Cameron names four 'Big Society' testbeds

Four Communities in England will be eligible to apply for funding from a new Big Society Bank under plans outlined today by the Prime Minister to create a generation of volunteers. 

David Cameron said that four "vanguard communities" - in Liverpool, the London Borough of Sutton, Windsor and Maidenhead and Eden Valley in Cumbria - would be the first to be able to apply for funding from the bank, which is to be funded using cash from dormant bank accounts and from private sector investment.               

The communities will be supported by dedicated civil servants intended to help them overcome red tape and bureaucracy in a bid to create "people power"and transfer power from the state to local people, Cameron said.

He said that a project leader will also be identified in each area to be trained as a "community organiser" to help them motivate local residents to contribute towards local initiatives.

"We’ll work with communities to help identify and fund a community organiser for each area. These will be trained people who know how to stimulate and organise local support for – and involvement in – community action," Cameron said.

Some ideas outlined by the Prime Minister to help transfer central powers to local communities included:

- giving council budgets directly to residents of specific streets to allow them to decide how to spend the funds
- allowing local residents to decide on what improvements are made to local transport
- allowing local residents to take over pubs or community services
- allowing volunteers to take a role in running museums so that they extend their opening hours
- giving communities more say in installing alternative energy sources

Cameron said that the Big Society Bank would finance voluntary groups, charities and social enterprises to allow them to help run vital services, Cameron said. "These unclaimed assets, alongside the private sector investment that we will leverage, means that the Big Society Bank will, over time, make available hundreds of millions of pounds of new finance to some of our most dynamic social organisations," he said.

Accounts left untouched for over 15 years will be transferred to the bank with the first funds expected to be distributed from April next year, the Prime Minister said.

Chief executive of the Community Development Finance Association Bernie Morgan said: "With disadvantaged communities around the country crying out for investment, it is essential that the Government launches the bank in time for its ambitious April 2011 deadline."

Charity Bank chief executive Malcolm Hayday said: "We have called for the Big Society Bank to be a wholesale provider of finance to existing independent intermediates, so we are pleased that this seems to be the case. The involvement of current social investment organisations will provide the most effective way to leverage the impact of the money available and therefore multiplying the effect of the funds available.

"The social sector needs to scale up, and if funds are directed towards intermediary organisations like Charity Bank who are established players working towards the long term sustainability of the sector, this is a positive step."

Meanwhile a new study from YouGov’s Public Sector Research Team shows more than a third of British adults have not heard of Cameron’s Big Society plan, despite it being a key plank of the Conservative Party’s election manifesto.

Michael Wagstaff, head of public sector research at YouGov, said most people surveyed found it hard to understand the concept of the Big Society. "If the coalition can get the message across then people are generally supportive of it," he said
 

www.regen.net 19/07/2010