Election bandwagon is rolling

We have, today, just issued guidance for Third Sector organisations relating to their conduct during the election campaign . If any Third Sector organisation does not receive an email explaining the guidance within the next 3 days please let me know and we will respond by return.

In terms of the election campaign , for our part we will making known to all political parties the issues that we are currently campaigning on which are:

Rural Development Programme (RDP)- there are a significant number of issues ranging from micro management / bureaucracy through to exposing charities , voluntary and community organisations to unnecessary financial risks. To date the Welsh Assembly Government have not been able to respond as it would appear European legislation is required. There is the wider issue also namely how involved are third sector organisations in the delivery of projects funded under the RDP, again this picture is patchy across Wales given that I know of one County Council where they have indicated they do not want to be the delivery agent which really opens the programme to third sector involvement whereas in other areas an opposite view has been taken. In Denbighshire the leads on the eight projects are County Council, Cadwyn Clwyd and Coleg Llandrillo and note there is no third sector lead.

Funding Code of Practice for Voluntary Sector - we currently have across Wales an inconsistent approach by statutory bodies to signing off the code. The Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) have taken a lead by fully committing to the code but equally we require all local statutory bodies to sign up as well. Ideally legislation is required which prescribes that all statutory bodies sign up to the code that has been adopted by WAG without any changes that effectively could dilute the impact of the Code.

Scrutiny Committees - I know that a measure is to be introduced which will encourage Local Councils to co opt third sector representatives onto their scrutiny committees. However what we want is prescription whereby all County Councils , by law, are required to co-opt. Again we would then have a consistent process throughout Wales whereas at present some Councils do and some don't . Unfortunately Denbighshire declined our request for co-option last year.

Procurement and Commissioning

We are actively encouraging all local statutory bodies to commission more of their "in house" public services so that the third sector get the chance to tender for the work.
On this issue I am confident that we will have news very shortly as Denbighshire County Council and their CEO Mohammed Mehmet have been very supportive and so here we are looking for support from all political parties to promote and encourage our efforts locally to step up the commissioning programme.

This list is by no means comprehensive but at least it gives a flavour as to the kind of issues we are trying to address at a local level.