Letter: Planned ‘Devolution’ Will Not Help the Voluntary Sector

Published on: 3 Jan, 2025
Updated on: 4 Jan, 2025

From Chris Stanton

In response to: SCC Leader Seeking Postponement of County Council Elections to Focus on Devolution

What sort of community do we want to see as a result of Devolution in Surrey?

In a single generation our local council services have been so hollowed out by central Government policy that very little discretionary or non-statutory grant funding support is now available to the voluntary sector as it once was.

When the late Richard Fox and I founded Guildford Job Club in 2009 as a response to the Credit Crunch. We started with a £10,000 grant from Guildford Borough Council and were subsequently able to secure further grants from Surrey County Council and other boroughs in Surrey to help people return to employment when their jobs had disappeared.

One modest grant from the European Social Fund (alas, no more) enabled us to demonstrate a 70 per cent success rate in our job club approach compared to the mere 25 per cent achieved by corporate Government contractors against the already modest 40 per cent targets they’d been set.

That was localism in action!

Now retired and wearing a new hat as chair of trustees at Surrey Community Action I fear the total removal of locally-targeted, grant-funded support to voluntary sector charities and organisations as a result of Devolution.

They should beware of the “Law of Unintended Consequences”.

The VCSE (Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise) sector is barely on the Labour Government’s radar as it adopts and adapts the previous Conservative Government’s Devolution agenda without understanding the damage likely to be caused to already cash-strapped community services.

The grant money formerly available through councils has already dried up and services that they used to provide and were then contracted to Surrey Community Action for delivery by ourselves and/or our voluntary sector partner organisations are now at real and potentially terminal risk.

Since the Covid pandemic volunteering in all forms has dropped considerably and – short of a “Dig for Victory” approach across our communities – it is difficult to see how the UK’s public services can stop their long, sad decline from being once-great beacons of civic excellence.

Devolution in Surrey needs to acknowledge the role of our county’s VCSE sector in creating and supporting our vibrant local communities – before it’s too late.