Will close involvement with service provision
prevent third sector organisations retaining the ability to be
critical of government?
For specialist organisations (which we are not)
we would see this as being a particular issue as they could be
directly lobbying against those who they have been commissioned
to provide a service for. Being a multi purpose organisation delivering
a variety of services we do see this as much as an issue.
However, we are keen to retain a balance of
income source to ensure we do not get in a position of our independence
being threatened by the fear of losing funding overshadowing our
need to be critical of a public body.
(c) Is there a risk that the service providers
will become increasingly bureaucratic?
Yes. This is one of our largest concerns. Undertaking
the IMCA tenders has pushed us dramatically in terms of our knowledge
and capacity and for a local voluntary organisation we are one
of the largest. We can see that if we were to manage a number
of contracts in different service areas we would have to grow
our internal bureaucracy in a way that enables us to more effectively
communicate with the bureaucracy of local government in particular.
Our concern is that one of the major reasons public bodies would
want to commission us is our local knowledge and contact with
communities which could be lost if we become as bureaucratic as
local government.
(d) Is there a risk that third sector organisations
will lose their independence, their identity or their distinctive
ethos?
Yes—Our Trustees have a concern that "we
are not here to become the unpaid servants of the local authority—we
are here to govern a Charity".
We are actively trying to balance where our
income comes from to ensure we do not become a mini local authority.
We will not take on contracts for the sake of it- it has to be
a clear benefit to our service users that we are best placed to
deliver it and should not detract from, or compromise, our existing
work.
(e) Might the third sector become polarised
between large service providing organisations and more radical
groups? If so, would this matter?
Yes we can see already the polarisation and
have concern that the larger national charities will become distanced
from their smaller particularly more local siblings. We would
want to see that where local contracts go to national charities
there is a requirement to use local third sector organisations
where possible to deliver and to build their capacity to do so.
There is a danger that the large national charities
will reduce overall choice by the demise of smaller and medium
sized organisations and local needs and nuances will be overlooked.
Q4 Does commissioning services from the third
sector have any benefits for the state?
(d) How good is the state at managing bidding
processes and defining contractual obligations when commissioning
services?
The management of the bidding processes we have
found with IMCA have varied and a number of issues that have particularly
hindered us are:
(i) Very short turn around of release of
tender documents (one only gave a week) to submission.
(ii) 80 page legal contracts that are irrevocable
on signing just at the tendering stage.
(iii) Said legal contract puts all the liability
on the organisation. We are fortunate in that we have pro bono
legal advice—most organisations would not have this. Our
legal advisors have been horrified by the language and liability
being presented for a £40,000 per year contract compared
to what is usual in the private sector.
(iv) In one instance having to pay over £800
to a credit checking agency just be able to submit a tender. We
have achieved Gold status which means we have a certificate to
say this and can get bumper stickers to confirm it as well. We
have had to understandably question the use of charitable funds
in paying for this credit check.
(v) Having less than a week's notice of being
called to interview.
5. IMPACT ON
SMALLER COMMUNITY
ORGANISATIONS
As previously outlined we have struggled as
a large local provider to submit tenders but feel we have learnt
and equipped ourselves for the coming years when much of our existing
work we will have to tender for.
However we have a huge concern as an organisation
that houses and supports a number of other voluntary and community
organisations as to how they will participate in such processes.
The "level playing field approach" as outlined in the
paper is only level if you are a large organisation or have the
capacity to become large. This therefore does not include the
majority of the third sector and government's commitment to commission
from the sector in the belief that it will provide better, more
efficient and inclusive services could actually kill off the most
efficient and inclusive services there are.
February 2007
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