Public Service Reform Report (UK) advocates the Australian model

"Communities in Control: The New Third Sector Agenda for Public Service Reform", a UK report published in 2005, encourages the government to speed-up the transfer of service delivery budgets and assets from the public sector to the third sector, following Australia's lead in transforming public service delivery.

Government Ministers in Britain are being asked to look at how Australia has transformed public service delivery through the third sector.

The controversial proposal is being put forward by the Social Market Foundation and the Association of Chief Executives in Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) on the launch of their new book: “Communities in Control: The new third sector agenda for public service reform”.

The recent response from charities to the London bombings, where the St John Ambulance and Red Cross were among the first ambulances to arrive at the scene, provided another illustration of the third sector’s capability for meeting public needs.

Nick Aldridge, Director of Strategy and Communications for acevo and author of the new book says   “The government will fail to meet its manifesto commitments on public service reform unless it makes better use of the third sector’s expertise. Ministers need to look to examples such as Australia to see how they can do this successfully. The present government in Australia has taken steps to outsource publicly funded employment training to the independent sectors.

“The two largest providers of employment training services in Australia are third sector organisations: the Salvation Army, with around 10% market share, and Mission Australia, with around 9%.

“Ten years ago, provision was shared between the public, private and third sectors in roughly equal proportions. Since then, the government has withdrawn from direct service provision. Its role is now restricted to commissioning and regulation, with the private and third sectors each delivering about 50% of the services commissioned.

”If Australia can revolutionise the deliver of its public services through greater use of third sector providers so can we. We want to see the Cabinet Office coming up with concrete proposals within 18 months.”

Ann Rossiter, Acting Director of SMF says: "Giving charities a bigger role in direct service provision will have the benefit of building social capital and building a robust civil society - it could break down the barriers between "them" - those outsiders with power and control who intervene in communities, for good or for ill - and "us" - those who have things done to them."

“The third sector can and is delivering public services and we want to play an equal part with the state and private sector providers in the very near future. By the very nature of being a charity we are very much in touch with the concerns and needs of people at community level and we have already proved we can do it. We want to play an even bigger role in service provision in the future to ensure people receive better public services.”

ACEVO is the only association for third sector chief executives in England and Wales, with over 2000 members. The third sector now employs the full-time equivalent of 1.5 million staff, and has a turnover of £46bn.

For further information

Contact	:	ACEVO
Address	:	1 New Oxford Street, London, WC1A 1NU
Phone	:	0845 345 8481
Fax	:	0845 345 8482
Email	:	info@acevo.org.uk

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http://www.acevo.org.uk