Department of Justice reiterates Minister's Budget priorities in the first of our consultation meetings

Permanent Secretary of the Department, Nick Perry, attended the meeting, along with Anthony Harbinson, Director of Justice Delivery, Carol Moore, Director of Justice Policy and Glyn Capper, Head of Financial Services Division.

The meeting provided the Permanent Secretary and his colleagues with the opportunity to highlight some of the challenges the Department will face but also reiterated the Minister’s priorities, including:

• protecting front line services
• engaging with voluntary and community sector to deliver cost effective services
• squeezing ‘backroom’ and administrative functions to ensure vulnerable groups receive required support.

Mr Perry explained that although a draft budget has been drawn up, an initial screening process is currently being undertaken with all the agencies under the Department of Justice. This includes the Youth Justice Agency, Northern Ireland Prison Service and the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunal Service. This process will allow each agency to examine where savings can be made and a more robust savings plan will be released in the week beginning 17 January 2011.

The meeting, which was attended by a cross cutting range of voluntary and community sector representatives, highlighted issues such as:

• the use of shared services for government departments
• ring fencing of funding
• what the role of the voluntary and community sector will be
• the use of equality impact assessments to shape policy, and
• what role will DOJ have in the proposed £20 million allocated per year for the Social Investment Fund at OFMdFM which is to be used to help transform interface areas across Northern Ireland.

For details of the other consultation meetings in this series, go to www.nicva.org/news/consultation-draft-budget-gets-underway

To see Budget proposals from each individual department, see www.nicva.org/news/departments-begin-make-spending-plans-available