Review of government efficiency could mean longer terms and different responsibilities
Charity chief executives are pressing for changes to the way their contracts are renewed as part of Sir Peter Gershon's review of government efficiency.

The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations wrote this week to Gershon suggesting that:

  • contracts should be made longer – at present many charities have annually renewed contracts for long-term projects, which increases administration and uncertainty
  • a charity's main funder should handle the financial monitoring of the charity and the main regulator should handle all the regulation for that body
  • alternatively, all regulators and funders should ask for the same information
  • funders should pay for a proportion of charities' overheads as part of their contracts.

Gershon, the former head of the Office of Government Commerce, met the ACEVO last month to find out how to increase efficiency in the government's relationships with charities delivering public services.

The Treasury has also been investigating whether the voluntary sector has the capacity to take on more public sector work.

In a separate move, discussions have begun on an Office of Government Commerce proposal to monitor the performance of charities on government contracts. A group from the ACEVO met John Oughton, the new OGC chief executive, to discuss the idea a month ago and is due to meet him again next week.

ACEVO chief executive Stephen Bubb said: "In the process of working with the OGC on the Gershon review, we have made good links with them and are deciding whether we might be more collaborative in working with them and even doing some performance monitoring perhaps on a joint basis, looking at business performance or outcomes of projects."

He added: "It's also an acknowledgment that a significant amount of public services are delivered through voluntary sector organisations so the procurement agreement needs to be right."

Jeremy Swain, chief executive of homelessness charity Thames Reach Bondway, and a member of the ACEVO, said: "When we are running an initiative we need to find out how we are doing and ways of measuring it.

"The OGC wanted to find out if there was a need, desire or possibility of its system being useful to us."

Gershon's review will be published in June but a copy has already been leaked.

It suggested that up to to £15bn of public funds could be saved each year through better procurement, a reshaping of back office work and by cutting 80,000 civil service jobs (HT 20 February, page 9).

Source

Housing Today