Big Society
What does this mean for VCS
infrastructure?
Warren Escadale
Policy & Research Manager
VSNW
Big Rhetoric
Create a Big Society which offers “the
potential to completely recast the relationship
between people and the State; citizens
empowered; individual opportunity extended;
communities coming together to make lives
better”.
Two planks:
1. Decentralisation
2. Building civil activity (community / social)
The Big Aim, or how to roll back the
state and win friends
It cuts costs and promises to build income
• Deal with Deficit
• Mend Broken Britain
• Create a new prosperous economy (not public sector dependant)
• Be the good guys – a progressive Small State Conservatism (+ Lib
Dems) with ethics: roots in personal and social responsibility
“A simplistic retrenchment of the state which assumes that better
alternatives to state action will just spring to life unbidden is
wrong…. But I see a powerful role for government in helping
engineer that shift {from state action to social action}”.
David Cameron, November 2009.
Delivering the Big Aims
• Draft Big Society Programme (18th May)
• Cabinet Office Structural Reform Plan (June
2010)
• PSAs gone – Big Society becomes the crossdepartmental policy agenda
• Spending Review 2010: every departmental
plan should focus on ways of supporting Big
Society and mutualism
Cabinet Office Structural Reform Plan:
Big Society Actions
6.1 Make it easier to run a charity, social enterprise or
voluntary organisation
6.2 Get more resources into the sector -social investment,
giving and philanthropy
6.3 Make it easier for sector organisations to work with
the State
6.4 Develop a social norms agenda
6.5 Build the Big Society by encouraging volunteering and
involvement in social action
6.6 Begin development of a National Citizens Service
Key characteristics
In
Out
• Localism / Decentralisation
• Social/Culture Change
• Low cost / financially sustainable:
Is short term, kick-start
investment available?
• Transparency
• Mutualism
• Online Engagement and solutions
• Volunteering
• Community Action +
Responsibility
• Consideration for Equality and
disadvantage
• Innovation + philanthropy
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High Cost
“Big Government”
Regional tier
Quangos
(Emphasis on) Local Authorities
to ensure local democratic
accountability??
Investment vs, Loans??
Bureaucracy
Upfront payment (work
programme)
“A Benefit culture”
PSAs
The contradictions
• Seeing the contradictions:
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transparency vs. reduced red tape
transparency vs. private ownership
private ownership vs. community empowerment
bigger role for civil society vs. reduced investment
Big society vs. excluding those not able to engage?
social change vs. increased social mobility?
Increased democracy vs. less accountable services
-transfer/privatisation vs. transformation/empowered communities
Active communities vs. less investment/rolled back state
Good looking models:
what’s caught the eye so far?
• Paddington Development Trust
• London Citizens and Citizens UK: Community
Organisers
• Grandmentoring (Freud)
• Community Land Trust?
• The Big Lunch
• St Giles Trust
• Nudges
• Clarity
• TN2 and Pickering Cancer Drop-in Centre
• Sure Start Children’s Centres
The Big Themes?
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Ownership/Responsibility/Social Enterprise
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Public sector to private (Right to Request)
Community over public sector assets
Empowering communities
Being fair: disadvantaged communities; social justice; mending ‘Broken Britain’
Work Programme
Localism/Decentralisation
E-Big Society
Innovation and philanthropy
Health agenda: Right to request
Children & Young People
Culture change
Role of Infrastructure
Volunteering
Culture Change
Exclusion, including Financial
What of health and health and social care from a third sector perspective?
A Variety of Approaches
• Lord Nat Wei:
the Big Society at a fundamental level requires us to
get involved and help determine what it looks like in
each place where we live; in some places the state
needs to be bigger while civil society repairs itself or
grows, in others we are itching to take more control
and cannot wait for the state to play a more
facilitative rather than delivery or even
commissioning role; the key is to not fall into “the
state knows best and has all the answers” or Big
Government mindset and to assume a variety of
approaches are needed
(18 June 2010, Big Society Network blog)
VSNW Briefing #36
• For further details about the link between the
Big Society agenda and the Government’s
Spending review 2010 see:
The Big Society: step by step (VSNW Briefing #36)
http://www.vsnw.org.uk/files/Publications/Big_Society_step_by_step_eia.doc