The Church Urban Fund (CUF) supports and represents small, local faith-based social action organisations, which comprise an important sub-sector of the Third Sector. CUF supports organisations with an annual turnover of under £150,000 and which work in the 10% most deprived areas of England or with intrinsically disadvantaged communities (such as homelessness, drug and alcohol problems or refugees). During its 20 year existence CUF has supported over 4,500 projects and awarded over 6,000 grants totalling in excess of £62 million.

In addition to its grants programme, CUF is also a development, infrastructure and advocacy organisation representing the projects it supports.

• Development initiatives, assisted by funding from DCSF, DCLG and Capacitybuilders, include research, training, toolkits, and consultancy for projects.
• Infrastructure developments for projects include facilitating a network between projects through which they are able to communicate with each other and be empowered to share and learn from identified best practice.
• Advocacy work is enabled by our strategic partnership with and ‘Voice' grant from the Cabinet Office's Office of the Third Sector which equips CUF to gather the voices of smaller faith-based social action projects and ensure that they are heard by government and policy-makers at national, regional and local levels.

CUF welcomes this consultation and the opportunity to respond to it. The empowering of local people by involving them in community initiatives and listening to their voice through a participative democratic governance structure ensures that respect and trust is fostered to build strong and cohesive local communities. Our comments are given based on CUF's experience as a national organisation working with many local faith-based social action projects supporting England's poorest communities. However, we are also responding in light of the research we did in autumn 2006 for DCLG and the report that came out of this – ‘Faithful Representation: Faith Representatives on Local Public Partnerships'. This is available at www.cuf.org.uk/page23712516.aspx It demonstrates the real life experiences and practical needs of faith representatives serving on local public partnerships especially LSPs. The findings specifically relate to faith representatives but some may also be relevant to other third sector representatives.

1. Given that the new duty to involve leaves the decision about when and how to involve ‘representatives of local persons' to best value authorities (except police authorities), have we adequately explained the duty and what is required?

There are several findings in Faithful Representation that are relevant to this question:

• LSPs have endorsed the value of having faith representatives to represent local faith communities and faith representatives themselves felt the issues discussed on their partnerships were relevant and important to their local area. Although some representatives reported that they did not always feel comfortable discussing ‘faith' issues.

• Overwhelmingly current faith representatives feel there needs to be more faith representatives on local public partnerships and particularly more younger and female ones. Such representatives must be visible, for example on partnership websites.

• Faith representatives can lack a mandate or authority particularly through being invited / co-opted onto their partnership rather than elected. Their legitimacy and accountability can be reinforced by being linked to a local faith/inter-faith forum or the wider local third sector. However, it should be noted that not all local third sector infra-structure / umbrella organisations are accommodating to local faith communities.

• Many faith representatives are paid full-time clerics and the role of faith representative needs to be opened up. Linked to this is the need to make sure representatives are fully reimbursed for any financial disadvantage they accrue through their involvement. Advertising of future vacancies for faith representatives has also been suggested.

• Faith representatives do have training and support needs that are not being met. Training to do this role includes induction, and on governance, negotiation skills and conflict resolution. Though time for training was reported to be limited.
• Faith representatives felt they were not as well supported as other representatives on their partnerships particularly those from public sector agencies. Greater consideration needs to be made of the use of jargon, practical matters related to meetings (like timing) and not making meetings too ‘public sector'.

• Faith representatives reported that they would appreciate written guidance on their role on their partnership and expectations of all sides as well as on relevant policy issues.

• There is a gap in the understanding by many public sector employees of faith issues generally. So faith literacy training should be available for people involved with implementing this guidance. Every local authority should also have a clearly identified and experienced faith communities' liaison person.

• There is a real need for new and creative ways to engage with all local communities particularly with the fatigue and apathy that is currently seen in response to many consultations.

• It is important that in hearing local voices the differences between race, culture and faith are appreciated.

If the above points need to be made at local levels as well as in this consultation, it is important for it to be made clear how that can be practically done.

