- Pledge your support for Empowerment Works
- Email your networks to ask them to pledge their support for community empowerment
- Write to your MP or local council to ask them to prioritise support for empowerment (see below). Send us your letter and we'll post it to the website. (View examples of letters written on behalf of Exeter Refugee Support Group)
- Is your funding being cut? If you know of a voluntary and community sector project that is being cut, add it to www.voluntarysectorcuts.org.uk.
- Join the Real Power for Communities campaign to make sure the Localism Bill really does give people more power www.rp4c.org.uk.
- Want an alternative to the Big Society? Join 'Our Society' at www.oursociety.org.uk.
- Finally, please tell us what actions you are taking - email isabel@southwestforum.org.uk.
Suggestions for your letter to local authorities, MPs and others
We suggest you write to the leader of your local council and copy in the chief executive, but you may have other contact who would be appropriate.
- Begin by introducing your own role or experience in community empowerment (for example are you writing as a local resident, or a community group, or a specialist who works in community empowerment)
- In your letter ask them to do something specific, such as giving you some information, or writing to someone else. This way they will have to respond to your letter to tell you what they have done.
- Refer to something positive the council has done for the community or community empowerment.
- The Government’s guide to decentralisation emphasises the role of local charities and community groups to ‘empower communities to do things their way’. See http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/decentralisationguide
- Mention Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Neighbourhood Programme [2] worked with 20 neighbourhoods over four years, and concluded in 2007 that ‘community engagement depends broadly on two factors – sustainable neighbourhood-based organisations and a responsive and engaged public sector’. See http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/changing-neighbourhoods-impact-light-touch-support-20-communities
- The local authority needs to support local community organisations, both through grants and by funding community development work. Without this support, only the loudest and most prosperous voices will be heard, empowerment will fail, and as the state shrinks civil society will not be able to fill the gaps.
- There are sound financial reasons for investing in community organisations, apart from the good they do. They don’t just take money from rate payers – by their fundraising efforts they bring money in. But this is predominantly project funding. The core grant funding the Council provides is crucial to enable their basic survival; even small cuts to this can force closure.
- Many authorities recognise the value of investing in the voluntary sector. Wiltshire recently calculated that £750,000 allocated to 250 community projects generated over £3 million of external funding and investment. (See page 19 of http://www.creatingexcellence.org.uk/mod-Downloads-index-req-viewdownloaddetails-lid-358.html) The cost when people fall through the net so often provided by voluntary organisations is financially and personally incalculable, and falls directly on public services.
- Remind them of the situation for small grants and community empowerment work where you are, and tell them specific things they need to do differently.
You should be able to find contact details for the elected Leader and Chief Executive of your council by phoning your council or looking on their website. You can find details of your own local councillor for your ward at www.writetothem.com
You can find details for your MP and write to them online at www.writetothem.com
You may also want to write to the chief executive of your Police Authority, or your Primary Care Trust, as they will be responsible for community engagement in health services. Primary Care Trusts are being closed down, but for now they are working on the change to new structures (known as GP Consortia).
