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The poor preparation for these programmes and the absence of effective evaluation do not contribute to the credit of the Cabinet Office
Edward Leigh MP
Two government programmes to improve capability in the third sector were undermined by poor management, a committee of MPs has found.
The Commons public accounts committee has published a report into two Cabinet Office programmes, ChangeUp and Futurebuilders – both of which were designed to improve voluntary organisations’ ability to deliver public services.
The highly critical study said there was an “alarming” lack of measurement of the success of both projects, and called for urgent improvements.
So much time had been spent setting up ChangeUp that a three-year funding programme for partnerships between third sector groups had to be squeezed into a year, the report noted.
"Third sector bodies have complained of short time scales for applications, delays in receiving grant payments and pressure to spend money quickly," the MPs said, demanding clearer timescale targets.
Futurebuilders, which is also the responsibility of the Cabinet Office, suffered from a "lengthy and costly" application process which took on average 127 days, the report noted.
And more effort was required to show how the taxpayers' "substantial and long-term financial interest" in the loans it had agreed were to be protected.
Committee chair Edward Leigh said the fact that both initiatives were experimental was “no excuse” for poor performance. “The poor preparation for these programmes and the absence of effective evaluation do not contribute to the credit of the Cabinet Office, especially given the central role it plays in making government work better," Leigh said.
A Cabinet Office spokesman noted that the committee had acknowledged that the programmes in question had had some positive impact, but said the Office of the Third Sector - based inside the department - would be working on improvements.
"These are important programmes that have made a significant improvement to the third sector's ability to deliver public services and empower local people to work together for the benefit of their community," they said.
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