Voluntary Sector (Nottingham)

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Osborne? The voluntary sector in Nottingham is doing a huge amount for our city and its citizens. It provides services, support and advocacy to a wide range of groups, including some of the most vulnerable in society, as well as raising awareness, campaigning and fundraising. It also offers thousands of volunteering opportunities, which are important in strengthening our civil society and sense of community, but which also provide vital experience and skills to people seeking to move into paid work. Finally, of course, it provides employment to many people who are committed to making Nottingham a better place to live. There are 678 registered charities in Nottingham. Nottingham Community and Voluntary Service, the local support organisation for the voluntary and community sector, has more than 1,000 local groups on its database, including charities, community groups and social enterprises. I am grateful to have the opportunity today to pay tribute to the fantastic work that the voluntary sector carries out in Nottingham, but I also want to express the hope that action can be taken to protect the sector before it is too late. I must tell hon. Members that Nottingham's voluntary sector faces a crisis brought on by the Government's spending cuts and the particularly severe reduction in funding for our local authority. In its response to the city council's budget consultation, the NCVS has stated that"““we believe that direct support to the sector from the council in 2010/11 totalled approximately £47.5 million. This is testament to both the strength of our local voluntary sector and the spirit of partnership working developed over many years by the Council””." It is clear that Nottingham is already doing what the Government say they want local councils to do by using specialist providers in the community and voluntary sector to provide services to local people. Over the past week, Delia Monk, the local government correspondent for our local paper, the Nottingham Post, has revealed the impact that spending cuts are having on the many different groups that make up the sector. The paper has done the community a great service by bringing the crisis to public attention and explaining how and why it should matter to us all. Local groups face this funding crisis because of Government decisions to cut local authority funding too far and too fast. The Government claim that Nottingham's spending power will be reduced by 8.4% in 2011-12, but the actual figure is 16.5%. That masks even deeper cuts to needs-based grants, which have now been rolled up into the total settlement. Those cuts include the scrapping of the working neighbourhoods fund and the future jobs fund and the 48% reduction in Nottingham's allocation for Supporting People.