Joint Forum meeting on the cuts to our sector - 15 May

The Joint Forum is made up of representatives from central and local government  and the voluntary and community Sector, and provides a mechanism to facilitate open discussion of key issues which shape the relationship between the voluntary and community sector and the public sector, influence and examine the impact of public policy and support opportunities for greater co-operation and joined up activity to better serve the people of Northern Ireland.

Given the recent developments in funding relationships between government and our sector, as our publicity around this highlights, all normal Joint Forum business was suspended and the agenda was written around a single item issue: the cuts to our sector.

Seamus McAleavey began the presentation by outlining the disproportionate nature of the cuts to the voluntary and community sector due to those being quickest and easiest. Seamus stated that organisations in the voluntary and community sector had a realistic and pragmatic approach to the tough budget situation being faced by the NI Executive and he believed that the voluntary and community sector should not be offered unconditional protection but neither should it be targeted arbitrarily.  

Seamus outlined other work that NICVA were undertaking to draw attention to the cuts including meeting with each Minister, ongoing engagement with the junior Ministers concerning their new budgetary oversight role and collecting Cutswatch data on the impact of the cuts. Lisa McElherron provided the Joint Forum with a presentation on the information collected and the emerging patterns.

Representatives from the sector provided the Joint Forum with how the cuts were affecting their organisations and service users.

Eddie McDowell, Churches Community Work Alliance, spoke about the cumulative impact of the cuts, the lack of consultation and the redundancies that had to be made as a result. Eddie told the Joint Forum that the voluntary and community sector was being given contradictory advice: organisations were told to diversify their funding from different departments and then are being hit twice making it more difficult to plan.

Anne McVicker, Women’s Resource and Development Agency (WRDA), spoke about the disproportionate impact the cuts were having on women: women comprised the majority of both the public sector and voluntary and community sector staff where the cuts were being made, and services that worked for women and their children were being hit harder than other areas. Anne spoke about the importance of core funding to women’s organisations and if even a small cut is made, it has an impact on the organisation’s ability to carry out its other services and draw down other funding streams.

Geoff Nuttall, WWF and Northern Ireland Environment Link, spoke about the lack of a strategic focus to the funding decisions and that the environment sector could not have anticipated the scale of the cuts made. Geoff told the Joint Forum that the sector had been moving towards strategic partnerships with officials for a number of years which these cuts have called into question.

Jonny Currie, East Belfast Community Development Agency (EBCDA), stated that evidence they had gathered in East Belfast spoke about devastating consequences on organisations’ capacity to deliver. Jonny told the Joint Forum that when funding decisions are made to protect certain public sector delivered services, the voluntary and community sector organisations that are needed to support that delivery is not considered. Jonny continued that voluntary and community organisations do a lot of work that no-one else can or will do, and there is an expectation that in spite of the cuts the organisations will continue to deliver the service anyway.

The joint chairs Anne O’Reilly (NIWRN) and Michael Donnelly (DSD – Voluntary Sector Unit) chaired a discussion between the two groups on how we could proceed forward to ensure that this never happens again.

Early Engagement

All members of the Joint Forum agreed that there must be early engagement for the next budget to ensure public sector officials were aware of the impact of the cuts on sector organisations and sector organisations could have meaningful engagement in the process. It was agreed that the quality of the concordat was only apparent when it was used and it was important decisions made were transparent and departments were accountable to them.

Both groups agreed that the time frame in which departments had to make decisions and organisations had to respond to them was challenging. The absence of a clear set of priorities made funding decisions more difficult for organisations as they were unclear as to what public services they should prioritise in the context of reducing resources.

Public sector group members raised difficulties in coordinating cuts within their own departments when there were many different areas. Furthermore, between other departments there was no central information source available that officials could consult for information on where organisations or services were being impacted by the funding decisions of other departments.

Joint chair Anne O’Reilly raised important governance issues facing organisations in the wake of the cuts being made as board members were being asked to manage risk and performance which was proving extremely difficult on a month to month basis.

Oversight role

Margaret Rose McNaughton, Director of ALBs and Financial Governance Division in OFMdFM, was in attendance. Margaret Rose has been appointed to work with the 2 Junior Ministers in their role as agreed by the Executive. In the lead up to the Comprehensive Spending Review it was agreed that officials should be engaging with the sector. NICVA would have ongoing engagement with the Junior Ministers to support the oversight task. Margaret Rose told members that the Department for Finance and Personnel and OFMdFM were meeting next week to have a discussion about the possibility of a Transition Fund.

Members stated that there could be a Joint Forum subcommittee to consider the cumulative impact of cuts. There is an existing Finance Director group that could be engaged with that could be kept involved with Joint Forum work to ensure they understand the impact their decisions will have on the sector and demonstrable outcomes VCS organisations can show.The existing DSD funding database could be consulted by departments. 

Next steps

DSD are going to share the framework that DSD Minister Mervyn Storey used in making sure the cuts implemented by the department were proportionate, outcomes focused and didn’t have unintended consequences on VCS organisations.  Chairperson of the social development committee Alex Maskey commended the Minister on his approach at the private member’s motion debate on 18 May.

A Joint Forum subgroup is going to be established that will examine the cuts framework, how that can be applied to other departments and improving information sharing between departments, and between departments and the voluntary and community sector. There is ongoing conversations between NICVA and OFMdFM on the establishment of a Transition Fund.