Ministers agree cost of National Citizen Service must be cut

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport has published a response to a Public Accounts Committee report on the programme

The government has accepted that it needs to reduce the costs of running the National Citizen Service, according to a government response to a select committee report on the programme.

In Treasury minutes published yesterday, the Department for Digital, Culture Media & Sport has responded to a Public Accounts Committee report, released in March this year, which warned that the costs of running the NCS were “unjustified” and had not been benchmarked against similar voluntary sector youth schemes.

The PAC report came after a similar report by the National Audit Office, published in February 2017, which said that participation targets for the NCS programme could be missed by 40 per cent and costs should fall by 30 per cent to stay within its £1.7bn budget.

The government response accepts the recommendation in the PAC report that the government and the NCS Trust – the governing body of the NCS – should develop a robust cost model for the programme before the next commissioning round in 2018.

The response says that, although the government has a good understanding of the costs of the NCS programmes, it “recognises that there is further work to be done to put the department and the trust into a stronger position to understand and reduce costs”.

This would include attempting to reduce the cost of places on the programme by 12 per cent in the next commissioning process for the NCS, which is due to take place next year.

The government says it agrees that it needs to publish benchmarking of its costs in advance of the next commissioning round, with a report due to be published in January.

The PAC report found that the NCS Trust paid partners approximately £10m for places that were not filled on its 2016 programmes. The government response accepts that the trust should provide an update on the recovery of this money.

Work to minimise the risk of paying for unfilled places on future NCS programmes has also been completed, according to the government.

But it disagrees that the Cabinet Office should provide a list of all companies substantially funded or controlled by the government that are not currently required to meet principles for managing public money.

This response concerns criticism in the PAC report that the Cabinet Office set up the NCS Trust without appropriate governance arrangements.

But the government accepts that the trust should put in place the governance, leadership and expertise required to aid its expansion, and says a full action plan has been completed and will be sent to the PAC this month.

The response says the government will work with the NCS Trust to publish a “clear plan for further strengthening the evaluation of the long-term impact of NCS”. The PAC report had raised concerns that the DCMS lacked the data to measure the NCS’s “long-term outcomes” or understand what works.

The DCMS will undertake a feasibility study shortly, the response says, which will decide the best approach to measuring long-term impact, with a study then carried out by an external provider.

But the response says this is due to be completed in February 2018, rather than by the target of September 2017 set out in the PAC report.

The PAC report’s recommendation that the government and the NCS Trust “think radically” about how the NCS is provided and how it works alongside other organisations have also been accepted by the government. Its response says the supply chain of organisations providing places on NCS programmes will be refreshed in 2018.

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Lifeboat service to use donated drones to help rescue people at sea

Direct Line and Saatchi & Saatchi London have formed the first partnership making use of its pioneering Fleetlights drone technology and donated a fleet of waterproofed drones to the Caister Lifeboat service.

The Norfolk service will use a network of Fleetlights drones equipped with high-powered lights and high-definition cameras to perform semi-autonomous flights, helping lifeboat crews to spot people stranded at sea.

Saatchi & Saatchi filmed the fleet’s inaugural flight earlier this week, with the drones lighting up the sea in a 10-mile radius from the lifeboat.

Each mobile-controlled drone uses “mesh networking” tech, which helps operators spot people who would otherwise be easy to miss. At night, the technology can help rescuers see further than they usually could thanks to the high-powered lights.

After conversations with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and HM Coastguard, Direct Line decided that Caister would be the first to benefit from the technology, given its distance from helicopter support.

The drones will be used in searches ahead of a potential national roll-out.

Paul Garrod, chairman of the Caister Lifeboat, said: “In the past, there have been instances where we have been unsuccessful when searching for someone in need of help. Perhaps if we had been equipped with the drone technology, these searches would have had a positive outcome.”

Mark Evans, Direct Line’s marketing director, added: “We deliberately created the Fleetlights code on an open-source basis in the hope that this would help us to accelerate. Now that we are using the technology to develop the drones for sea rescue it has happened much faster than anticipated.”

This article first appeared in Campaign


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Fraudsters target charities with invoices for the Fundraising Preference Service

The Fundraising Regulator has warned charities to be wary of any email that demands payment for the FPS, which is already covered by the voluntary levy paid by hundreds of charities

Fraudsters are sending charities invoices that demand payment for the Fundraising Preference Service, the Fundraising Regulator has warned.

