Latest News
Mobile Library Service
CVSF has been contacted by Cllr Geoffrey Bowden the Green Party Councillor Queen's Park Ward and Cabinet Member for Culture Recreation & Tourism.
Cllr Bowden would like to explore the possibility of the community and voluntary sector becoming involved in the delivery of mobile library services in the city. He has written a letter to the sector with more detailed information and has requested that anyone interested might contact him directly.
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.
Neighbourhood Councils
You can read CVSF's bitesize information in our policy briefings section.
Please follow this link for documents on Neighbourhood Councils and the Open Public Services White Paper.
CVSF Info Sheet: Opening Public Services
The Government Open Public Services White Paper is now out for comment. This White Paper contains familiar themes: Commissioning, personalisation, and Localism. To help CVSF have published an information sheet.
CVSF Briefing: Community Asset Transfer
Community asset transfer describes the process of unused public sector assets being taken over and used by community and voluntary organisations. Please visit our website to find our latest briefing.
Reps Council Meeting
Elected CVSF reps get together quarterly in a Reps Council meeting to share issues, concerns, ideas and knowledge about CVSF representation. The minutes from this meeting will be available to CVSF members following the meeting. To find out who your elected reps are visit the CVSF website. For more information about your elected reps email: clair@cvsectorforum.org.uk or call 01273 810241.