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The need to recognise variety and diversity

Matthew Jackson

Senior Policy Researcher

Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES)

I read with interest Nicola Carroll’s article, ‘Three’s a crowd?’ investigating the progress of relations between local government and the third sector. The article touched upon the key imbalance that exists between policy rhetoric around the engagement of the third sector in local governance mechanisms such as Local Area Agreements and what is actually happening in reality. This imbalance is something that the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) has also been researching in recent years.

Whilst CLES are supportive of a third sector role in public service delivery and to an extent in local governance, there are limits to the scale of the role, key barriers to involvement and a number of key questions that both the sector, local government and central government need to consider to enable brokerage to be effective in the future.

The third sector need to continue to ask themselves whether strategic involvement in local governance comes at the expense of their operational objectives and project activities, particularly in the most deprived areas and in thematic areas of delivery which are under resourced and in which there is insufficient capacity. Third sector organisations continue to play an important role in local places in advocating the needs of local communities and helping to engage people in the decision making process.

A further key question is around whether local government in policy terms truly recognises the diversity and variety of the sector. Engagement in local governance needs to recognise that engagement can come along a spectrum of roles ranging from ‘as a communicator of project activities’ to ‘as a strategic deliverer’ reflecting the diversity of size, scale, activity and strategic skills of the organisation.

Central government needs to recognise that in policy terms that not all third sector organisations may want or need to be involved in local governance and that the third sector may not be ready to be engaged strategically. Investment therefore needs not only to skim the surface in raising the strategic capacity of third sector infrastructure bodies but recognise that smaller, more local organisations also require capacity building in strategic skills.

Matthew Jackson, 0161 236 7036, matthewjackson@cles.org.uk