Why a Norfolk-wide VCS learning consortium?
'Releasing resources to the front line - Independent Review of Public Sector Efficiency ('The Gershon Report') of 2004 looked at aggregation of procurement services as a means of increasing efficiency. This has resulted in Government preferences for this type of larger, collective procurement process, filtering through into the kind of arrangements we have seen recently as regards regional contracts for Department of Work and Pensions (distributing Jobcentre Plus contracts) and the regional and county-wide emphasis on LSC contracts.
In addition to this, 'Working Together' was an LSC report released in 2004 which aimed to promote better working between the LSC and the VCS. It felt consortia was a most effective tool for this:
"A...(voluntary sector)...consortium approach can benefit the LSC by providing a single contracting and reporting point, assuming day-to-day monitoring and quality assurance on its behalf. Many local offices have made it clear their preference for this sort of arrangement."
This funding climate dictates those larger bodies responsible for distributing funding favouring the awarding of fewer but larger contracts to reduce contract management burdens for those organisations. To enable the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) to be in a position to hold those larger contracts and to distribute these funds to partner organisations, consortia must be formed. Development work on learning consortia for the VCS is underway all across the country and the development work of a Norfolk VCS learning consortium is supported by the Eastern Region VCS Learning Consortia (ELC) network and the Cover VCS Skills Strategy Manager - Eastern Region.
