Office for Civil Society consultation on improving support for frontline organisations

The Office for Civil society has launched a consultation to get your thoughts and ideas on the role it can play in ensuring that civil society in England is supported and encouraged in the coming years. In particular, it looks to find out what help, support and and influence would help it to respond to the current public sector cuts and take up the additional responsibilities that the new government is seeking to place upon it.

The consultation asks for your specific feedback on proposals in six key areas:

• Easier access to advice through online services
• Access to wider sources of support, particularly from the private sector
• Direct support to frontline organisations through bursaries
• Consolidation of support services through merger and collaboration
• Local public sector partnerships
• Partnerships between Central Government and national infrastructure organisations.

Hackney, as an area with a vibrant and wide-ranging third- and voluntary-sector, should ensure that it's voice is heard in the consultation, and that our views and needs are reflected in the responses.

To respond visit www.strongercivilsociety.org.uk to download the consultation document and send your response.

The consultation is open until 6 January 2011.

Roving Surgery Saturday 20th November

This Saturday, the 20th November, your three local Labour councillors will be out and about on De Beauvoir Estate. If you live on the estate and would like to talk to us about a local issue or a problem you have, please email us at debeauvoir@hackney-labour.org.uk or leave a message or send a text on 07722 868937, and we will make sure we knock on your door. We will be there from 2pm.

 

We hold regular roving surgeries all around the Ward. If you would like Gulay, Rob and Tom to come to your street or estate - do let us know, and we'll add it to our programme for an early visit. 

New home for Dalston's Arcola Theatre

Dalston’s famous Arcola Theatre is to move into new premises at Dalston Junction, just to the north of De Beauvoir.

Their new space will be on Ashwin Street, in the Colourworks. As well two professional theatre spaces, their new home will have youth and community and rehearsal spaces as well as an expanded Arcola Energy research centre and a new café / bar.

The Colourworks itself is a historic building, being the former home of Reeves, the world famous fine art paint manufacturers, whose paint was used by artists such as Turner and Constable. It is owned by theBootstraps Trust, an organization that exists to improve the social, economic and cultural environment of Dalston.

The final production at the current Arcola Theatre will be The Cradle Will Rock by Mark Blitzstein, which closes on December 18^th at which point the theatre will move to its new home.

You can find more about the work, and their fundraising campaign here, follow the progress of their work on their blog, and they are also posting weekly video updates of the work so far. You can see the first of them here.

Comprehensive Spending Review and it's impact on Hackney - an update

The impact of the comprehensive spending review on Hackney is now becoming clearer.

It now appears that the majority of cuts from central government funding to Hackney Council will be made next year, rather than being spread evenly over four years as initially indicated. Specifically, the information that has currently been released by the Government suggests that Hackney will experience budget cuts of around 20 per cent in the first year, not the 7.25 per cent initially stated by the Coalition.

If correct, this could mean a reduction in government funding to Hackney Council of between £50 and £60million in the next financial year (2011/12). This means that, unless there are further funding streams that are still to be revealed by the Government to make up this shortfall, the Council will be faced with having to make devastating decisions.

In the lead up to the Chancellor's announcement, Hackney Council had successfully found savings of some £26million, some 6-7 per cent of its budget, to be ready for the Coalition Government's reduction to next year's local authority grants. In identifying these savings we intended to buy ourselves a 12-month breathing space to avoid snap front-line service reductions. This new information suggests that the buffer that Hackney has built up will be swept away by the massive cuts over the next year.

The Prime Minister, the Chancellor, and the Secretary of State - in writing to all council leaders - have confirmed that the average loss in real terms to local authorities would be around 7 per cent each year over the next four years. However the specific budget cuts on a council by council basis are yet to be announced. Extra grant funding has been given to areas like Hackney in the past for good reason, but we will now potentially see reductions in grant of more than twice the national average.

Hackney's Mayor and Councillors continue to work hard to protect Hackney's budget however we can, and we will ensure the budget cuts we will be forced to make will seek to protect the most vulnerable in our community as best we can. However, the scale of cuts currently being proposed by Central Government mean that it will be impossible for us to avoid making cuts to front-line services.

We will continue to provide more information to Hackney's residents as and when it is available to us.

Please do get in touch with us if you have any questions and we will do our best to answer them as best we can.