Cameron launches Big Society

The first details of the Government’s Big Society programme have been unveiled by the Prime Minister.
Community projects in four parts of the country – Liverpool, the Eden Valley in Cumbria, the Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and the London Borough of Sutton – will receive an expert organiser and dedicated civil servants to ensure "people power" initiatives get off the ground and inspire a wider change.
The initiatives being championed include a local buy-out of a rural pub, efforts to recruit volunteers to keep museums open, support to speed up broadband supply, and giving residents more power over council spending.
These schemes and others in the future, he said, would represent "the biggest, most dramatic redistribution of power from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street".
Launching the plan in Liverpool on 19th July, David Cameron also revealed further details of the Big Society Bank, which will allow money in bank and building society accounts dormant for at least 15 years to be diverted, enabling charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to take over the running of public services.
Mr Cameron stated his hope that over time, the Bank would provide "hundreds of millions of pounds" to Big Society projects.
Ministers hope the Big Society Bank will be operational quickly enough to see the first money distributed to groups by April 2011.
Some voluntary sector groups have broadly welcomed the idea but expressed concerns about how equipped they are to take on more responsibility, given that public funds are likely to be cut as part of the Budget squeeze.
"It is going to be very challenging for them to play a bigger role if they have fewer resources to do it," said Ben Kernighan of NCVO.

♦ A useful briefing on the Government’s Big Society agenda and Structural Reform Plans has been produced by Voluntary Sector North West. It can be downloaded from the link below: