Section 114 and the Community Sector

 

With section 114 in the news again, I’m looking back to what happened in Northamptonshire County Council and the implications and outcomes for local third sector organisations in Nottingham who are now facing this. Much was written about the car crash of local government that was Northamptonshire County Council. For those in Northamptonshire, the warning signs were clear as for the years before virtually every Tory policy attacking working people were trialled out in the organisation.

In 2015-16 saw the council workforce moved out of NJC terms and conditions in a version of what we would now call fire and re-hire. This was essentially the organisation forcing the people working for it, to bear the financial burden of strategic and managerial failure. There were a variety of large scale expensive projects to re-configure, privatise and outsource huge amount of the service delivery of the Council, with one historic Chief Executive having a vision of the council ending up with just 500 employees.

When the crunch came with the two section 114 notifications being issued in 2018, the majority of the voluntary sector investment was in a single social wellbeing contract which was already cut from  £2.6 million in 2016 to £1.6 million in 2018. When the county emerged out of the dust of local government re-organisation, most of the groups delivering services were found at least some re-source apart from the single Black organisation, Dostiyo Asian Women and Girls organisation. Despite “concerns” of the then Executive Director for Adults, Communities and Wellbeing, there was no resource forthcoming for them to continue the work.

Smaller grants to grassroots organisations disappeared overnight in July 2018 as £1.3 million delivered by Northamptonshire Community Foundation disappeared overnight. Behind every single one of these cuts is the human faces of people losing work and communities losing the services that they so desperately rely on.

The key issues for the local voluntary and charitable sector was not only the insecurity delivering a difficult environment to work in, but the lack of base or core funding means the local groups do not have the leverage of those in other parts of the country who do have this. From the experience in Northamptonshire, it will be services to disabled people and black communities that will be hit hardest. This as at a time when, the cost of living crisis is hammering those communities hardest. This is why it is so important that there is organisation by trade unions in those communities where section 114’s are being issued. The question is whether this is happening effectively enough, with enough focus and with the right insight to be effective.