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3. Government policies undermine equalities work, new research reveals

Voluntary Sector North West has recently published research undertaken by CLES and partners at the Centre for Local Policy Studies exploring the impact of emerging government policies upon equalities issues in the North West. The research has found that:

1. Reforms have come at a cost
2. New forms of representation are weak and exclude equalities groups
3. Spending cuts are damaging voluntary sector capacity to deliver big society
4. The new policy framework is liable to reinstate old patterns of exclusion and discrimination
5. Implementation is disproportionately harming the most excluded
6. The capacity of equalities groups to participate and hold public bodies to account is heading towards a point of critical failure.

A full copy of the research and its executive summary are available below:

Open for all? The changing nature of equality under big society and localism

Open for All? Executive summary

VSNW and CLES will be formally launching the research and a policy publication at two events in London on Thursday 23^rd February. Further details will appear here shortly.