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Could you chair a strategic working group?
Chair of the Transforming Local Infrastructure Project Strategic Working Group
Time commitment: approx ½ day month, including chairing quarterly meetings
Immediate start until September 2013
£2,000 per year plus reasonable expenses
A partnership* in Brighton and Hove has embarked on a project which will review and re-design support services for grassroots groups, charities and not-for-profit organisations in the city, and seek to merge a number of services currently provided by different organisations into a single infrastructure support organisation. To achieve this, the partnership is recruiting a Chair to steer the Strategic Working Group which has responsibility for oversight of the project.
The Chair will provide leadership to the Strategic Working Group in overseeing implementation of the project. This will include chairing quarterly meetings, facilitating effective collaborative working, ensuring the Group remains true to its aims and key objectives and complies with its Terms of Reference. The Chair will help ensure that the project is responsive to the needs of the sector and be an ambassador for the project in representing the Group’s collective views and decisions.
To find out more please read the accompanying Advert and Role Description.
CVSF 2012 Members Survey
Dear CVSF Member
CVSF 2012 Members Survey
We are conducting this survey to:
* Find out the needs of our members in the current political and financial climate
* Learn how we can best place the resources we have to support your group or organisation
* Gather evidence about the needs of our members for commissioners and funders of the community and voluntary sector across the City
As a thank you for completing it, you will have the option to enter the FREE PRIZE DRAW to win a Montezuma’s indulgence evening for your group or organisation; a bubbly and chocolate tasting experience for up to 20 people, which you could use for a volunteer celebration, a team building experience or maybe even a raffle prize.
The CLOSING DATE is Friday 27th April 2012.
The survey contains 5 short sections and will take around 10-15 minutes to complete in total. All answers you give will remain completely confidential.
We would be really grateful if you could please visit Survey Monkey and complete the survey.
If you have any questions about the survey or would like to speak to a member of staff, please call 01273 810230 or email info@cvsectorforum.org.uk
Best wishes
CVSF Staff Team
CVSF urges protection of frontline services
On Thursday 23 February the city council will look to agree its budget for the next financial year. With ever decreasing public funding and the urgent need to preserve services for those in need, there will no doubt be tough and difficult decisions to be made.
The Brighton and Hove Community and Voluntary Sector Forum (CVSF) has been campaigning hard on behalf of the city’s many community groups and voluntary organisations, and the residents and communities that they serve, to ensure that any cuts to services and reductions to budgets are undertaken in a transparent and proportionate manner.
CVSF and its many members are of the opinion that cuts to services should be based on a clear understanding of the needs of residents, and a clear understanding of the impact of reductions or closures to services. CVSF representatives have argued throughout the council’s budget scrutiny process that priority frontline services need to be protected.
CVSF has urged the council to avoid ‘salami slicing’ budgets and moving funds from one area to another for political reasons. Services to the city’s most vulnerable and most in need families should be at the forefront of budget expenditures and should be protected wherever possible.
CVSF believes that there are genuine savings and efficiencies that can be found by reducing council overheads which means that frontline services, and services provided by non-profit providers in the city can be protected.
A spokesperson for CVSF said “The council is faced with making some tough decisions on Thursday. Decisions that will directly effect a wide range of services in the city from allotments, to nurseries, to libraries. CVSF has campaigned hard in recent months to urge the council to prioritise direct service delivery and services delivered by the community and voluntary sector. We would not support decisions or amendments to budgets which seek to remove funding away from direct service provision, particularly when there are savings which can be found from other routes.”
To see a copy of CVSF members views and key messages which CVSF representatives have been championing on their behalf please click here.
You can also find out more about our involvement in the Budget Scrutiny process here.
Local partnership secures £300k to support community and voluntary action
A partnership of six Brighton and Hove based organisations has successfully secured £300,000 of funding from the Big Lottery Fund. The money will be used to improve the support given to grassroots groups, charities and other not-for-profit organisations and to provide more co-ordinated support to volunteering in the city.
Libby Young, Acting Joint CEO, at the Community and Voluntary Sector Forum said: ‘It is excellent news for the city that we have successfully secured this funding. The hard work will now begin to make sure that support for voluntary and community action in the city is high quality and sustainable through these challenging times.’
A project will now take place over the next 18 months to explore the potential for merging a number of services which are currently provided by different organisations, into one main support organisation for community and voluntary action in the city.
The project will also build relationships with local businesses to enable their expertise and skills to support community and voluntary action.
Giles Ings, ABIR Architects, Chair of Brighton and Hove Skills Exchange said: "It's great news that this bid has been successful and the business members of Skills Exchange are looking forward to exploring how our pro bono work can be part of providing the best possible support for local charities".
Community and grassroots groups have already been involved in identifying what help and support they would like and how they would like to receive it. However, the partnership will be speaking to more groups in the city to make sure they can get the support they need.
Brighton and Hove City Council has also pledged its support to this project.
