Future support for the voluntary and community sector

Overview

The Council is facing the biggest financial challenge it has ever faced over the next few years.

Currently, between now and 2030 we are expecting to lose £82m of funding from Government which represents 40 per cent of our controllable spend. This is due to the Government’s Fairer Funding Review, where they are looking to move funding out of London to the areas of greatest deprivation across the country. When you include broader pressures in terms of inflation and increasing costs in Children’s, Adults and Temporary Accommodation, we need to make nearly £130m of savings by 2030.

The final outcome of this review is not expected until Christmas and while things may change as a result of our collective lobbying with other London councils, we need to start looking at what will have to change to balance the budget going forward.

We are looking at all our spend and our priority is to protect our statutory services, be as efficient as we can be, and ensure the most vulnerable get the support they need. But this still means almost all of our services will need to change in some way or other in the coming years.

The support we provide to the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) will have to be reviewed as part of this. One of the great strengths of this borough is its thriving VCS sector so we know changes here will be difficult and we would prefer not to have look here but the financial outlook leaves us with no option.

Currently we commission lots of services, projects and activities from the sector, as well as providing core funding to some organisations through the Voluntary Sector Support Fund. We also provide a range of financial support to the sector from a property perspective, with some organisations receiving discounted rent, support with bills, and/or access to repairs services.

We want to do whatever we can to try and ensure residents’ needs are still able to be supported, and so we are considering to look first for savings by reducing the Voluntary Sector Support Fund and adopting a fairer more consistent approach to the responsibilities VCS organisations have when using Council buildings.

Why your views matter

We know the impact of these changes will be significant so we are starting conversations now before proposed changes to the Voluntary Sector Support Fund come in from April 2027 and the outcome of the Voluntary and Community Sector Property Review, which will be phased over several years. We hope this will help ensure the Sector has time to feed into the process and prepare for the changes. 

Please note: this consultation is aimed to gather feedback from Voluntary and Community Sector organisations, while residents will be engaged separately.