Consultation Response: Active Community Unit Strategic Funding Review

Volunteering England warmly welcomes the Active Community Unit Strategic Funding Review consultation. We are in support of the proposals it contains.

We specifically appreciate, and would encourage continuing commitment, to there being read across with the activity of the Volunteering and Charitable Giving Unit and its current strategic funding review. As some of the questions asked by the Active Community Unit Strategic Funding Review mirror those of the Volunteering and Charitable Giving Unit, a copy of our response to the Volunteering and Charitable Giving Unit can be found as an appendix to this response.

There are 2 specific areas on which we would like to comment:

CapacityBuilders

The role of CapacityBuilders is a vital one in the delivery of the Active Community Unit's strategic objectives. We would seek assurance that CapacityBuilders would have a commitment of more than 2 years funding from the Active Community Unit if it is not to be explicitly included within the strategic grants programme. We believe this to be especially important as CapacityBuilders has to deliver on a ten year government strategy.

Compact

We are strongly committed to the Compact and are surprised to see that it does not feature in the consultation document. We believe that this is an issue that should be explicit across all strategically funded work. We would also welcome the inclusion of strategic funding for the mechanisms to support Compact development and delivery.

1 September 2005