David Murray, Strategic Director for Communities said: “On behalf of Brighton & Hove City Council, I am very pleased to support this project and its plans to improve support for our valuable local community and voluntary sector. This project should help to ensure a higher quality of support to the sector through the challenging years ahead, with the consequent benefits better services bring to our communities.”
Ends
Notes to editors:
- The government has made £30 million available to help change support in local areas to community and voluntary action. This funding is being managed by the Big Lottery Fund on behalf of the government Cabinet Office.
- For a copy of the Cabinet Office’s press release:http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/government-invests-%C2%A330-million-modernise-local-charity-support-services
- For a copy of the Big Lottery Fund’s press release: http://news.biglotteryfund.org.uk/pr_020212_tli_eng_local_charity_support_services_?regioncode=-uk
- The partnership which secured £300,000 to change support services in Brighton and Hove is made up of the following organisations:
Brighton and Hove Community and Voluntary Sector Forum: www.cvsectorforum.org.uk
Brighton and Hove Volunteer Centre: www.bh-impetus.org/volunteer_centre/index.php
Impetus: www.bh-impetus.org
The South East Wellbeing Consortium
The Business Community Partnership: www.bhbcp.org.uk
The Trust for Developing Communities: www.trustdevcom.org.uk
The Community and Voluntary Sector Forum (CVSF) is the lead organisation for this project. For more information about the project please contact: Libby Young, Acting Joint CEO, 01273 810237 or libby@cvsectorforum.org.uk
What do CVSF members think about the draft budget?
The CVSF event Your Budget, Your Say: CVSF Consultation on the Council’s Budget Proposals for 2012/13 took place on Wednesday 11 January 2012.
The well attended and lively event was an opportunity for our membership to feed in their thoughts on the overall process and any additional concerns that they would like taken forward to the next roundtable event.
Click HERE to read the resulting CVSF Position Statement, Event Report and BHCC draft budget presentation.
Work Choice programme
Please click here for information on the Work Choice support for people who have a disability available through Job Centre Plus.
News from the CVSF Conference
On 1st November 2011 CVSF held its AGM and 'State of the Sector' Conference. We would like to thank the 106 people who participated in the day and made it a conference to remember, and the community caterers who kept us all so superbly well fed: Trailer Trashed, MERNET and the Oromo community group.
The day began with the results of our survey on the state of the sector, a presentation from Rachel Newton of Urban Forum on localism and neighbourhood councils, followed by a lively AGM and Councillor Bill Randall who talked about tackling inequality, empowering communities and developing a sustainable city. In the afternoon community groups led on open space discussions and asked some important questions to a panel of public sector partners on equalities, volunteering, commissioning, collaboration and communication. An audio clip of the questions put to the panel and their responses will be available soon.
Useful information from the day
We were excited to see many people talking about the conference via social media, and you can follow the day as it happened on twitter here http://tinyurl.com/67jc3fy.
Following questions asked by CVSF members during the AGM part of the day we thought you might be interested in the NCVO guide we used to select our auditors which you can find on the NCVO website. You might also be interested in the NJC pay scales which are used by CVSF trustees to set CVSF staff salaries, and the current CVSF staff structure.
Other useful documents from the day can be found below.
- Conference report from the day
- Programme from the day
- Presentation slides from the day
- Recording of Question Time Panel
- Written Summary of Question Time Panel
- Additional written responses from the Panel
- Urban Forum Speaker Notes
- Attendees' views from the day
- Data from the State of the Sector Survey 2011
- State of the Sector - you said... we did...
- CVSF Annual Report for 2010-11
- CVSF Annual Accounts for 2010-11
- DRAFT minutes from the CVSF AGM 2011
CVSF's Budget Scrutiny Process
LIVE UPDATES AVAILABLE HERE!
Over the next few years the council is faced with a tough economic choice: protect front line services to the city’s most vulnerable people whilst having to find significant and far reaching savings. The magnitude of these savings is not yet fully known but it will be in the region of £50 million over the next three years.
There remains a large degree of uncertainty about the impact of the cuts on the community and voluntary sector. One thing is certain however, there will be real and significant cuts to budgets in 2012/13 and 2013/14. As a sector we cannot expect to rely on the same levels of funding and support from Brighton and Hove City Council.
Nevertheless CVSF and its representatives are exerting as much influence as possible during the budget scrutiny process to ensure that priority services delivered by the community and voluntary sector are protected. You can find out more about how we will go about this in CVSF's Budget Scrutiny Process document.
Please also save the date for our event Your Budget, Your Say: CVSF Consultation on the Council’s Budget Proposals for 2012/13 which will take place on Wednesday 11 January 2012 930-1300 at The Friends Meeting House, to book your place please email Lisa Mytton.
Kind Regards,
Gordon McCullough
Interim CEO of CVSF
Exploring voluntary sector use of data in Brighton & Hove
The DataBridge project came out of CityCamp Brighton in March 2011 from a conversation about how the voluntary and community sector (VCS) could make the most of open data and capitalise on the burgeoning open data movement.