CHANGES to the way voluntary community services are managed in Essex have been agreed upon despite concerns that it will create damaging competition reports the Local Democracy Reporter.

Essex County Council will begin a universal standard support and active communities service, whilst expanding the current in-house Active Essex service to support place-based working, which will improve the way the voluntary sector can operate.

It says the review of services in 2023, referred to as the Insight Phase, showed that change is necessary to meet the ambitions of the voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations working alongside the county council, lower tier borough, city and district councils as well as health organisations.

It adds phased and modular VCS support will ensure voluntary groups are sustainable.

However, Lib Dem councillor Stephen Robinson accused the county council administration of failing to appreciate that the council for voluntary service (CVS) in each area – such as the Chelmsford CVS or Basildon CVS – could now be brought into competition with the new support.

He said: “What has ended up happening is one large countywide organisation – the Community Foundation – has effectively been put into competition with a collection of locally driven volunteer-led CVSs around the county and they have ended up competing against each other rather than collaborating which I would have thought was the last thing that you want when you’re talking about the voluntary sector,”

He added: “A lot of discontent and disquiet has been caused and if this Cabinet Member Action is pursued I don’t think things will get better.

“I think you will continue to have poor relations between organisations which really should be collaborating not competing.”

He added: “If localism is to mean anything it should be locally led at the district level and not try to shoehorn everything into a single countywide structure which doesn’t recognise the differences between say Tendring, Chelmsford, Epping Forest and Castle Point.”

Cabinet member Councillor Louise McKinlay said: “To suggest that there isn’t a market is simply not the case.

“We have a number of fantastic organizations across the county and many of them will bid for funding so there is absolutely the market there and it’s about us making sure that that infrastructure is in place to support them to do and be the very best they can be for the benefit.

“And there is no chaos in the sector. I just simply don’t accept that. Indeed the the risk of repeating myself the communication that I’ve received is ‘please come and get on with this’.”