The regulator alerted organisations to the scam today and urged those affected to get in touch.

“A number of charities have been invoiced fraudulently, although we do not believe that any have paid money,” a spokesman for the regulator said.

He said the spoof messages came from an email address not registered to the regulator’s @fundraisingregulator.org.uk domain and contained a link to an external website.

The regulator had alerted the national fraud centre Action Fraud to the phishing attempt, the spokesman said, and was raising it with sector bodies including the Charity Commission, the Institute of Fundraising and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

The regulator has asked charities that spend more than £100,000 a year on fundraising to pay a voluntary levy to cover the Fundraising Regulator’s costs, which includes the operation of the FPS.

The regulator started the FPS this year to allow people to block post, telephone, email or text communications from named charities.

The amount that charities have been asked to pay by the regulator for the levy varies according to how much each organisation spends on generating voluntary income.

The spokesman added: “The Fundraising Regulator will never issue an invoice for the FPS, since it is funded by our levy. If you know or you believe you have received one of these fraudulent FPS emails and have concerns, or if you have any questions, please get in contact with us on 0300 999 3407 or at [email protected].

“We would also like to ensure that those organisations that fall within the scope of the fundraising levy do not assume the invoices we are currently sending for year two are in any way associated with this fraudulent scheme.”

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Scout Association signs three-year partnership with National Citizen Service

The deal, expected to be worth about £1.5m to the charity, will see the association deliver some NCS programmes

The Scout Association has entered into a three-year partnership with the National Citizen Service in a deal that is expected to be worth about £1.5m to the charity.

The two organisations said they hoped the arrangement would enable them to support more young people and have a greater impact in geneal.

The deal marks the first time the Scout Association, which has more than 600,000 members in the UK, has been involved in delivering the NCS.

A statement from the two organisations said the partnership would be the first of many to test ideas through the NCS’s new innovation programme, which has been set up to enable the NCS Trust, which runs the scheme, and its partners to test new approaches to improving social cohesion, social mobility and civic engagement through the NCS.

The scheme offers 16 and 17-year-old school-leavers the chance to take part in seven or eight-week projects that include community work, a physical challenge and a residential placement.

The project, which is being supported by £1.5bn of government funds between 2011/12 and 2019/20, has struggled to fill all of its places and earlier this year it significantly reduced its participation targets.

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said in March that the high cost of the scheme could not be justified.

The statement from the two organisations today said the partnership would open up new opportunities for the Scout Association to deliver innovative NCS programmes and integrate the NCS experience within scouting.

A spokesman for the organisations said the precise work the Scout Association would carry out was still being worked out, but was expected to be finalised soon.

As part of the deal, the TV presenter and chief scout Bear Grylls will become part of the NCS board of patrons, which is chaired by the former Prime Minister David Cameron, who introduced the scheme.

Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, said he hoped the deal would mark a turning point for the scheme.

He said the NCVO had been calling on the NCS for some time to work more closely with charities that shared its aims.

“Many in the sector feel the NCS has not worked well with local charities and not integrated itself well into local volunteering ecosystems,” he said. “This has been frustrating for those organisations and a missed opportunity for young people.

“I hope today will mark a turning point in the NCS relationship with the voluntary sector. All these concerns are being addressed as part of its nascent partnership with the Scout Association.”

Matt Hyde, chief executive of the Scout Association, said he hoped NCS graduates would become the scout volunteers of the future.

“Marrying the scale, reach and 110 years’ of experience of scouting with the resource and innovative delivery of the NCS will mean we have an even greater impact on many more young people,” he said.

Michael Lynas, chief executive of the NCS, said: “This partnership means that young people from all backgrounds will benefit from NCS programmes delivered by the scouting movement, and NCS graduates can in turn help scouting to expand its work in some of our most disadvantaged communities.”

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Catherine Johnstone appointed chief executive of Royal Voluntary Service

The former chief at Samaritans will take over from David McCullough, who is in turn becoming chief at the Abbeyfield Society

Catherine Johnstone, the former chief executive of Samaritans, has been appointed chief executive of the older people’s charity the Royal Voluntary Service.

Johnstone will succeed David McCullough, who leaves at the end of the month to become chief executive of the older people’s housing and care charity the Abbeyfield Society after more than five years at the RVS.

