It seems that the voluntary and community sector is sick of regulation.
That's the finding of the Better Regulation Task Force in its report, Better Regulation for Civil Society. 'Better could be achieved with less,' reckons Sir David Arculus, task force chair.
Excessive administration, unwieldy structures, too many rules and regulations.... we've heard it all before. This is the eternal lament of small business. But is it really the main problem confronting the 16 million activists in the community and voluntary sector, all those people who operate in the spaces left open by the state and private sector?
Read deeper into the report and you'll see an important distinction between this familiar inventory of grumbles, and what the activists experience as their greatest burden. It isn't regulation as such, it's the 'quasi-regulation' of the funding system.
Most of the sector depends on the state for funding, and I have yet to encounter a group that is not exasperated by the quixotic funding streams that come and go with alarming irregularity. I don't know of an organisation that isn't exhausted by the short-termism of the funding, and by the seeming inability to learn from experience, encourage continuity, or reward success.
Much of the problem derives not from regulation alone, but from a crisis in the relation between the state and the sector. Organisations have to tailor their projects to the Government's own political priorities. That, not regulation, is what is stifling innovation and good practice.
These priorities sometimes lack an evidence base, but the sector has to comply, and then suffer the consequences when the money dries up. They spend a year recruiting and getting going, a year doing the project, a year winding down.
The task force should more usefully focus on what is really driving the sector into the ground. Or is it up the wall? If it was regulation per se, then the task force shouldn't be offering encouragement. That's like saying, let's get rid of the Health and Safety Act because is a burden to business. Of course it is, it's supposed to be. It should promote the sector's more serious critique of the Government's funding culture, rather than allow itself to sound like the CBI complaining about tax and red tape.
