Memorandum from In-volve
In-volve is a charity providing drug treatment
services and personal development programmes to young people at
risk under contract to local authorities and health authorities.
We are very keen to contribute to the Public Administration Select
Committee inquiry into Third Sector Commissioning as we believe
we have evidence they should be aware of but the timescale for
replies is impossibly tight. We were informed about the LVSC on
23 February. One week's notice does not allow us to pull together
what we want to say when senior management all have full diaries.
This does make us question the quality of the consultation exercise.
Our experience of commissioning by local authorities
and health authorities is:
(1) Since the Compact, commissioning practice
has been much worse. Guidelines on simplifying the process have
been ignored and tender processes are now around 4 times as expensive
in terms of preparation time, having gone from tender submission
and presentation to PQQ, pre-tender presentation, tender submission,
tender presentation, and site visit.
(2) Since the Government suggested payment
in advance, all but one of our contracts has been switched to
payment in arrears.
(3) Since the Government suggested that
the NHS contract out services we have seen drug services increasingly
return to the NHS. NHS managers seem to assume without question
that our sector lacks the competence and professionalism of their
own, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. We are not at
the table when PCTs make their funding decisions.
(4) Not one of our commissioners operates
full-cost recovery. Competitive tendering and aggressive commissioning
has driven management fees down below feasible levels.
(5) We are not invited for our views on
the future shape of services. We are generally excluded, for example,
from discussions about there shaping of services under Every Child
Matters and Children's Trusts until all the important decisions
and structures have been decided upon.
(6) Increasingly contracts define budgets,
staffing and methodology, in effect turning the sector into an
extension of statutory provision.
(7) The voluntary sector has to jump through
massively bureaucratic and tight monitoring hoops that the statutory
sector does not impose upon its own service delivery.
(8) When budgets get cut, the voluntary
sector is always the first to bear the brunt.
The Select Committee does not seem to be asking
about these issues although they directly impact upon the answers
to the questions they ARE asking.
Please convey our feelings to the Select Committee.
February 2007
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