An overall and general comment that should be posed relating to this consultation question (and for several others):

• How will this be monitored?
• How will it be enforced?
• What actions / sanctions will be put in place to remedy inadequate local implementation?

2. Have you aligned or do you plan to align your LDF Core Strategy with the Sustainable Community Strategy? We are interested to understand what lessons you may have learned to inform the final guidance.

If you are working towards incorporating your housing strategy with your Sustainable Community Strategy, what lessons have you learned with could inform the final guidance?

CUF would stress how, in preparing the strategies stated here, it is vital to ensure that all locally relevant faith and belief communities have their views included. It should be remembered that the faith sector is very relevant to local well-being not least in terms of its volunteers, its buildings, its long-term local commitment and historical presence, and its ability to reach ‘hard to reach' groups.

3. In defining the duty to co-operate it is important to strike the right balance between using this as the basis to create more effective partnership working locally and not being too prescriptive regarding processes. Have we struck the right balance in the draft guidance?

We would highlight the two following points in relation to this consultation question:

• There is much reference to involving the local third sector but it should be remembered that not all local third sectors have good relations with their local faith communities or should be automatically regarded as representative of them.
• In terms of the list of ‘partner authorities', they all bring their own unique perspective. But it is hard to identify which ones bring an independent and holistic view. According to Faithful Representation, faith representatives bring to local public partnerships an independent voice beholden to no-one.

Again, an overall and general comment that should be posed relating to this consultation question:

• How will this be monitored?
• How will it be enforced?
• What actions / sanctions will be put in place to remedy inadequate local implementation?

4. In defining the implications of ‘having regard to local improvement targets' it is important to strike the right balance between using this as the basis to ensure clear accountability and a greater likelihood that these targets will be met without being too prescriptive regarding processes. Have we struck the right balance in the draft guidance?

The key point here is how are non-partner authorities are to be practically included in ‘having regard to local improvement targets'? In point 5.11, there is emphasis on the need to ensure all partners are involved. For the third sector the key issues here are that there should be guidelines on how the possibility of involvement should be publicised and over what time schedule.

5. Does this section provide sufficient clarity on the trade-offs that best value authorities must make when seeking to provide both quality services to local communities and value for money to the taxpayer?
   
6. We want to place service users and communities at the heart of commissioning. Do you believe that the guidance given here, together with that on the new duty to involve in section two, work together to help achieve that ambition?

We would make the following key points in terms of the emphasis on commissioning:

• Not all third sector organisations are able to or want to engage with commissioning. Some are too small and lack the expertise whilst others run services that are unlikely to be commissioned such as local community development work, counselling, support to people with low level mental health needs and support to those involved in the local sex industry.
• In light of the above it is important that local authorities and other public agencies retain their commitment to giving grants and not to allocate funding only through commissioning.
• Many of the small and local faith based social action projects that CUF supports serving England's poorest communities report that local authorities are often quite responsive to their needs and situation. More particular problems are reported in engaging with certain other public sector agencies like Primary Care Trusts and Learning & Skills Councils. These and similar agencies finance many local services provided by third sector organisations and they need to join in understanding some of the limitations of commissioning as many local authorities do.
• It is vital that the commissioning of services is not just based on the cheapest option and that commissioners are also able to consider the social value in any contract they award.

7. The commitment to three year grant funding for partners in the third and business sectors is important. Have we struck the right balance between using this guidance to strengthen that commitment and not being too prescriptive regarding process?

We welcome the general commitment in the document to a three year funding norm and in point 6.12 to the central importance of measuring user satisfaction and relating it to funding. We are surprised that in this section and the document generally makes no strong reference to the Compact and its role in ensuring good practice in relations between the public and third sectors.

Again, an overall and general comment that should be posed relating to this consultation question as for others:

• How will this be monitored?
• How will it be enforced?
• What actions / sanctions will be put in place to remedy inadequate local implementation?

 

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