Johnstone, who left Samaritans in 2015, was until March interim chief executive of the Dover-based charity Migrant Help. She is chair of the Directory of Social Change and was last year appointed CBE for services to suicide prevention.

The charity, which employs 1,200 staff and has more than 25,000 volunteers, supports more than 100,000 older people each month.

Johnstone, who before joining Samaritans was interim chief executive of Capacitybuilders, the now defunct quango that provided infrastructure support to the voluntary sector, became a trustee of the RVS in January, a role she will relinquish before she becomes chief executive of the charity on 1 August.

Income at the RVS has been falling in recent years: it was £64.7m in the year to the end of March 2016, £10m less than in 2011/12.

Johnstone will be paid £136,500 for the role, the same amount that McCullough was on.

Richard Greenhalgh, chair of the RVS, said Johnstone’s record in building sustainable services, driving innovation and inspiring and enabling volunteers would be invaluable.

Johnstone said she was privileged to take up the role. “With an increasingly tough time for our society, I am looking forward to working with the staff and volunteers to ensure that Royal Voluntary Service can be the best it can be,” she said.

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Almost 500 people access the Fundraising Preference Service hours after launch

According to the Fundraising Regulator, 484 suppression requests were made by 10.30am today, five and a half hours after the preference service began operating

Almost 500 requests to stop charities contacting people were made in the first few hours after the Fundraising Preference Service went live this morning.

At a reception this morning to mark the launch of the FPS and the first anniversary of the creation of the Fundraising Regulator, Jenny Williams, who sits on the board of the regulator, revealed that 484 suppression requests had already been made since it was launched at 5am today.

The FPS, which will be run by the regulator, will allow people to block all phone, email, direct mail and text contact from specific charities in groups of up to three at a time.

Speaking at 10.30 this morning, Williams said: “As of about an hour ago we already had 484 suppression requests since the website and system went live earlier on this morning, so the FPS is well and truly under way. This is a tremendous achievement on behalf of the team.”

People who want to block communications from a particular charity will be able to log on to the website or call the telephone number, then choose a charity and the communication channels they wish to block.

The charity will then receive a notification from the regulator and will log on to its own portal on the website to get the person’s information.

Williams said that 641 charities already had portals on the system and more would be joining shortly.

She said the regulator would carry out a formal review of the system in 12 to 18 months’ time.

“We’ve designed the FPS to be flexible,” she said. “If necessary we can increase its capacity, but we hope the wider efforts to improve fundraising standards and the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation will mean there’s much less demand for services over time.”

Stephen Dunmore, chief executive of the Fundraising Regulator, said the FPS set-up and running costs for its first year were likely to be significantly lower than predicted a year ago.

In August last year, the regulator predicted those costs would be £750,000, including £250,000 for set-up.

But Dunmore said today that the set-up costs had been £250,000 and the predicted first-year running costs would be £450,000. He said he expected the actual figure to be lower than that because the regulator was encouraging FPS users to use the website rather than the telephone line, which is more expensive to provide.

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Fundraising code amended as launch of preference service looms

The Fundraising Preference Service will be launched next week, and the Fundraising Regulator has adjusted the Code of Fundraising Practice to take this into account

The Fundraising Regulator has added new rules to the Code of Fundraising Practice to take into account the Fundraising Preference Service, which is due to launch next week.

The FPS, which will be launched officially on 6 July, will allow members of the public to block all contact from specific charities.

The new elements of the code, which come into effect from today, enforce the requirement that any charity receiving a notice from someone through the FPS will have to stop all contact with them within 28 days.

Charities will also be required to stop contact within 28 days if they receive any other kind of indication that the person does not wish to receive communications, the rules say.

The rules also call for charities to ensure that all third-party agencies inform them about and comply with any stop notice they receive.

Suzanne McCarthy, chair of the Fundraising Regulator’s standards committee, said: “It is important that members of the public have confidence that charities will respect their communication preferences.

“The changes made to the code today support the introduction of the new FPS and require all charities to stop sending direct marketing communications on receipt of a request made through the service.”

Stephen Dunmore, chief executive of the Fundraising Regulator, said the watchdog had written to the charities that do the most fundraising to ensure they were ready to receive FPS requests.

“While only these largest charities need to register at this stage, all charities need to make sure they know what the FPS is and are ready in the event that they receive a ‘stop’ notification,” he said.

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