Boundaries Changing

Well it doesn't take long before turbulence is experienced. The Chancellor announces more cuts beyond the general Election in May 2015, and those already in place have a real impact. Regular readers will know we have links to our former sister organisation in West Sussex and have some legacy funding to support their voluntary youth sector members. I met with WSCVYS former CEO yesterday to plan various workshops in West Sussex, so I keep tabs on what is happening there.....This includes £61 mill cuts on a £600 mill budget and £1.2 mill off the Youth Service, and the cutting  of WSCC's Chief Executive, and his post completely.

Meanwhile the Cabinet Office is promoting an initiative with local authorities called Delivering Differently aimed at encouraging local authorities to put services out to Mutuals, social enterprises or Local Authority Traded Companies.The familiar distinctions between the public, private and charity sector continue to be blurred which seems inevitable, but this MUST be balanced by an increase in the powers of Select C’tees, and Audit  in both Central and Local government.

The risk is that without such a check and balance we will see a complete loss of public accountability, because the chain from politician to commissioning public servant, to prime contractor/LATC/mutual,  to sub-contractor, to sub-sub- contractor is so long, and complex that accountability will be lost. The result will be malpractice at best, and corruption at worst. The recent example of Serco being in trouble with the Ministry of Justice about various malpractices is the sort of episode I have in mind.

More prosaically, my week has been about catching up with various internal matters including a staff-time cost recording system against projects, and shaping up our Pqqasso Level 2 bid. Also pushing hard to get the deal done on Surrey Youth Focus taking over the property management of Woking Youth Arts centre , and doing so through setting up another social enterprise to handle it.Today is the closing date for applications for our CommUniLAB project manager post - very encouraging response thus far.

Just re-reading Thomas Merton's autobiograhy - "Seven Storey Mountain " - he being one of the two greatest spiritual writers of the 20th century - as I'm going to a very distinguished public lecture about Merton next week. As Assistant England Rugby Manager I am pleased with the new squad just announced..but not with the performance of Manchester United! Just signed up for yoga classes - "strengthening core" etc .