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Jeremy Leggett Chief Executive AIRSSteve Manwaring Director HVA

What’s Going On - World

• Global recession

• Over 40 US states are technically insolvent and will have a combined deficit of $200bn in 2011.

• The United Nations report that unemployment worldwide was at 6.6% and there were a record 212 million people out of work.

• World economic inequality increasing rather than decreasing with major crises over water, food and

access to basic healthcare.

What’s going on in Europe

• Sovereign debt crisis (Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland)

• Injection of 750bn euros…. “insufficient to meet the scale of the crisis”

• Nations on the brink of technical insolvency

• The EU “project” in jeopardy

What’s Going On… UK

• “By the end of the decade councils may be forced to wind down some of the most popular services they provide unless urgent action is taken to address the crisis in adult social care funding. Efficiency savings won’t go close to solving this problem”. LGA

• The first “insolvent” public services identified

• Huge reduction in public finances likely to continue

• Everyone is “paying the price” (except Jimmy Carr!!)

May You Live in Interesting Times”

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Coalition Policy

• Immediate fiscal reduction

• A smaller role for the State

• Rebalancing employment between public and private sectors

• Migration of services out from public services

• Community interventions to mitigate cuts (Big Society)

Typical Responses

• To reinvest through efficiency savings

• To replace universal provision with “targeted” intervention

• To established more specific criteria which need to be met to access services

• …and to pull services in house in order to retain critical mass?

The Need for Support

Advice and guidance (12,000 enquiries to HVA per year)

A culture of giving and availability of small grants

In kind support to keep costs low

Premises and Accommodation

Ingredients for inward investment

Intensive targeted services to those in greatest need

Preventative more universal or general interventions freely available

What are the implications - Rural

• Targeting – people or places?

• Targeting – needs led or potential savings led?

• Troubled and troublesome vs. out of sight and out of mind

• Rural communities have developed their assets over 150 years – they needs support as well

• Fairness towards rural young people eg free transport

What are the implications - Urban

• The impact of labelling/segregating

• Who misses out (‘winners’ and ‘losers’)

• Not everyone responds well to formal intensive intervention

• How can mainstreaming be sustainable in the context of wider financial pressures

Unprecedented times deserve creative thinking

• Good practice – Community Asset Transfers

• Good practice – Whole community planning

• Good practice – Co-design with people in their locality

Is the Community Asset Transfer agenda our “Get out of jail free card”?

MatchingBuildings made vacant because of the “shrinking state”…

…With the needs of a growing voluntary sector whose role in service delivery will increase

Key Messages

• Invest in long term relationships with communities, not in seeking quick wins and ‘political’ firefighting

• Invest alongside communities not over the top of them to your own agenda

• Community resilience comes from communities having permission to act and permission to fail as well as incentives for success

• Reducing the “circuitry” between experience “on the ground” and change “at the top”

Gene Kranz:

“I don't care about what anything was DESIGNED to do, I care about what it CAN do.”

Thanks for Listening